Joe Biden is apparently on track to be the slackeriest president in history, having already taken more than 365 vacation days—yes, a whole, literal year of his term spent on vacation. So, you might ask, how do the other recent presidents stack up? The New York Post says this:
Joe Biden: 40% (and counting)
Donald Trump: 26% (still kinda hefty, especially given what follows)
Barack Obama: 11%
George W Bush: 35% (Wikipedia)
Bill Clinton: 6% (Wikipedia)
George HW Bush: 36% (lazy ass)
Ronald Reagan: 11%
Jimmy Carter: 5%
Jimmy Carter beats my own percentage. Since I often work on weekends, I'll calculate my vacation as the number of vacation days (not including national holidays) out of 365 calendar days per year. For me, that's 29/365 (the number of days needed for my long walks), or about 8%. So Jimmy Carter, with his 5%, beats that. I've been Jimmied!
News articles on the topic chidingly remind us that, for presidents, vacations are always working vacations, so maybe we should cut them all some slack. Fine. By that standard, I'm vacationing a lot more than Jimmy Carter: when I walk, I sure as hell don't work.
Yeah, I imagine that a president is never really on vacation the way that normal people can sometimes be. I was completely off the grid when I was in Singapore earlier this summer, for example. Presidents have that luxury.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why anyone would ever want to be president, to be honest. It's like being a football manager (when the team wins it's because the team is great, but when they lose it's because of you) except you're in charge of an entire country. Yeesh.