Bush campaigning & on vacation 84% of the time!!

[KelleyKramer]

This is just incredible, I have been looking for these numbers for a long time and finally have them. George W Bush is now without a doubt the laziest president in US history.

There was the first report that shows Bush went on 417 days of campaign fund-raising trips his first three years in office. Now there is (finally!) a report that totals George Bush at 500 days on vacation in his first three years in office.

Ok, do the quick math.. 417 + 500 is 917 days. Three years times 365 days in a year comes to 1,095 total days.

That means out of 1095 days, George Bush was campaigning or golfing for 917 of them.. That’s 84% of the year PLAYING.

George Bush was 'on the job' for only 16% of the time.

For easy reference, compare that to the average American 40 hour work week...

That means over three years president George W Bush has an average 6.4 hour work WEEK.

Most jobs (if you still have one after Bush got in) come with two weeks paid vacation a year.. President George Bush has taken 305 days each year.


Best
Kelley Kramer
http://www.demopower.com/blog.html

--

500 days vacation reference:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62524-2004Apr8.html

417 days campaigning reference:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30173-2004Mar27?language=printer
(scroll down to 'presidential mileage')

[wtmusic]

1. Cheney's running the show anyway...be kind to Sock Puppet

Now if Cheney goes on vacation, it's time to worry (then again, maybe not) :crazy:

[Old and In the Way]

2. And people wonder how 9/11 could occur on his watch?

He's been campaigning for election since his selection 3 years ago...and he's no better than tied with Kerry.

[Tellurian]

3. The grownups send him out to play

while they lay out their well made plans.

He really is Uncle Dickie!

[DemosthenesOfTheWest]

4. Of course this was pointed out waaaay back in 2001.

Bush was lazy, we said, and not spending enough time on the job.

The laissez faire response from everyone, not just the Freepers, was: "Why does it matter that the president takes such long and frequent vacations?" "He's doing his job isn't he?"

Then of course it turns out that he wasn't doing his job. He wasn't reading his memos and he wasn't holding important meetings. Then they had the gall to say it wasn't his fault, he was on vacation!!! And having learned that you actually get rewarded for having national catastrophes happen on watch as long as you're spening plenty of time on your ranch or reckless invading 3rd world countries, I suppose this behavior has become almost Pavlovian.

[Trajan]

5. Unlike others on this thread ...

I will speak to the OUTRAGE of this fact ....

It is an ABSOLUTE OUTRAGE that George Bush performs SO LITTLE service to his nation ...

He is a goddamned hypocrite ... and so are his supporters ....

[KelleyKramer]

6. Not to throw gas on the fire, but it cost you ... $1,004,931.51

Just so you know, we (US taxpayers) paid George Bush $1,004,931.51 for all that time he was out playing.

That of course is not counting all the travel and security expenses we paid for him to go golfing and fishing three times each week.

Oh yeah, almost forgot... If that’s not enough, for all that paid vacation time George Bush also gave himself another $231,000.00 a year tax-cut.

[nonconformist]

9. Appalling

Just... disgusting.

This is definitely one of those issues we need to be hammering - short and to the point. Perfect for a commercial!

[andino]

7. Just a question

I don't want to come across as a goober or anything. I hate Bush as much as the next Dem. I was just wondering if some of those campaign trips were taken on his vacation days or are all of his campaign days considered working days?

[ComerPerro]

11. I was wondering that myself.

BUT

Even you only take one total, that is still damn close to fifty percent of the time either on vacation or campaigning...

That is assuming all the days overlap.

[nonconformist]

12. It doesn't appear that they ran concurrent

At least the vast majority didn't.

(from the two articles above)


This specifically says that his vacation days took place at Crawford, Camp David or Kennebunkport:

<snip>
This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.
<snip>



While this specifically states that he campaigned in 46 different states and lays out which ones he visited most:

<snip>
In his first three years in office, Bush took 416 trips to 46 states, compared with Clinton's 302 trips to 40 states during a similar period. Virginia was Bush's most visited state (not surprising, since presidents often take day trips across the Potomac for public events).

More notable, the scholars found, was the heavy proportion of Bush travel to "swing states" -- those where the vote margin in the 2000 election was within 6 percentage points.

Tenpas and Corrado found that 39 percent of Bush's trips were to swing states, compared with 28 percent for Clinton. Bush, for instance, took 27 trips to Pennsylvania -- more than to any state other than Virginia and California. Next up was Florida, the most swingy state of all last time, with 24 Bush visits. Texas, Bush's home, was fifth, and Missouri, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia rounded out the top 10.
<snip>


I suppose, to be fair, without some digging it's hard to say if a vacation and a campaign trip ever took place at the same time. But what is very clear is that the vast majority of them did NOT - so any way you slice it, Dubya's AWOL (again).

