What Vacation? Obama Still In News Spotlight
So much for the relaxation plan.
After a lightning-paced first seven months in office, this was hardly the long week of quiet time to catch his breath that Obama had sought.
“I think that when I said that the president wanted you guys to take long walks on the beach and relax and just enjoy yourselves and that there would be no news, maybe it was a little bit of wishful thinking,” a slightly sheepish spokesman Bill Burton told reporters. In fact, Burton had brought his own wife to Marthas Vineyard, expecting a light week.
Its practically written into the presidential job description that no commander in chief can take a true turn-it-all-off vacation. He gets briefings from aides almost every day. World events invariably intrude. Its almost become a joke that the term “slow August” doesnt exist for a president.
And for this president, the intense interest in All Things Obama makes private time even more challenging.
“The president, when he ran for this office, knew that there would be no days where he was completely down,” Burton said.
Still, all presidents spend part of their summers away from miserably sticky Washington and some of the stresses of the job.
Thomas Jefferson left the capital in mid-July and didnt return until October, setting an early precedent.
The modern era hardly allows for that much time away. Still, Ronald Reagan spent 335 days of his eight years in office – totaling almost a year – at his ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he rode horses and wore his cowboy hat. Bill Clinton spent summers here on Marthas Vineyard, in the Hamptons or in Jackson Hole, Wyo. George W. Bush often spent weeks at time at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Obama also is hardly the first president to find his R&R interrupted.
In the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush planned a three-week vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine. He ended up ordering military reserves into battle from his seaside home.
His son was home in Texas in August 2001 when he received a CIA briefing paper warning him of al-Qaidas intentions to strike the United States. The younger Bush also was in Crawford when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. His presidency never recovered from his response to the storm, including his decision to not return to Washington until two days after it hit.
He chose to schedule just a week on this idyllic island off the Massachusetts coast to recuperate and recharge for what promises to be a tough fall of health care debates and who knows what else.
The week got shortened at the very start by Hurricane Bill, which delayed Air Force Ones departure from Washington on Sunday.
Then Obama chose to announce on Tuesday that he would nominate Ben Bernanke for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman. Bernankes term doesnt expire until early next year, but the president decided that speculation needed to be put to rest. The men appeared together for the announcement in business attire – minus ties in a bow to vacation informality.
Then came the somber news of Sen. Edward Kennedys death on nearby Cape Cod.
With more bad weather (this time Tropical Storm Danny) potentially bearing down on his vacation spot, Obamas Friday plans were also reshuffled. Hell now fly that night with his wife, Michelle, to Boston, where he is to deliver a eulogy at Kennedys Saturday funeral before returning to the island. Aides said he was working hard on the address he will give about his friend and mentor.