Reading the “Obama Beat” of August 12 regarding the First Family vacation flap and thinking about the Bush presidencies this week has led me to conclude three possibilities about “W’s” substantial vacation skills:
1.) He was very fortunate to avoid media heat, or;
2.) Things ran better when he was on vacation, or;
3.) We couldn’t tell the difference between work and vacation in his case.
It turns out, according to research for a February 9, 2009 story in Vanity Fair, that President Bush spent more than 450 days at Camp David and another 450 days at the Crawford, Texas ranch during his eight years in office.
That’s close to two and one half years.
Now in his defense, not that much was going on then, other than war, natural disasters, and the meltdown of our economic system.
Jack Shea
Oak Bluffs
Jack Shea is a writer whose work appears often in The Martha’s Vineyard Times.