As many have noted in the last week, President Bush already has broken the record for vaction days in a term (see
Political Wire for the story.) Already, in five years, President Bush has amassed almost 350 vacation days. That's 70 a year, or over two months, or almost 20% of the year. This begs two questions. First, why would any President want to go on so much vacation? If I were President, I'd take as much advantage of it as I could. Second, why hasn't this stat turned into a Democratic soundbyte?
The first question has no rational answer, other than that Bush has no real experience working on his own, without the ability to take such long vacations. The second question has a more obvious answer: Democrats seem to abhor going on the attack nowadays. Yet the President's vacation time should be attacked when many Americans are losing money at home and dying overseas. It can be turned into a potent example of how Republicans cannot govern. Let's ask the country, "When did you last get 70 vacation days?"
More in extended
One can picture several diferent uses of this attack. Some of these have to do with the economy, some with Iraq. First, the economy:
Use 1: "Americans are among the hardest working people in the world. We take fewer vacation days than most of the Western world, around 14 a year. We need a President who mirrors our hard work at our jobs with hard work at his." Let's be honest, most people would love to have Bush's time off. We need to show that he really is not in the same fix as the average American, and this is one way to do it.
Use 2: "Our economy continues to stagnate, and Americans are unsure about the future, especially with oil prices skyrocketing. Why is the President not working on these problems, instead of vacationing?" This is a "fill-in-the-problem" use of the vacation stat. If we have "such-and-such problem", why isn't the President working on it? A resort in Idaho is surely a less effective workplace than the White Hourse.
Now to Iraq:
Use 1: "We Democrats feel that the war in Iraq is extremely important and requires a lot of hard work and effort, whether or not we will pull out. Why is the President vacationing when he should be fulfilling his role as Commander-in-Chief and making sure our brave soldiers are safe?" This emphasizes that the war is going badly and so the response cannot be to take a break. We need instead to finish the job.
Use 2 (and the one I think is most powerful): "Why can the President take 70 days off from the Iraq War while our brave soldiers get their tours extended? The President is supposed to be the Commander-in-Chief, and he cannot take a break from war. To do so is to fail our soldiers and fail the American people who value their work so much." This use highlights what I believe is the most hypocritical part of the President's love of vacation. We have soldiers fighting for 18 months straight, with tours extended and vacations deferred, while the President shoots the breeze on a resort in Idaho. What is wrong with this picture?
Let's not sit back and ignore opportunities. We can make vacation a powerful metaphor for the incompetence of the administration. All we need is for some Democrat to get a spine and attack the President.