During her 15 minutes of unwanted fame, accused racist turned celebrated anti- racist Shirley Sherrod urged President Barack Obama to visit her corner of Georgia.
“I need to get him down here with some regular folks to see how they live and how they get along,” Sherrod told The Associated Press. “It might give him a better understanding on how to promote togetherness in this country.” A lovely idea, Shirley, but get in line behind the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Seems Obama swung a golf club in a polo shirt rather than a containment boom while dressed in a Hazmat suit, before BP’s deep-sea well was capped. To compensate for that lack of sympathy, and to boost tourism, the first family will spend part of their August vacation on the Gulf coast in Florida, a region likely to be as hot and humid as Washington, the very place the Obamas want to escape.
Malia and Sasha must be thrilled.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; a presidential vacation is never just a vacation. It has been made into a window on the chief executive’s soul, a declaration of presidential priorities.
Don’t take enough days off and you’re a grind, like Jimmy Carter. Take days at the wrong time, or go to the wrong place, and you’re an insensitive goof-off — especially if something goes wrong and you’re caught on split-screen playing sports while an oil-slicked pelican poses for its close-up.
You’d think Americans would want their president to have some quality time with the family, recharging the ol’ batteries in some beautiful place. Instead, the Republican National Committee is tracing Obama’s every moment away from the Oval Office, as if he’s escaping house arrest.
What poor Obama lacks is the open-range ranch or waterfront compound that his predecessors owned and cannily rebranded for an accepting public.
Richard Nixon had his Winter White House in Key Biscayne, Fla. The press so much liked going to Ronald Reagan’s Western White House in Santa Barbara, Calif., that it seldom appears without the word “beloved” before it.
Reagan so disarmed the press, quipping how the outside of a horse was good for the inside of a man, that he got away with spending 355 days at his ranch.
A “working vacation” sells if the setup looks as if generations have unwound there. When President George H.W. Bush announced the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1991, he shifted seamlessly from a guy motoring in a cigarette boat to a president standing on land that had been in his family for 100 years.
And few could lob credible complaints of elitism or luxury at President George W. Bush and his own Western White House, the ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he spent all or part of 490 days of his presidency.
A Democrat without a vacation home — and no, the Obama residence in Chicago doesn’t count — is like a man without a country. He visits a New England beach at his peril.
After dragging his family to the Gulf, Obama will head to Martha’s Vineyard. The only thing that might quiet the Republican heckling might be a contrition tour: From New England, proceed to southwestern Georgia to see the wrongly terminated Sherrod for a lesson in civil-rights history.
Head north in a fuel-efficient General Motors car to visit an unemployment line in Detroit. Go west to Arizona, pull up a plastic chair next to Gov. Jan Brewer, and scan the horizon for illegals crossing the border from Mexico.
In New York City, go to Wall Street, incognito, and declare your admiration for how the Obama administration has cleaned up our financial system.
Finally, grace a newsroom, where a dying industry beset by huge layoffs would be grateful if you promised to stop taking your message over our heads to shows like “The View.” It’s August. There’s a lot of white space and dead air to fill. You can help.
