The Washington Post and several other mainstream and traditionally liberal news organizations began obsessing again over the President’s planned visit to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Here’s what the Post had to say:

President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of — nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening to clear brush, visit with family and friends, and tend to some outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

Looking at the first sentence of the quote, it’s truly a study in contradiction. How can the President get a “break most Americans can only dream of” when, for the entire time, the President will still be doing many parts of his job? How can he be taking “nearly five weeks away from the office” when his office follows him wherever he goes?

Americans, for the most part, can get away and REALLY leave the office behind for two or three, or even four weeks at a time. They don’t have to sit through daily briefings, or take calls, or go on short intra-vacation business trips, or even meet with co-workers during their vacation.

But the President, the Post reporters readily admit, does have to do this. Why do Presidents leave the office after one or two terms looking decades older? Because modern Presidents are ALWAYS on the job. Wherever they go, the job follows; and the stress as well.

Even the compartively young and vigorous President Clinton, who loved his job and was a master of political details left after two terms looking old and tired. Now, you could blame that on Republicans, whom he had to deal with from 1994 on, but it would ignore the fact that most every President who ever served followed the same pattern.

Can you see most Americans leading the kind of life a modern President leads?

Which is why the Presidency is a unique job, with unique and daunting challenges. Which means that drawing some kind of comparison to “the average American” is just bogus and, in my mind, underscores exactly why the MSM is losing readership every year.

Partisans, the liberal media, and Democrats in Washington love to obsess over this kind of thing, but most Americans (Democrats and Republicans) just roll their eyes when they read or hear this kind of journalism and get back to their own lives. It’s just partisan pettiness, and average Americans mainly just ignore it.

In the end, this weird obsession regarding the number of days President Bush spends outside of the White House serves no purpose. It wins no votes for Democrats, has no positive effect on readership, and says nothing about how effective or ineffective Bush is as President.

As a matter of fact, Bush has been a highly effective President so far. While not winning every battle, President Bush continues to score major victories when it comes to moving his agenda through congress.

So, while partisans try to convince Americans that the President is, at best, “lazy,” and, at worst, “callous” when it comes to his Presidential duties, Bush continues to focus on the priorities he has set out for his second term.

So why this whole “VacationWatch” obsession? I’m not sure, but it does reflect some of the same sensless bickering that goes on in the corporate world.

The dot com boom brought innovation to the workplace as much as it brought innovation to businesses all over the country. Suddenly you could work just as easily, and, in some cases, MORE easily, from home as you could from the office. But some companies balked at the idea.

How do you KNOW someone is working if they are not in the office? They could be in their “home office” goofing off, surfing the net, or even playing with their kids!

My answer to that has always been that you know their worth by the quality and quantity of their work. If they work from home and do a lousy job, you either pull them back into an office setting or you let them go.

But if they do good work from home and can still remain integrated with the team, then you let them continue in that setting. What matters is how effective you are for your company, right?

In the same way, what matters for a President is how effective he is for his country, not necessarily where he conducts the people’s business. If you want to argue, then, that the President’s periodic visits to his ranch have been bad for the country, then lay down your argument.

What I’ll point out in reply, however, is that we have not had a single major terrorist attack here in the US since 9/11, we have a growing economy, we have a strong rate of employment, salaries are on the rise, consumer spending is up, the deficit is shrinking again, and we’ve managed to free over 50 million oppressed human beings in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sounds to me as if this President prefers to work smart as opposed to working long. But that’s just my opinion.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com