As of August of last year, President Obama had taken 92 vacation days. This comes to about four weeks a year. Four or five weeks of vacation per year is not an outlandish amount of vacation for a chief executive.
At a similar point in his presidency, George W. Bush had taken 367 days of vacation. This was one of the many topics about which Mr Bush was justly derided by Democrats. Four or five weeks vacation may be typical but 16 weeks is certainly pushing it.
In total, George W. Bush vacationed 1,020 days. This accounted for a full 32% of his presidency. He also took a five week vacation. The longest of any president ever.
President Obama was on vacation for 26 days during his first year in office (2009). Ronald Reagan spent 42 days on vacation during his first year in office (1981). President George H.W. Bush was on vacation less than his son, 40 days, in 1989, his first year in office. President Obama was on vacation less in his first year in office than the previous three Republican Presidents.
Republicans generally downplayed comments about G. W. Bush’s vacationing. He certainly did need a rest from sleeping at the wheel during 9/11, studiously ignoring the Afghan War, providing excellent mismanagement to the Iraq Occupation, striving mightily to gut Social Security, cheerleading the bungled response to Katrina, and providing spectacularly anemic leadership in the face of a recession.
To achieve failure at such a grand old scale, a Republican President requires a lot of rest and relaxation.
And Obama going to Palm Springs for another round of golf and R&R.
Reagan went to CA b/c he had a ranch. GHWB went to Maine b/c he owned a home. One needs to look at the expenditures of these trips, that’s where Obama is abusing the privileges of the office. Since 2009, he and Biden racked up $40 million in just flying the carbon-emitting AF1 around on their get-aways. You add up accommodations, security, limos, it’s an obscene cost, When Obama vacationed in Hawaii, his wife stayed a few extra days, do she took a separate flight back. But they are concerned about carbon emissions.
and not just graphs is apparently problematic.
…DFW is someone I always want links from.
Gov. Romney and Sen. McCain are thus even more qualified than Ronald Reagan or G. W. Bush because they each own so many more vacation homes.
We should only elect wealthy Americans to preside over us. That way, we save a bundle on travel and security costs. Perhaps we can amend the Constitution to require that future Presidents own at least a beach cottage. DFW could raise this possibility with Senator Warren.
Reagan traveling to his CA ranch is the same as Obama traveling to Palm Springs? So following your logic, when Stephen Lynch travels back to his district (i.e. goes home), he is considered by your own definition, to be on vacation, amirite? When Markey travels back to Malden, is he on vacation? Oh wait, bad example, he never does that, but you get my point.
When Congress recesses for 5-6 weeks as they always do in the summer, W usually went to Crawford TX. That’s a heck of a difference than renting a mansion in Hawaii or Martha’s Vineyard and he and Michelle and the dog all take separate flights and spew all that carbon.
I don’t recall Laura and the girls and grandma taking flights to China without the president or the girls racking up a million dollar tab on a trip to Mexico. But hey, the rest of us can just eat cake.
PS. I have enjoyed our dialogue on this and on my diary on the situation in Iraq.
Neither I presume can its author.
So I stopped reading.
Since he was wrong in his claim that I (OK, you, but still) got his point, I figured the rest would be either more nonsense or more wrongness. Why bother?
Why John Boehner!
Here he is bragging to Biden about his golf game:
But Matt Taibbi has done the research:
180 junkets in 6 years.
W loved his ranch so very much that, approximately 2 seconds after leaving office, he sold it and moved to a lovely neighborhood in Dallas. As a demonstration that Bush earned his TX reputation of “All hat, no cattle,” see the photo thoughtfully provided by DfW in his otherwise vacuous post on the same general subject as this one.
Oh, and W’s aversion to hooves also apparently extended to horses, according to Vincente Fox.
…either during the campaign or while he was President-elect because he thought it would seem folksy?
He still owns the ranch. The rumor that he sold out after leaving office is still widespread, but untrue.
I’m sure she knows Reagan had part of his left lung torn apart by an assassin’s bullet earlier that first year in office, so we can cut him some slack, no?
Reagan going HOME to CA or GHWB going HOME Kennebunkport or GWB going HOME to Crawford is not the equivalent of jaunting off to Hawaii or Africa or sending the kids and grandma to China or Mexico or Spain or playing more golf than Arnie Parlmer. And taking separate flights back when the world is facing a warming crisis, and spewing all that extra carbon goes to show how little they really care.
FORE!!!
…that when Presidents vacation they are only sort of vacations. You can be President wherever you are and it’s not like Presidents routinely hand power to the VP per the 25th amendment so they can take some actual time completely off.
Sweet 100s again this year. Great eating right off the stem in the mornings. The butter and sugar corn seems late, though. Don’t know if it’ll be ready for the 4th.