Moore’s 42% Bush vacation figure is misleading
Update; Here\’s Jeff Jarvis\’ reaction to seeing the film.
There\’s oh-so-much hype about Michael Moore\’s new film, Fahrenheit 911 (whew, tough spell!), which comes out this Friday. And in nearly every mention I\’ve seen about this movie, one presumably damning statistic about George Bush is repeated: he spent 42% of his first eight months in office on vacation.
How do we get the 42% figure (the Washington Post article referenced in the film is called \”A White House On the Range; Bush Retreats to Ranch For \’Working Vacation\” from August 7, 2001)?
According to the Post, Bush spent:
4 full or partial days in Maine
38 full or partial days at Camp David
54 full or partial days at his ranch in Crawford
That, plus the two national holidays that occured in that period, adds up to 98 days, or about 42% of the 228 days from Jan. 20 (when he was inagurated) until the end of August.
But what I doubt Moore mentions in Fahrenheit 911 is that \”Many of those days are weekends, and the Camp David stays have included working visits with foreign leaders.\” Or that Bush\’s monthlong August stay at Crawford wasn\’t exactly spent sitting by the pool sipping martinis: \”Before Labor Day, \” the Post writes, \”[Bush] is scheduled to fly to eight communities over seven days … to listen to the concerns of the people.\”
I don\’t know just what it means to \”listen to the concerns of the people,\” but it\’s not quite a vacation. The problem is, of those 98 vacation days, many (possibly as many as 64) were weekends.
For a conservative (!) estimate, assume just half (32) of those days were weekends (which means he worked the other half). That means Bush\’s real vacation time was closer to 66 days, or 28%. Then consider that those were full or partial days, and also the fact that, let\’s face it, the president is really never off the job. With that in mind, the 42% figure seems a little irrelevant.
I\’m not saying I think GW\’s 30-day ranch retreat was a great idea; I\’d have rather seen him in Washington, too. But I\’m sick of hearing the 42% figure thrown around like it\’s a huge deal; if average Americans got their weekends counted as vacation time (as apparently the Post does for the President), we\’d all have taken around 28% vacation in the first eight months of 2001.