If it was fiction, you’d edit out the metaphor as way too obvious:

After answering six questions and eager to sit down to dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Bush turned down a reporter who asked permission for a follow-up question.

He then strode from the lectern toward a door. He jerked on the handle and came up short. The door was locked. He tried the other side. It, too, was locked.

Stymied, Bush stood at attention – and laughed at his foiled exit strategy.

“I was trying to escape,” he said. “It obviously didn’t work.”