A TALE OF TWO VACATIONS

DRUDGE:

LEAVE US ALONE, NOW...

Public, Press Barred from Airport...

'No tolerating reporters using cellphones to call or text friends with latest movements on island'...

OBAMA'S 2009 VACATION: Obamas start vacation with tennis, golf, swimming

President Barack Obama played tennis with his wife and golf with his buddies Monday, starting his first vacation in office on Martha’s Vineyard, a picturesque island known as a refuge for the wealthy and privileged.

Obama began the day with a workout at his rented retreat, then tennis with Michelle Obama, White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters traveling with the president.

Obama later played golf with UBS Investment Bank President Robert Wolf and Chicago physician Eric Whitaker, both friends. White House aide Marvin Nicholson was also in the foursome.

White House officials have stressed that the president is on a private vacation and very little is planned.

... the trip was clearly designed to limit exposure for the first family. White House aides have asked journalists not to tail the first daughters when they are not with their parents.

COVERAGE WAS DIFFERENT FOR BUSH:

2005 - BUSH'S VACATION: Just call it Bush's vacation from hell

Call it President Bush's Vacation From Hell. That's what it turned out to be.

Little did the president know when he decided to spend the month of August at his Crawford, Texas ranch, expecting to mix rest with work, that it would turn out to be not only controversial, but also chaotic.

By the time he packed up and returned to the White House last Wednesday, it had become a political disaster for him.

To start, political opponents roundly criticized Bush for having the temerity to spend nearly five weeks out of Washington with a war going on.

Several news reports suggested that Bush was taking more vacation than other presidents took. That touched off more criticism.

Incidentally, Bush is not the most-vacationing president. Far from it.

Lyndon B. Johnson, who was president for a little more than five years, roughly equivalent to Bush's time in office, spent all or part of 484 days at his Texas ranch. Counting this latest respite, Bush has spent all or part of 351 days at his spread.

Every summer, Theodore Roosevelt moved White House operations from Washington to his home in Sagamore Hill, N.Y. from June to the end of August.

But for Bush, little seemed to go right during his latest attempt to get away from the Capitol.

His troubles began Aug. 6 when Cindy Sheehan, a Vacaville, Calif. mother whose son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year, came to Crawford and set up a camp on the side of the road to Bush's ranch. She had come to seek a meeting with the president and urge him to bring all U.S. troops home.

Bush refused to meet with her. He said he sympathized with her loss, but he disagreed with her demand to end the war. Besides, he already met with her in June 2004 at Fort Lewis, Wash., when he visited with several families who had lost a loved one in Iraq.

In hindsight, Bush might be having second thoughts about not meeting with her again.

The vigil of the lone, bereaved mother outside the president's gates was a scene the news media could hardly resist. And the coverage triggered a huge outpouring of public sympathy for Sheehan, forcing Bush onto the defensive.

And it set off a new wave of criticism not only of the war, but also of Bush's vacationing while Americans were continuing to die in Iraq.

Supporters of Sheehan's cause flocked to Crawford to stand in solidarity with her, national and international news media in tow.

Worried that anti-war sentiment was being blown out of proportion by the Sheehan vigil, backers of Bush's Iraq policy organized a counter demonstration in Crawford to show support for U.S. troops. Not to be outdone, Sheehan's forces staged a demonstration of their own on the same day.

So there you had it. Crawford, Texas, population 700, it's main corner an intersection with a blinking light, overrun by as many as 5,000 people who braved 102-degree summer heat to express their Iraq sentiments, pro and con. It was a circus.

... If there is any lesson here, it is that presidents — all presidents — are never on vacation. We just call them that, and pretend.

NOT ONLY DID THE MEDIA NEVER EVER CUT BUSH ANY SLACK, THEY WENT OPUT OF THEIR WAY TO GIVE PRESS TO HIS FOES.

NOW... THEY BEND OVER FOR OBAMA - WHEN THEY'RE NOT ON THEIR KNEES!

PEOPLE SEE THIS FOR WHAT IT IS: BIAS.

AND IT PISSES THEM OFF.

GOOD.