Let's End The Right Winger's Nonsense - Bush's Vacations Cost A LOT More Than Obama's

[karynnj]

10. Not on this.

This shows that the costs involved in ANY President vacationing anywhere - other than the WH - costs a lot of money. The reason it is different than an upper class family of 4 from DC is that as President, there is a huge cost for security.

It would be a very ill advised photo op if the President, Michelle and the girls got in line at Dulles and then took coach seats on a scheduled flight to Hawaii. Not to mention, think of the screening the secret service would have to give to everyone else. Not to mention, they could not simply book a condo on the beach. Again, they need security.

The EASIEST way to dispatch this is with costs of Bush II, Bush I and Reagan costs. The fact they all owned places they usually went to did NOT make the cost appreciably less. (Not to mention, if Obama had free use of secluded getaways from a friend/supporter the uproar would be LARGER as this would be called unethical.

PS This sounds pretty defensive - the FACT that Obama spoke of where the country was economically when he took over was incredibly relevant - and, in fact, was a version of the Reagan "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago". The country is still not economically healthy, but no one in the mainstream things we are moving into uncharted areas where we could go off a financial cliff. (The end of the year threat is nothing like 2008.) Not to mention, it was not just Democrats - a very significant % of the population blame Bush more than Obama for the economic problems.)