When presidents take a breather

Have presidents always taken vacations?

Not in the modern sense of the word. In the nation’s early years, neither the president nor Congress spent their full time governing. Congress only met part of the year; once the public’s business was completed, it was expected that elected officials would return home to handle their private affairs. As president, George Washington spent months away from New York City and Philadelphia, the first two cities where the capital was located. Twice a year, Washington went home to his Virginia estate, Mount Vernon, for a period of weeks.

Are prolonged presidential vacations useful?

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The nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, insisted that they were. Politicians, Jefferson said, needed to mix with ordinary people in order to know their hearts and minds. As president, Jefferson took numerous trips to see how ordinary people lived. “You must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done,” Jefferson wrote in 1787, “look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under the pretense of resting yourself, but in fact to find out if they are soft.” Even during the Civil War, Lincoln occasionally sought refuge at a stone cottage not far from the White House, for solitude and reflection.

What do presidents do on vacation?

Aside from communing with the masses, presidents generally engage in their favorite leisure activities—just like other Americans. Calvin Coolidge went fishing in the backwoods of Wisconsin and South Dakota. Harry Truman played poker and fished in Key West, Fla. Dwight Eisenhower golfed in Augusta, Ga. John F. Kennedy sailed and played touch football with his brothers and other family members at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. Ronald Reagan rode horses and chopped wood at his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif. Gerald Ford hit errant golf drives in Palm Springs, Fla. Jimmy Carter was partial to tennis on islands off the coast of Georgia. The senior George Bush played horseshoes, golfed, and bounced a speedboat over the waves near the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bill Clinton golfed, rode horses, and raised funds on Martha’s Vineyard. Richard Nixon, not a particularly sporting fellow, simply retreated to a luxurious beachfront complex in San Clemente, Calif.; he called it “the Western White House” and brought his staff with him. For recreation, he occasionally took walks on the beach with his wife, Pat. The home was so swanky that it often served as the site of official state functions, including a visit by Soviet Prime Minister Leonid Brezhnev.

Have most presidential retreats been luxurious?

Actually, most have tended toward the rustic. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, built himself a six-room cabin in Warm Springs, Ga. The “Little White House,” as it was called, was near a hot spring where he swam, soaked, and sought relief from his polio. The house was furnished with simple wooden furniture made in unemployment relief factories established by Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor. Eleanor, however, seldom visited Warm Springs. When Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while at his refuge, he was with his frequent companion, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.

Which modern president took the most time off?

Ronald Reagan spent 345 days—nearly one of his eight years in office—at his Santa Barbara ranch. The Gipper waved off criticism from the White House press corps and from Democrats, saying his vigorous routine at the ranch kept him healthy and relieved stress. In his autobiography, Reagan wrote, “It just seems a lot easier to sort out a problem when I’m on a horse.”

Does the public resent presidential vacations?

Reactions seem to be mixed. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 55 percent of Americans think President Bush’s vacation is too long. Before his 1996 re-election battle, former president Bill Clinton was so concerned about public reaction to his vacations among the elite on Martha’s Vineyard thathe asked his political consultant, Dick Morris, where else to go. Morris advised Clinton that Americans like outdoorsy, family vacations, so Clinton went hiking in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks—and let the photographers come along.

Can the leader of the free world ever truly relax?

In the modern world, only for short spells of time. During his month in the heartland, Bush announced his controversial decision on federal funding for stem-cell research, and has made highly visible trips to neighboring states to show the public he’s still on the job. Reagan was happily riding his horse in Santa Barbara in 1983 when Soviet jet fighters shot down Korean Airlines flight 007. He wanted to handle the crisis from the ranch, but aides insisted that he had to return to Washington. Today, a president simply cannot disappear into a cabin in the woods and tell the world to leave him alone. Bush may be spending August at his ranch, political consultant Joel Drucker told the San Francisco Chronicle, but it’s not as if the president has left a recording at the White House saying, “This is George. I’ll be out of the office for a month.”

Dodging the press