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Critics call on Obama to cancel his Martha’s Vineyard vacation

By David Nakamura,August 16, 2011

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So, though the public understands that Obama is entitled to some time off, the problem is in perception, Walsh said.

“During hardship times, maybe a vacation should be restricted to show you’re not insensitive to the country,” he said. “A lot of Americans can’t take a vacation and can’t afford one. . . . Going to Martha’s Vineyard, he might have a problem in the optics, the playground of celebrities, being in a rich person’s home, even if he has the money to pay for it. It can look quite insensitive at this time. Maybe it would be better all around if he went someplace different, less expensive and exclusive.”

Obama is not the first president to catch grief for appearing insensitive to the country’s plight while engaged in recreational pursuits. Harry Truman was regularly mocked for wearing Hawaiian-style flowered shirts on his many jaunts to Key West, Fla., during the post-World War II era. Dwight Eisenhower spent 365 days at his farm in Gettysburg, Pa., over six years, prompting the Democratic National Committee chairman to label him a “part-time president.”

In 1990, during the Persian Gulf conflict, George H.W. Bush called on Americans to conserve energy, but he stipulated that he would not give up zipping around off the coast of Kennebunkport, Maine, in his speedboat, Fidelity.

“I’m going to keep using my boat,” Bush said at the time. “And I hope the rest of America will prudently recreate. I don’t think we’ve reached the point where I want to call on everybody in the recreation industry to shut it down or everybody that’s taking a vacation in American to shut it down.”

Jimmy Carter, by comparison, gave in to pressure in June 1979 when he got an urgent call from an adviser while aboard Air Force One heading to a three-day vacation in Hawaii. An extended energy crisis had dropped Carter’s approval rating to 25 percent, and the aide pleaded with him to cut short the trip, which he did, retreating instead to Camp David, Md., for meetings with advisers.

Some presidents have used vacations to send another kind of political message. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush retreated to their ranches in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Crawford, Tex., respectively. Reagan was regularly photographed chopping wood or riding horses, while Bush was shown clearing brush — more rugged pursuits that suggested they remained no-nonsense even while on vacation.

Even so, Reagan canceled a vacation in September 1983, after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean passenger airline.

For his part, Bush was criticized by the media for being out of touch when he failed to recognize intelligence warnings before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks while on vacation for most of August 2001. And though he cut short a vacation during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in August 2005, Bush was faulted by some for being slow to respond.

His predecessor, Bill Clinton, vacationed each summer in Martha’s Vineyard. But in 1995, with the economy struggling and his reelection campaign underway, Clinton famously heeded the advice of strategist Dick Morris and went camping in Wyoming instead.

“Clinton was so good at ‘feel your pain.’ They decided that camping was an all-American vacation,” said John Kenneth White, a political science professor at Catholic University. “Once the president was reelected, he went back to Martha’s Vineyard and never went camping again.”

Perhaps the greatest example of a president striking the right balance between his own comfort and the somber mood of the nation came in 1939, during the Great Depression. After welcoming a visit from the king and queen of England, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took them to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., for a relaxed picnic celebration.

But to the chagrin of his mother, Roosevelt served the royal family something appropriate for the penny-pinching times: hot dogs.

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