Out of Sight, Out of Touch?

In my August 4 post Son of the Sequel of My Pet Goat the 13th, I questioned Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice's statement (on Larry King) that President Bush had not spoken with Ehud Olmert or any other significant Mideast leader since the Israeli army began shelling Lebanon because such conversations were not "important."

If World War III in the Mideast "is not "important" enough to merit the President's personal attention", I asked, then "what is?" Among others ideas I suggested that the President's vacation and cutting brush on his ranch came first. Sure enough, according to the New York Times, the President began his vacation on August 4, and:

"Practically as soon as he arrived, Mr. Bush began doing what he likes best, getting back to nature in the blistering heat. He spent Friday “brush cutting and trail clearing, followed by a bike ride,” said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary.

With Eye on Political Reality, A Shorter Vacation for Bush, NY Times, August 5, 2006.

Why is it this President continues to sink beneath even my lowest expectations?

It seems the President reduced his planned vacation from one month to "only" ten days so as not to appear "isolated" in an election year.

Some interesting statistics provided by the Times:

Mark Knoller of CBS News, whose statistics on presidential trips to Crawford are so comprehensive that the White House refers inquiries to him, said the current visit was Mr. Bush’s 59th trip to his ranch since taking office; as of Saturday, he had spent all or part of 384 days there.

The president spent 27 days at the ranch in August 2001 and 2002, and 29 days in August 2003 and 2005. But in 2004, when Mr. Bush was running for re-election, his Crawford time totaled just 13 days, according to Mr. Knoller’s calculations. White House advisers say that the summer of 2006 will be patterned after that year, and that there is nothing unusual about it.

384 vacation days in 5 1/2 years in office. That's 70 days a year - 14 weeks, 2 1/3 months - paid vacation - and that's just the time in Crawford. As quoted by the Times,"Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, said the new calendar was smart politics. "

“This is a direct reflection of the debacle of last summer where a perception became a reality that he was isolated down in Crawford,” Mr. Reed said, adding: “I’ve always thought a month was a long time. Most families don’t take a whole month off in the summer.”

And that, may be the understatement of the year.