If there's one thing multimillionaire Hannity loves, it's pretending to be a regular guy and bashing President Obama for living too large. But last night, former Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee smacked it down.
Goolsbee looked it up and found that George W. Bush "had the most vacations of any president of all time." And, in fact, he's correct. Not that Mr. Intellectually Honest would acknowledge the truth. But it still made for an entertaining discussion.
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Kevin Koster commented
2013-03-31 13:16:08 -0400
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This is one of the sillier talking points the GOP has tried to wave around. It’s similar to when they got humiliated with that ridiculous line about the visit to India that was supposed to cost 200 million dollars a day and involve a big part of the Navy.
The reality is that any time the President travels, there is a Secret Service cost and an entourage cost. A big part of this has to do with the open hostility shown to our Presidents more and more over the past 20 years. Of course, the President could just stay inside the White House and never leave, but that’s a ridiculous condition for the GOP to expect the Obamas to observe. World leaders travel, both within and without their countries – it’s part of the job and appropriately so.
The idea of attacking President Obama because he takes a weekend here or there, or takes his family to Hawaii for the holidays, or because they don’t leave at the same time and take separate transportation, is completely hypocritical. The attempt to say that President GW Bush didn’t really take big vacations because he went to his ranch in Crawford belies the fact that he still had to travel to get there, and he still had to house and accomodate all those Secret Service and entourage people. So yes, those ranch “brush clearing” trips were quite expensive – just as expensive as if President Obama had a ranch in Hawaii and was taking his people there.
It seems that Fox News is desperately hanging on to this talking point as a holdover comparison between Bush and Obama, because it was supposed to work for Bush and didn’t. During the Bush Presidency, it’s clear that Karl Rove worked this out as a talking point defense against the accusations that Bush was taking a shocking amount of vacation time after starting two wars. So Rove told Bush not to play golf until after he was out of office, and told him to stay in town or at Camp David for the holidays each year. And what do you know? Now Fox News touts both of those talking points, which are essentially meaningless, in yet another tantrum.
This is the same sour grapes that led GOP pundits to condemn President Obama attending inaugural balls, particularly in 2009. I remember one pundit on Los Angeles saying that the President should just get a sandwich from the White House kitchen, step out the front door and wave to the press, and then get to work, like they say FDR did. (Not counting the fact that FDR was elected four times and that for the first two times, the country was in a complete Depression…) And it’s the same sour grapes that leads to a ridiculous standoff on just about any initiative President Obama proposes.
It seems that the only action they’ll accept from this President is total surrender.
The reality is that any time the President travels, there is a Secret Service cost and an entourage cost. A big part of this has to do with the open hostility shown to our Presidents more and more over the past 20 years. Of course, the President could just stay inside the White House and never leave, but that’s a ridiculous condition for the GOP to expect the Obamas to observe. World leaders travel, both within and without their countries – it’s part of the job and appropriately so.
The idea of attacking President Obama because he takes a weekend here or there, or takes his family to Hawaii for the holidays, or because they don’t leave at the same time and take separate transportation, is completely hypocritical. The attempt to say that President GW Bush didn’t really take big vacations because he went to his ranch in Crawford belies the fact that he still had to travel to get there, and he still had to house and accomodate all those Secret Service and entourage people. So yes, those ranch “brush clearing” trips were quite expensive – just as expensive as if President Obama had a ranch in Hawaii and was taking his people there.
It seems that Fox News is desperately hanging on to this talking point as a holdover comparison between Bush and Obama, because it was supposed to work for Bush and didn’t. During the Bush Presidency, it’s clear that Karl Rove worked this out as a talking point defense against the accusations that Bush was taking a shocking amount of vacation time after starting two wars. So Rove told Bush not to play golf until after he was out of office, and told him to stay in town or at Camp David for the holidays each year. And what do you know? Now Fox News touts both of those talking points, which are essentially meaningless, in yet another tantrum.
This is the same sour grapes that led GOP pundits to condemn President Obama attending inaugural balls, particularly in 2009. I remember one pundit on Los Angeles saying that the President should just get a sandwich from the White House kitchen, step out the front door and wave to the press, and then get to work, like they say FDR did. (Not counting the fact that FDR was elected four times and that for the first two times, the country was in a complete Depression…) And it’s the same sour grapes that leads to a ridiculous standoff on just about any initiative President Obama proposes.
It seems that the only action they’ll accept from this President is total surrender.
mj - the same one commented
2013-03-28 20:49:20 -0400
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Hannity would complain less about about the Obamas being in the White House if they were the butler/maid instead of the POTUS/FLOTUS . . .
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