You might wonder why I’m bringing up old news about our Vacationer-in-Chief. For the record Bush took 487 days at Camp David and 490 days at his ranch, the equivalent of almost 2.7 years in his 8 years in the Oval office. That works out to around ONE THIRD of his entire Presidency.
Well this is why (from CNN): Obama is is taking fire from CNN for daring to take a three day trip to Maine.
(CNN) — President Obama and his family left Washington Friday for a weekend getaway to Maine, but along with a little rest and relaxation comes criticism that the president is taking it easy with the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis in a critical phase.
The Obamas plan to spend the weekend on Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. The trip marks the president’s third vacation since the oil disaster began in April. […]
Our liberal media strikes again!
Hey, I know, you know, and Obama knows that criticism over trial crap like this it comes with the territory but do you remember a big uproar about Bush in the media having spent the entire month of August on vacation after 9/11 happened? I sure don’t.
And I sure don’t recall a website by the Democratic National Committee devoted to attacking Bush for his many vacations — ever, much less one pointing out the time the time he took off to cut brush while his ignoring his national security experts were warning that Al Qaeda was poised to attack the United States. It was only a story that got much play in the liberal blogosphere and then not until 2004.
Yet that is precisely what the Republican National Committee has done. They created a website devoted to criticizing Obama for his leisure activities.
The Republican National Committee launched a website blasting what it considers Obama’s “leisure activities or missteps” during the oil disaster, like playing golf, attending concerts and vacationing in Asheville, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and now Maine.
I’m not providing a link for that site by the way. Search it out if you like fallacious and nonsensical information about our “lazy” Democrat President from the party who gave us this man to lead the nation:
And for good measure here’s another video to remind you that Bush praised his appointed head of FEMA, a man not qualified to umpire a T-Ball game for five year olds, after his administration’s utter failure to help the people of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina:
Amazing isn’t it? You have to give it up to Karl Rove. He convinced the Beltway media (with the help of Fox News of course) that Bush was a hard working guy, always in touch with the people of America, and always in control of the “War on Terror” even as he took more time off from his job as Commander-in-Chief than any other President ever — by a wide margin.
Meanwhile, the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, a crisis that was caused in large part by the deregulation of the oil industry and the corruption of the Mineral Management Service that the Republicans ushered in under Bush and Cheney, is being used to attack the most effective President we’ve had since LBJ in terms of getting his agenda passed by Congress.
It’s enough to make your blood boil at the hypocrisy and deceit the Republicans and their lap dogs in the media are perpetrating, isn’t it?
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said the Republican criticism is “galling,” considering Bush’s frequent trips to Camp David and his home in Crawford, Texas.
“Barack Obama is working as hard as any president that we’ve had in recent history and certainly harder than the most immediate previous president,” he said.
Jamal Simmons is right. Not that anything is going to change. The majority of the press will still go after Obama 1000 times harder than they ever went after Bush because of what too many of them have allowed themselves become: mouthpieces for Republicans, conservatives and corporate lobbyists always willing to publicize the talking points which criticize Democrats in order to prove that they do not have a “liberal bias.”
Well I can assure then that after watching their performance during the Bush years, and the first 18 months of the Obama administration that is the one concern our media elites no longer need to worry about.
And all of these sorts of things are possible because there are few to oppose Rove from the left.
Just about everyone on the left is caught in the grip of ZOMGIDONTWANNABECALLEDANOBAMABOT!!!-ism, and as such is busy agreeing with any and all criticisms of Obama just to show how much of a patriotic feet-to-the-fire free thinker they are.
So now that these self-proclaimed “true progressives” have been effectively marshaled to the cause of current republicanism (to wit, being against anything Obama), Rove’s free and unopposed to go back and clean up the historical mess, replacing it with sheer fantasy.
Pretty slick little operation, actually.
The majority of the press will still go after Obama 1000 times harder than they ever went after Bush because of what too many of them have allowed themselves become: mouthpieces for Republicans, conservatives and corporate lobbyists always willing to publicize the talking points which criticize Democrats in order to prove that they do not have a “liberal bias.”
The TradMed didn’t allow themselves to become anything. It’s always been what they are. It’s the pact they make to be able to go to Sally Quinn’s cocktail parties.
The reader knows that the news is now only what is read and only when the sources are worthy. Anything with video and audio is suspect as the sources are rarely if ever available. I have zero confidence in what I see and hear via radio or tv. With what I read I have a wealth of material available that will confirm or question the reliability of the information. I’m hoping and believing that most people are doing the same.
The issue of Presidential vacations is one that strikes me as political theater. As a former Poli Sci guy, my perspective is a little different. I like to see Presidents recreating because it gets them out the cocoon and helps prevent them from wearing down.
I was initially somewhat dismissive towards reports of Bush’s lax work habits but found the numbers disconcerting.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a080401bushvacation#a080401bushvacation
The fact that Bush was rarely on the job was comforting in one sense — he could do less harm. But the one exception is national security, which he needed to attend to but didn’t. And it’s far more damning that Bush was a lax administrator as President than the fact that he spent 42% of first six months on vacation, where his work consisted of occasional wood cutting sessions staged for photographers.
In the world of political theater, style trumps substance, and the carefully cultivated perception of being a wood-chopping, hard-working kind of guy means more than actually being one.
Because the issue is so big, I won’t attempt to relate all the warnings that were given to the Bush administration but there was one other of note:
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/2007/05/they-knew-tenets-book-reveals-9-11.html
Most criticism directed at a President is merely symbolic and has little to do with how well they perform their job. The one exception is national security, and it’s pretty ridiculous that Obama’s time off has been deemed worthy of press coverage considering how little time (in historical terms) he’s taken off. In comparison, Bush’s gross negligence and coverups have often received far less coverage than they deserved.
Little of what’s in the MSM lately passes for serious journalism. The medium itself has devolved into ‘he said, she said’ narratives that merely echo the disinformation produced by political pressure groups. It’s not that there aren’t a few actual journalists left but when groups such as the Tea Party are examined as if serious then the reporting is an accurate depiction of the absurd. It’s not a question of whether the issue is being well-reported but of the subject matter itself. Treating the political opinions of Tea Partiers as serious creates a paradox, since it presumes that there is good faith present.
Rove, Fleischer, Perino, Luntz and their ilk are working overtime to revise the historical record regarding Bush. A bit of it gets caught out, but for the most part it works to blur the actual events.
Today’s NY Times story on Presidential vacations by Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a case in point. She walks back the Bush Presidency somewhat, using Ari Fleischer as her primary “expert” on the Presidency. And she says this:
“Every president’s calculus is different. Mr. Bush quit playing golf after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad; he later said, “Playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” Mr. Obama, too, is a wartime president, yet he does not conceive of himself as one in the way Mr. Bush did. He is also an avid golfer, and has maintained a steady diet of the sport, despite its appearance as a rich man’s endeavor in economic hard times.”
Help me out here: didn’t Bush, in fact, continue to golf, and wasn’t that widely known though little mentioned in the MSM?
Yep