Bush Embarks On 'Working Vacation'
As He Should, President Will Stay Busy On Monthlong Vacation
Posted: 11:54 a.m. EDT August 5, 2002
Updated: 12:09 p.m. EDT August 5, 2002
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush is going on a month-long vacation, but he is making sure it won't be all rest and play. He has a lot to worry about -- how to revive the domestic economy and whether to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq.
Long ago other presidents devised the term "working vacation," and after Bush arrives Tuesday at his beloved ranch near the hot and dusty Crawford, Texas, he will make a dozen side trips around the country to raise funds for Republican candidates and to pump up his agenda.
He also will host a "forum" of fiscal experts in nearby Waco to examine the nation's economic outlook in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown and the corporate-sleaze scandals.
It's no wonder Bush plans to be seen as staying busy. Remember his prolonged August vacation last year when he was warned in intelligence briefings of possible hijackings of airplanes by terrorists?
None of the information was definitive enough, but in the Monday-morning quarterbacking, questions arose about how much the CIA and FBI knew and whether the horrific Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented.
It's been a rough time, and Bush has been longing for renewal at the Texas ranch. Kennebunkport, Maine, where he is spending this weekend with his parents, does not do it for him. He grew up in Texas, and that's where his heart is.
Every president has had his favorite recreation retreats. Franklin D. Roosevelt looked forward to train trips to his ancestral home in Hyde Park, N.Y., and to his cottage in Warm Springs, Ga.
Harry Truman often went home to Independence, Mo., but he also enjoyed relaxing at Key West, Fla., where he donned a flowered Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat and drank a little bourbon and played poker with his cronies.
John F. Kennedy was drawn to Hyannis Port, Mass., where he joined his clan at the family compound every summer and went sailing. He also spent Yuletide holidays at the family's winter home at Palm Beach, Fla.
Lyndon B. Johnson's favorite place was the LBJ ranch near Stonewall, Texas. Incidentally, the White House press corps goes along on these vacations to do what we call the "body watch" in case the president becomes ill or falls under attack. But mostly we are not told what really goes on.
Johnson, at least, was hospitable to the reporters traveling with him and often invited us to the ranch. He would take several of us for rides around the property in his white Lincoln Continental, and he delighted in showing us the deer at sunset.
We would stroll over to the ramshackle cottage of his cousin Oreole Bailey. She padded to the door barefoot one evening when we knocked, and later when I wrote about our visit, she was rightfully furious. Seeing the story, she asked Johnson, "Does Helen Thomas sleep with her shoes on?" But she got one benefit from the story. It shamed Johnson into paying for a paint job on her house.
In covering LBJ at the ranch, the press stayed at the Driskill Hotel in Austin more than 60 miles away. We were able to pick up gossipy tidbits about Johnson's early political career. But when our interviews with his friends put us onto subjects he didn't like, he had us moved to San Antonio, even further away.
We loved covering Richard Nixon at the western White House in San Clemente, Calif. That beautiful home later became his Elba when he went into exile after being forced out of office for his Watergate misdeeds.
We particularly liked staying in the artsy-craftsy Laguna Beach 15 miles away. Nixon, on drives down the freeway with his pal Bebe Rebozo, enjoyed giving the press the slip. But we usually caught up with him. He liked to stroll on the beach. Once he was spotted in business shoes while walking on the sand, and that made for great news photographs.
The only other president I covered who kept close vacation ties to his childhood home was Jimmy Carter. We got to know all his kinfolks in Plains, Ga., and every store on Main Street.
Later when we began to cover President Ronald Reagan from the wealthy city of Santa Barbara, Calif. a local reporter asked me, "Now isn't this better than Plains?"
He looked astonished when I replied, "No, the red ants and the gnats were not intolerable because I could walk down the street on Saturday morning with the president of the United States and pile on questions of the day." We always got news on those strolls, and for us that was the name of the game.
Reagan, on the other hand, kept himself inaccessible while at his "ranch in the sky" in the Santa Ynez Mountains 20 miles from Santa Barbara. Some photographers stood on a nearby mountain with zoom lenses.
Sometimes they would catch him and his wife Nancy riding into the sunset. But the president, a former movie actor who had many parts in westerns, was well aware of the cameras. Once he pretended to fall off his horse, causing momentary consternation before the "photogs" realized they had been duped.
Gerald Ford rarely went home to Grand Rapids, Mich. once he became president. He preferred golfing at Palm Springs, Calif., in the summer and skiing at Vail, Colo., in the winter. Unlike some reporters who tried to get close to him on the slopes, I stayed at the bottom, freezing.
Even when a president is on vacation, life goes on and so does the news. I hope that on this holiday Bush will turn away from his frequent talk of war and regain a peaceful perspective on life.
(Helen Thomas can be reached at 202-298-6920 or at the e-mail address helent@hearstdc.com
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