The good news is that over the weekend, the world’s attention was not riveted on Hawaii.

If yesterday’s newscasts led with pictures from Hawaii, it would mean that there had been either a tremendous fumble at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit or some disaster coming from tsunamis or terrorists.

Instead, Hawaii offered up a steady, competent and picturesque venue for big shots to gather and talk business.

Monday’s APEC dateline was "KAPOLEI, Hawaii," which must have pleased Oahu’s second city fathers. Holding a concluding news conference with a Hawaiian sunset as a backdrop was Obama’s gift to Hawaii. Even a cynical press corps struggled to find the edge to our postcard-perfect setting.

"Obama spoke from a podium Sunday with the gleaming Pacific Ocean and swaying palm trees as the backdrop, with temperatures in the mid-80s as sunset approached — a setting so spectacular that it prompted a question about whether the president risks appearing out of sync as the country copes with economic anxiety.

"‘This is a pretty nice piece of scenery here,’ Obama said, adding that he takes pride in his Hawaiian roots,’" Politico writers Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein reported yesterday.

Getting it right was the result of more than a year of advance planning, some done with the help of local residents and some with mainland assistance.

Earlier this year the National Journal, in a piece about the Secret Service, noted that two agents were sent to Honolulu a year before the summit to start planning and "listing everything from hospital locations to potential motorcade choke points."

Of course, it turned out that the choke points were for Honolulu residents as the summit leaders tooled freely up and down the cordoned-off and deserted H-1.

If there was news to be had out of Hawaii’s foray into international summits, it probably came at the expense of China as Obama was clear in highlighting his differences in economic policy. The Washington Post reported that after meetings between Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, a state department adviser said Obama "was clear with Hu that the American business community is ‘growing increasingly impatient and frustrated’ with the state of change in China’s economic policy and the evolution of the U.S.-China economic relationship."

The issue is a U.S. complaint that China controls the value of its currency, the yuan, keeping it artifically low to give Chinese exporters an advantage.

"This means our exports to China are that much more expensive and their imports into the United States are that much cheaper," Obama said at his news conference.

Calling China the world’s second-biggest economy, Obama said it was time that China recognized that it has "grown up, and they are going to have to manage this process in a responsible way."

It was probably the president’s clearest demarcation of the differences and the growing tension between the U.S. and China.

Even that, however, is fairly heady stuff for a weekend news cycle.

Getting much more play was the easy-to-understand comment by Obama that he was ditching the group aloha shirt picture after thinking that the tradition of posing in unusual native costume "may be a tradition we want to break."

And did I mention that killer Hawaiian sunset over his shoulder while he spoke?