Critics call on Obama to cancel his Martha’s Vineyard vacation [View All]

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

If it’s August, it must be time for that annual Washington political tradition: griping over the president’s vacation.

Through wars and natural disasters, recessions and reelections, the getaway locales for America’s chief executive have been dissected by critics looking for symbolic reasons why the president shouldn’t go.

With 14 million Americans out of work, a volatile stock market and a historic downgrade of the country’s credit rating, President Obama is set to begin a 10-day retreat Thursday at a 28-acre Martha’s Vineyard compound called Blue Heron Farm, which costs an estimated $50,000 per week to rent. The dichotomy, and presumed hypocrisy, of a president who has pledged not to rest “until every American looking for a job can find one” going golfing and biking on an island playground for wealthy celebrities has been too much for political pundits to resist.

Obama has taken heat the past two summers for renting Blue Heron, but the difference this time is the intensity of his critics and the fact that they are on both sides of the political aisle. Republican strategist Mike Murphy told the Daily Beast that Obama is “acting like the rich guys he wants to raise taxes on,” while liberal columnist Colbert I. King wrote in The Washington Post that this is the wrong time “to dwell in splendid seclusion among the rich and famous.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/critics-call-on-president-obama-to-cancel-his-marthas-vineyard-vacation/2011/08/15/gIQAONJGJJ_singlePage.html