[coloradodem2005]

8. only 16%...

...and look at the damage that has been wrought. Well, I always new there was something shady about him and that he was just a layabout.

[ContinentalOp]

10. Now why oh why...

why can't this be a Kerry campaign ad? It's so simple, so clear, and transcends any issues or ideologies to cut to the heart of this administration's negligence and incompetance. Why am I dreading that the Kerry campaign won't have the guts to make such a clear and direct attack though?

[Lorien]

14. I was thinking the same thing

there's an ENORMOUS amount of ammo out there, just waiting for Kerry to use it. Why do the Dems continue to dance around the cold, hard, ugly realities of this misadministration? The truth would hang BushCo, if only it were brought fully to light.

[nonconformist]

13. Does anyone have vacation stats on other presidents?

For comparisons sake?

Thanks a ton!

(getting prepared to hammer this little gem at every opportunity)

[BobDCousy2004]

15. The problem is that..

Congress isn't in session for some of those days. Though it is appalling that Bush has been spending more time at the ranch than at the White House, when Congress isn't in session, Bush is "on vacation."

[ContinentalOp]

16. That's not a problem at all.

This isn't about rationally analyzing the situation or giving Bush the benefit of the doubt here. Look, it's a very powerful statistic and however you slice it or try to justify it, the number should speak very clearly to americans who are having to work longer and longer hours for less pay.

Look at the phony statistics they toss around about Kerry voting for higher taxes 300 times or voting against 100 different military programs or whatever. It's the initial impact of the statement that counts. I mean what would Bush's defense be? That he was actually only on vacation 50% of the time?

Anyway, I hope the initial poster sends this info to various folks at Air America pronto.

[NewJeffCT]

18. don't have exact stats, but

The only person in the same league as W* when it comes to vacation time was his daddy... even Reagan took far less time off from work.

If I recall, Clinton & Carter took by far the least in recent memory.

[nonconformist]

23. I found this, from October 1 2003

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20031001.html

<snip>
Bush isn't the first president to get away from his work. George Bush Sr. took all or part of 543 vacation days at Camp David and in Kennebunkport. Ronald Reagan spent 335 days at or en route to his Santa Barbara, California, ranch during his eight years in office. Of recent presidents, Jimmy Carter took the least days off -- only 79 days, which he usually spent at his home in Georgia. That's less than three weeks a year, which is closer to the average American's paid time off of 13 days per year.

What about Clinton? As of December 1999, President Bill Clinton had spent only 152 days on holiday during his two terms, according to CBS News. A former staffer noted Clinton was such a workaholic that "it almost killed Clinton to take one-week vacations during August." In 2000, Clinton cut his summer vacation short to just three days, so he and his wife could concentrate on her Senate race and fundraising for Democrats. While we couldn't find the exact tally for Clinton's last year in office, it's reasonable to expect he didn't increase his vacation rate. And in barely three years in office, George W. Bush has already taken more vacation than Clinton did in seven years.
<snip>

[kskiska]

25. …and Clinton was begrudged the time he did take

I remember how once he took a few hours off to swing a golf club in the midst of a dealing with a crisis of some sort and the media piled on.

[nonconformist]

17. Kick

:kick:

[Bandit]

19. I don't believe Bush* spent 16% of his time working

That is entirely too much for such a lazy lying piece of shit who is incompetent. I think if those numbers were examined a little more you would find most of the time he was "working" he was actually eating pretzels and watching baseball, but at the whitehouse so listed as "working"

[leftofthedial]

20. think how much things would suck if it worked 40-hour weeks

Could have destroyed 100 million jobs and bombed 7 or 8 peaceful countries into oblivion

[heidiho]

21. This info would make a good letter to the editor

Mind if I use it?

[KelleyKramer]

24. By all mean yes, one request ...

Yes, feel free to use that for a letter to the editor.

If you get a chance please PM me a copy, and if I can work it in will post it on the blog,

Thanks
Kelley
www.demopower.com/blog

[salin]

22. Small caution

about adding the two together. It is likely that some of the days overlap.

More than a year ago there was a story about how bush spends his time by an AP person who had documented Presidents time (how it was spent) for decades. I have wondered many atime WHO that person was - because that person would surely have the accurate time accounting.

My guess is that we would find about 40/60 (equivalent of working 2 days and campaigning/vacationing 3 days a week.) But that is just a guess. Could be more - but I would be careful of merging info from two different sources that do not account for overlapping time.