The president is going to add another min-vacation to his August break next week with a a four-day weekend at Camp David. No big deal.
But the administration, ever sensitive to criticism, had to rationalize the time at the presidential retreat, with Spokesman Bill Burton saying that the vacation week has been newsier than expected considering the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.
From Politico:
“‘When you’re president, you’ve always got that job,’ Burton said.
On Monday, Burton pointed to former President George W. Bush’s vacation habits to defends scattered criticism of Obama’s August schedule
‘As I recall, the previous president [took] quite a bit of vacation himself, and I don’t think anyone bemoaned that,’ Burton said.””
I guess you have to say that perhaps no one bemoaned Bush’s vacations — attacked, lamented, scourged, bashed, snarled over etc.
At the Daily Kos, even Obama getaways still provoke recriminations for Bush’s time in Crawford, Texas and elsewhere — Obama NYC Date Night Highlights Bush Vacation Record
As Bush was leaving office, CBS had tired of the standard coverage of how much time Bush had spent in Crawford and raised the question of his use of Camp David, measuring the number of days in eight years that the 43rd president spent in the Catoctin Mountain getaway with: 487 Days At Camp David For Bush
Bush did spend a lot of time away from the White House over the years, but how was his first summer vacation handled in 2001, when he spent 30 days in Texas and traveling the country.
This from a late August piece from Mike Allen, then of the Washington Post, sums it up pretty neatly:
Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said voters remembered the time Bush was taking off, but could not say what he had done during his twice-weekly outings from New Mexico to Missouri to Pennsylvania. “The president had an opportunity to command the stage when Congress was gone and the reality is that he hardly did that at all,” Garin said. “It’s certainly true that the president maintained his image of being a nice guy over the past month and of being a decent family man. But he did nothing to strengthen his image as a leader.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill said that if the economy worsens, they can use that against Bush by suggesting he was goofing off on the job. “People like him and they’re willing to cut him some slack,” said one Democratic aide who has studied the focus group results “But when things start to go wrong, the first thing they’ll think of is the work ethic. We’re in a battle of perceptions, and Leno and Letterman and morning radio made it conventional wisdom that this was a month-long vacation.
Sounds like some substantial media bemoaning to me.
