General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsnytimes bullshit: ‘Presidential’ vs. ‘Political’ Trips: A Blurry Line, and Tricky Math
WASHINGTON Facing 5,000 enthusiastic students at Florida Atlantic University, President Obama rolled up his sleeves and raised his voice to chastise Republicans for their spending cuts and broken-down theories, evoking chants of Four more years!
And that was the nonpolitical stop on Mr. Obamas swing-state itinerary for that day early this month. The president sandwiched the 34-minute speech, billed as an official address on his so-called Buffett Rule for a minimum tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, amid three overtly partisan fund-raisers that accounted for the bulk of his time along the south Florida coast.
Mixing policy and politics, Mr. Obama is picking up the pace of his travel with that ultimate incumbents perk unlimited use of Air Force One. The trips are mostly to about a dozen swing states that will decide the election and to two reliably Democratic states, New York and California, for campaign money.
And Mr. Obama is not the only frequent flier with a re-election agenda. Both Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Michelle Obama, are increasingly stumping around the country as the campaign seeks to repeat its fund-raising success of 2008 and counter a building wave of G.O.P. cash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/politics/presidential-vs-political-trips-a-blurry-line-for-obama.html?pagewanted=print
no_hypocrisy
(46,130 posts)Example: Last month, NJ Governor Chris Christie, visited the Middle East, with emphasis on Israel and Jordan. Purported purposes: to get investment in NJ and to learn Middle East controversies firsthand. One can make an equally compelling argument that Christie did this for publicity, to get his "foreign policy" bona fides while the taxpayers picked up his $40,000 in security costs.
And it has been made. Repeatedly. And partisanly.
However, it's also possible to establish some sort of baseline. Not easy, partisanship and bias gets in the way, but have enough people do it, comparing between presidents and between years of a president's term and the general trend becomes obvious.
Such trips have tended to increase fairly monotonically in the last 30 years. That is, the election-year spike in trips that are fairly obviously electioneering-oriented has consistently increased.
I'm cynical enough that whenever any president makes a trip to give a speech--whether in a factory, to a high school, or to some civic group--I check to see where the fundraiser is and which was planned first. Most of the time the fundraiser was planned and then some justification for using presidential funds/equipment was found afterwards.
PCIntern
(25,557 posts)EVER. You see fawning ass-kissing pieces about how well the Bush/Cheney/Reagan/Nixon types are received by the leaders and how respected they are over there by the populus as well as theprime minister/dictator/presidednt/theocratic-chairman-of-the-boards. What great ambassadors of American Goodwill and all that.. makes me want to lose my lunch.
I'm surprised that the Times, in all its glory, hasn't run any articles about the giveaways on Air Force 1 yet. you know: all those embossed items like key rings and whatever, as though this hasn't been going on since directly after the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk.
Nothing like the 'liberal press', right?