Slacker In Chief

by digby

Ok, so I’m reading a story in the Washington Post about George W. Bush’s annual August vacation and the fact that he’s only taking ten days (like most American working stiffs) instead of the usual month or more:

Bush’s scheduled week and a half in Texas is a far cry from last year’s working vacation, which was shaping up as the longest presidential retreat in more than three decades before it was rudely cut short by Hurricane Katrina after nearly a month.

The image of Bush on an extended stay away from the White House while Katrina flattened much of the Gulf Coast and left New Orleans engulfed by floodwater proved to be a defining moment of his presidency.

The image of a president who critics say is aloof from details and too eager to delegate was only driven home when he ordered Air Force One to fly low over the stricken region so he could get a bird’s-eye view of the destruction as he returned to Washington.

[…]

Bush is not the first president to be criticized for spending time away from Washington. More than a century ago, Ulysses S. Grant was pilloried for his retreats to the Jersey Shore. President Bill Clinton often spent vacations at friends’ homes in places such as Martha’s Vineyard and twice vacationed in Jackson Hole, Wyo., a locale his political handlers said would play well among swing voters.

President Lyndon B. Johnson spent 474 days at his Texas spread during his five-plus years as president, far surpassing the 370 days that Bush has spent in Texas since his election, according to U.S. News & World Report. White House aides are quick to point out that Bush remains in command even when he is far from the Oval Office. He continues to receive his normal security briefings and holds meeting with top aides and foreign leaders during his working vacations. The president also likes to use his down time to mountain-bike around his 1,500-acre ranch and to do chores such as clearing brush.

“We’ve reached a point in the modern presidency where any vacation the president takes hurts in some way, because the world and the media move so fast,” Fleischer said. ” . . . The normal things that everyone else does, if the president does it he gets criticized.”

While Bush plans to curtail his long stretches away from Washington this year, he still plans to spend most of the coming month out of town. He has planned long weekends at Camp David and the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, for August, before returning to Texas before the Labor Day weekend.

So, Grant, Johnson, Bush and Clinton all spent lots of time away from Washington and got criticized for it. Isn’t that what you just read?

Unfortunately, it is really a game of “what’s wrong with this picture?” Bill Clinton took fewer vacations than any other president. I know it doesn’t specifically say he took long vacations or many vacations like all the other presidents mentioned in the article, but the context certainly suggests that he, like Grant, Johnson and Bush was criticized for doing so. That is incorrect.

(He was criticized for choosing his vacation locale for political reasons, it’s true. But I’ve always wondered why nobody ever thought that the Disney McRanch movie set that Bush bought in 1999 might have been chosen for political reasons too. Nope, not a word.)

Anyway, for the record, Clinton may have been a lot of things, but a lazy shirker like Bush he certainly wasn’t:

As of December 1999, President Bill Clinton had spent only 152 days on holiday during his two terms, according to CBS News. A former staffer noted Clinton was such a workaholic that “it almost killed Clinton to take one-week vacations during August.” In 2000, Clinton cut his summer vacation short to just three days, so he and his wife could concentrate on her Senate race and fundraising for Democrats. While we couldn’t find the exact tally for Clinton’s last year in office, it’s reasonable to expect he didn’t increase his vacation rate. And in barely three years in office, George W. Bush has already taken more vacation than Clinton did in seven years.

As of now, Bush has already spent more than a whole year (370 days) of his first six years as president on vacation.

This is another example of the false equivalence that’s making a mockery of modern journalism. They could have stuck with Lyndon Johnson as the example of a lazy Democratic president who couldn’t stand being in Washington. Hell, he was even a Texan. But they had to stick Clinton in there, out of context and without offering the similar criticism that should have been leveled at Bush since 2000 and wasn’t. I guess it’s a law or something.

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