KAILUA, Hawaii -- Before heading to a Wednesday luau, President Barack Obama did something much more somber, his aides said: he called CIA director Leon Panetta to discuss the deaths of seven agency officers in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. On Thursday morning, before taking his family to a private viewing of the movie "Avatar 3-D," Obama called his counterterrorism and homeland security advisers for updates on an attempted airline attack a week earlier. And on New Year's Eve, after more than five hours of golf, the president "cleared the decks" for work, aides said -- sequestering himself for several...