08-24-2014, 02:43 AM
“Obama golfs while the world burns” (or “bodies fall from the sky“) is the new talking point on the right, with variations for President Barack Obama’s vacation to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend. But how much is Obama actually off the clock?
This calls for some data journalism. Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox obtained the hard data from CBS News’ Mark Knoller, who has made a project of tracking executive days off since 1996. Knoller compared Obama to predecessor George W Bush‘s vacations. Here it is in graphic form:
Obama’s vacation days clock in at just over one-third of Bush’s, as do the total number of trips. Knoller didn’t count trips to Camp David as vacations, but Bush led those 3:1 as well.
The golf numbers are flipped, with Obama having played 186 games of golf to Bush’s 24, though Bush explicitly stopped playing golf early in his term.
Bush isn’t the only Obama vacation foil that has fallen apart. A few weeks ago conservatives criticized Obama for not canceling his travel plans following the downing of flight MH17, arguing that Reagan had immediately decamped from his California ranch to address to the 1983 attack on Korean Air Flight 007 — a claim that turned out to be wildly untrue.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/obama-has...ge-w-bush/
This calls for some data journalism. Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox obtained the hard data from CBS News’ Mark Knoller, who has made a project of tracking executive days off since 1996. Knoller compared Obama to predecessor George W Bush‘s vacations. Here it is in graphic form:
Obama’s vacation days clock in at just over one-third of Bush’s, as do the total number of trips. Knoller didn’t count trips to Camp David as vacations, but Bush led those 3:1 as well.
The golf numbers are flipped, with Obama having played 186 games of golf to Bush’s 24, though Bush explicitly stopped playing golf early in his term.
Bush isn’t the only Obama vacation foil that has fallen apart. A few weeks ago conservatives criticized Obama for not canceling his travel plans following the downing of flight MH17, arguing that Reagan had immediately decamped from his California ranch to address to the 1983 attack on Korean Air Flight 007 — a claim that turned out to be wildly untrue.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/obama-has...ge-w-bush/