Tony Snow Tells Cindy Sheehan To Make Sure She Brings Gatoraide To Crawford
A Shorter Vacation for Bush
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/wa...rtner=homepage
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: August 6, 2006
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 5 — This parched Texas cattle town, population 705, has been a haven for President Bush every August, an escape from the buttoned-down confines of Washington. Here, Mr. Bush can clear brush, ride his mountain bike along scrubby trails, curl up with a book or kick up his feet for an afternoon siesta.
But this year reality — in the form of the November midterm elections, the peace activist Cindy Sheehan and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina — has intruded on the president’s summer vacation, cutting short his time at his 1,600-acre ranch.
Instead of parking here for the whole month, Mr. Bush, who arrived Thursday night, will spend just 10 nights before returning to the White House. During his stay, his aides are taking pains to present Mr. Bush as deeply engaged in world events; on Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, arrived to brief him on the Middle East.
“It basically reflects busy times and a busy schedule,” said Dan Bartlett, counselor to Mr. Bush, explaining the abbreviated visit.
It also reflects a political decision made by Mr. Bush’s advisers, and the president himself, to prevent a repeat of the public relations debacle of last August. That month began with highly publicized protests by Ms. Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, and ended with the image of the president on vacation while New Orleans drowned, an image that helped start his slide in popularity.
So when summer planning time rolled around this year, the White House was determined to do something different.
“It was a political calculation that his advisers persuaded him that he needed to do, and I think he knew it,” said one Republican with close ties to Mr. Bush, who would discuss internal White House decisions only if not quoted by name. He added, “I don’t think he is resentful or angry or anything; I think he is resigned to it.”
Mark Knoller of CBS News, whose statistics on presidential trips to Crawford are so comprehensive that the White House refers inquiries to him, said the current visit was Mr. Bush’s 59th trip to his ranch since taking office; as of Saturday, he had spent all or part of 384 days there.
The president spent 27 days at the ranch in August 2001 and 2002, and 29 days in August 2003 and 2005. But in 2004, when Mr. Bush was running for re-election, his Crawford time totaled just 13 days, according to Mr. Knoller’s calculations. White House advisers say that the summer of 2006 will be patterned after that year, and that there is nothing unusual about it.
Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, said the new calendar was smart politics.
“This is a direct reflection of the debacle of last summer where a perception became a reality that he was isolated down in Crawford,” Mr. Reed said, adding: “I’ve always thought a month was a long time. Most families don’t take a whole month off in the summer.”
If there is one thing Mr. Bush can afford even less than the perception that he is isolated, it is the specter of a Democratic-controlled Congress. So this summer’s fund-raising will begin on Thursday, when Mr. Bush leaves the ranch for a day trip to Wisconsin to deliver a speech on the economy and raise money for John Gard, a Republican Congressional candidate.
In a nod to the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the president is also planning a late-August trip to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. He is then expected to return to Crawford for a short while around Labor Day, aides say.
Practically as soon as he arrived, Mr. Bush began doing what he likes best, getting back to nature in the blistering heat. He spent Friday “brush cutting and trail clearing, followed by a bike ride,” said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary. The president also has several books on his summer reading list, Mr. Snow said, including two about Abraham Lincoln, another wartime president whose decisions were sometimes extremely unpopular.
Here in Crawford, where the local economy has grown accustomed to its most famous resident and his entourage of Secret Service agents, reporters, presidential aides and distinguished visitors, the early presidential departure is not good news.
At the Red Bull Gift Shop and Gallery, one of several tourist shops tucked between boarded-up stores on Main Street, the manager, Jamie Burgess, could be found on Friday amid an array of George W. Bush knickknacks: shot glasses; mugs; mouse pads; and even a “Turkey Dinner Bush” doll featuring the president, clad in a silver flight jacket, as he appeared during his surprise 2003 Thanksgiving visit to Iraq.
Ms. Burgess said she was sorry Mr. Bush would cut short his stay. But she said there was now a new — though largely unwelcome — celebrity resident of Crawford, Ms. Sheehan, who was boosting the economy in her own way. Much to the dismay of many here, Ms. Sheehan recently bought five acres in Crawford; on Friday, workmen were on her land, grading a road in preparation for another influx of demonstrators.
In a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, where she said she was meeting with members of the Iraqi Parliament, Ms. Sheehan said she had rearranged her own schedule to keep up with the president’s changing plans and would return to Crawford on Sunday. She is planning to recreate a march she made last year to the Bush ranch, where she demanded, unsuccessfully, that the president meet with her.
“It seems like every time I adjust my plans, he adjusts his,” she said, adding, “I think he is very uncomfortable that I am there saying, ‘You still haven’t met with me.’ ”
Mr. Snow, the White House press secretary, said officials had not given Ms. Sheehan a single thought. “So far there are no plans at all,” he said when asked about a meeting, “but I would advise her to bring water, or Gatorade, or both.”
And though Ms. Sheehan tried to claim credit for altering Mr. Bush’s calendar, Crawford residents were skeptical. Jimmy Don Holmes, an artist who produces hand-cut metal wall hangings in his shop, Stars Over Texas, summed up the local sentiment this way: “I don’t think she’s running him out of town. You don’t run a Texan out of town.”
