On the Right - GWB's Vacation Fixation.(President Bush receiving ridicule for the number of vacations he takes)(Brief Article)

NEW YORK, AUGUST 10

It seems everyone is concerned about Bush and vacations. Some commentary is simply informational, idiomatic questions put and answers given, showing nothing more than workaday curiosity. "How many vacation days a year does the president of the United States get?" Anybody can answer that one, right? "Does he have to schedule his vacation?" Uh, yes. "How does the Secret Service protect the president while he's on vacation?" With guns. "Which members of the staff are required to go on vacation with him?" Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.

We have seen any number of rundowns on presidential days spent away from the White House. We read how many days he spent in Washington, and compare the figures with days spent out of town by his predecessors in their first six months. We can add days spent in Kennebunkport, and view them as vacation time. The toters run into problems when needing to count days spent abroad, because these are presumably work-time days, in no relevant way different from days spent in the White House.

But commentary goes on, and at progressive levels of hostility. Aboard Slate, Inc., an exchange comes in between James Wolcott and Zoe Heller, he of Vanity Fair, she of the London Daily Telegraph. Both are voluptuously splenetic on the subject of Bush. From Wolcott: "It seems so right that George Bush should spend part of the day lending his sweat equity to Habitat for Humanity in the Texas heat, a transparent charade to recast himself as a compassionate conservative for all those moderate Republican women voters who are less inclined than men to see the world reduced to ash." (What that means is that W. doesn't particularly care if global warming eliminates life on earth.)

What presidents do on their vacation tends to be the subject of ridicule or condescension. We recall that Ronald Reagan spent time chopping down trees and splitting wood. Abe Lincoln probably wouldn't have spent vacation time doing this, having had enough of it as a young man. But if he had, somebody (most likely in Slate) would have observed that splitting the skulls of Union generals would have been more to the point.

But, on vacation or off, Bush can't win, in Wolcott's view of things. "To me, the most arrogant thing about Bush is his ...