August 18, 2005

The "Vacation" of Harry S.

A regular commenter on The Jawa Report, Oyster, observes in response to an ersatz post on Cindy Sheehan:

What I find very irritating about this too is how the press keeps calling his stay at the ranch a "vacation" (or a "monthlong" vacation to make it sound like he's just fishing and taking naps for a whole month). They're trying to equate it with how we take vacations. How we go to some destination and are free of work and responsibility for a period of time. He is simply working from the ranch rather than the White House.

Most people know about Ike's golfing "vacations" and JFK's trips to Hyannisport to play touch football, but not many know that the concept and details of the Cold War strategy of "containment" were worked out by the Truman Administration during a long "vacation" in Key West. Truman and his advisors spend 175 days there during the course of his Presidency. Eisenhower established the Department of Defense while "vacationing" there, and Kennedy visited during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The location has been so seminal to the history of that half-century-long conflict with Empirialist Marxism that it has come to be known as the Little White House. But that was a different era.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to The Jawa Report)

Posted by Demosophist at August 18, 2005 01:19 PM | TrackBack
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