Through wars and natural disasters, recessions and reelections, the getaway locales for America’s chief executive have been dissected by critics looking for symbolic reasons why the president shouldn’t go.
With 14 million Americans out of work, a volatile stock market and a historic downgrade of the country’s credit rating, President Obama is set to begin a 10-day retreat Thursday at a 28-acre Martha’s Vineyard compound called Blue Heron Farm, which costs an estimated $50,000 per week to rent. That divide — and the presumed hypocrisy of a president who has pledged not to rest “until every American looking for a job can find one,” going golfing and biking on an island playground for wealthy celebrities — has been too much for political pundits to resist.
Obama has taken heat the past two summers for renting Blue Heron, but the difference this time is the intensity of his critics and the fact that they are on both sides of the political aisle. Republican strategist Mike Murphy told the Daily Beast that Obama is “acting like the rich guys he wants to raise taxes on,” while liberal columnist Colbert I. King wrote in The Washington Post that this is the wrong time “to dwell in splendid seclusion among the rich and famous.”
At last week’s Republican presidential debate, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty was so quick to criticize that he flubbed the destination: “He should cancel his Cape Cod vacation, call the Congress back into session and get to work on this.”
So far, the administration has held firm on the president’s right to “spend some time with his family,” as White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Besides, he added, a president is never really on vacation because “the presidency travels with you.”
“He will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team,” Carney said. “And he will, of course, be fully capable, if necessary, of traveling back if that were required. It is not very far.”
If it’s not far in mileage to travel on Air Force One, Martha’s Vineyard is a world away from the down-and-dirty partisan politics of Washington and the small-town, middle-American vibe of Obama’s three-day bus tour of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, which wraps up Wednesday.
If I were president today, I wouldn’t be looking to go spend 10 days on Martha’s Vineyard,” Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner, said today during a call to WLS-AM in Chicago.
“Now, Martha’s Vineyard is in my home state of Massachusetts, so I don’t want to say anything negative about people vacationing there. But if you’re the president of the United States, and the nation is in crisis - and we’re in a jobs crisis right now - then you shouldn’t be out vacationing,” added Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
Despite the criticism, Romney himself will visit the Vineyard during Obama’s stay, attending an Aug. 27 fund-raiser in Edgartown. He also was lambasted for spending all or part of more than 200 days outside of Massachusetts in 2006 - his final year as governor - during the run-up to his first presidential campaign.
The White House dismisses such questions, noting the president travels with a full communications suite and will be little more than an hour’s flight away should there be a need for him to return to Washington.
“I don’t think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the president would spend some time with his family,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week. “The presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication.”
A muted anticipation has already taken ahold among island residents and visitors.
Most of Obama’s vacations have been overshadowed by similar concerns or weighty matters.
His first visit to Martha’s Vineyard, in 2009, was marked by the death of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The president and first lady Michelle Obama left the island overnight to attend the Massachusetts Democrat’s funeral in Boston.
The president also undertook one piece of official business, announcing he was renominating Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Obama’s first trip to his native Hawaii for a holiday vacation, in December 2009, was marked by the Christmas Day attempted terrorist bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.
Last summer, Obama was criticized for choosing to return to Massachusetts rather than trying to promote the spill recovery with an extended stay along the Gulf Coast. He tried to defuse with a 26-hour, pre-vacation visit to the Florida Panhandle.
Once Obama arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, he was neither called away nor held an official news conference, but the middle of his vacation was marred by heavy rain.
Things brightened by the end, before Obama flew south to commemorate an event that once prompted questions about President Bush’s decision to remain on vacation in Texas: the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
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