Even the USA Today notices the disconnect between Obama’s speeches and his actions: Economic woes offer awkward backdrop for Obama’s vacation
Fourteen million people are out of work. Millions more are losing fortunes in the stock market. America’s AAA bond rating has slipped.
So should President Obama be vacationing next week in Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, where the average home costs $650,000?
Yes, says White House press secretary Jay Carney. Obama, like most Americans, needs down time to recharge his batteries for the battles ahead. And besides, he says, “The presidency travels with you.”
Maybe not, say some academics, authors and political pundits. While Obama deserves a break, they say, this might not be the time, and Martha’s Vineyard might not be the place.
Actually, Obama should take a total break over the next year and a half. Stay on vacation. Travel overseas. Sight-see. Play golf. Perhaps with him out of the way, things will get better.
But, we all know that is unrealistic. It’s also unrealistic for Obama to put his own pleasure off when so many are suffering.
Obama could be the best president we ever had if he did one and only one thing—–resign.
Unfortunately, I think he will pull a Carter and smear the USA once he is finally pushed out the door
Carney’s position on presidential “vacations” has changed since 2001. Some might even call it a “flip flip.” (Appropriate for walking on the beach.)
Personally, I think it is a clear case of a politician (and that is what Carney is) knowing who he is speaking for and the truth be damned.
According to Big Journalism back in 2001, Carney had this to say about George Bush while writing for Time magazine:
A Vacationing Bush Works Hard for His Photo-Ops
By Jay Carney Thursday, Aug. 16, 2001
The image-makers who advise George W. Bush got what they wanted this week: a photograph, taken by the Associated Press and published in seemingly every newspaper in the country, of the President lifting a telephone pole as he “helped maintain†a nature trail in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.
Back in July, when they were planning what the President should do during his month-long vacation (as part of their effort to persuade the public that he wasn’t actually on vacation in the generally accepted sense of what vacation means — i.e., having fun and not working), the image-makers hit upon a clever idea. Every week, they decided, they would send the President somewhere outside Texas for a day or a day and a half to hold an event of some kind in which he would mix with “real Americans.â€
That figures. And now he has to try and defend. THE Chump.