Debating the Presidential Vacation
Aug. 6 -- As George W. Bush begins a monthlong vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, he revives one of the oldest traditions in presidential history — the frequency of presidential vacations and the frequency with which presidents are criticized for taking them.
Some of Abraham Lincoln's critics complained that he spent a quarter of his presidency living away from the White House. With his family, Lincoln took up residence during the warmer months at the Old Soldiers' Home.
See where Bush lays down his cowboy hat.
Perched on a hill in northeast Washington, the clapboard cottage was a cool, quiet refuge from the pressures of the Civil War and the hundreds of office-seekers and favor-seekers who loitered outside Lincoln's White House bedroom. (In those days, the president's office was in the family quarters.)
Franklin Roosevelt once said that "all that is within me cries out" to return to his majestic home at Hyde Park on the Hudson. During World War II, he was secretly spirited out of the White House (to avoid assassins) for frequent vacations at "Shangri-La" (later renamed Camp David), Hyde Park, "Hobcaw Barony" — the estate of his friend Bernard Baruch in South Carolina, and the "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Ga., where FDR ultimately died.
Harry Truman took his staff and much of the White House press corps for vacations at a naval installation at Key West, Fla. Ike took long summer vacations at his mother-in-law's house in Denver and a naval station in Newport, and spent most weekends at Camp David (which he had renamed for his grandson) or his house at Gettysburg. JFK rarely spent a weekend in the White House, shuttling among family houses in Hyannis Port, Mass., Palm Beach, Fla., and the Virginia hunt country.
LBJ and Reagan spent large portions of their presidencies on their beloved ranches. Nixon established the "Western White House" at his San Clemente, Calif., estate, spending large sums of public money (later revealed during the Watergate investigations) to build offices and other facilities there for his staff in order to convince the public that he was as intensely on the job as he was in Washington.
Nixon grandly announced that long spells in San Clemente allowed him a more "national perspective on the presidency." George Bush the Elder gravitated to Walker's Point, the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
