White House Letter: Presidential campaign ruins Bush's vacation

[Rose Siding]

by Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON George W. Bush has spent the last three Augusts at his ranch in the scorched flatlands of Crawford, Texas, where he has cleared brush, gone for runs in scorching heat and summoned sweaty cabinet members to eat fried jalapeño peppers at the only restaurant in town. No one ever confused the place with that white-wine-swilling island in the Atlantic Ocean, to reprise the president's putdown of Martha's Vineyard, and so Bush has loved it all the more.

But this year, the 2004 campaign has ruined Bush's Texas vacation. Or, put another way, if Bush doesn't give up a lot of his summer holiday, the fear at the White House is that he could be on a permanent one as of January.

"The decision was made a while ago," a Bush adviser said on Friday. "The president will spend a good portion of his time traveling in August as we head toward the convention." The adviser insisted on anonymity because the president's August schedule is still in flux.
...
In deciding on Bush's vacation, as in all decisions at the White House, politics were paramount. During a summer when Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" is attacking Bush for spending 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation instead of worrying about Al Qaeda (Moore's calculation came from The Washington Post), the image of Bush lazing away August on his sprawling ranch was not one that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, particularly relished.

Still, there was debate over Bush's vacation within the White House. One group argued that the president should do whatever he wanted, while another, including Rove, said in essence that Bush should not.

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