Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column seems to suggest that Barack Obama’s Excellent Vacation is some kind of White Flag of Discourage:
The market is dispirited. I’m wondering if the president is, too, and if that won’t carry implications for the 2012 race. You can imagine him having lunch with political advisers, hearing some unwanted advice—”Don’t go to Martha’s Vineyard!”—putting his napkin by his plate, pushing back from the table, rising, and saying in a clipped, well-modulated voice: “I’m tired. I’m going. If they want this job so much let them have it.”
Noonan adds that both the Martha’s Vineyard location is wrong (“It’s a playground of the liberal rich: hedge-fund maestros, network producers, Wall Street heavyweights, left-leaning activists. It’s the kind of place that reverberates in the national imagination—that tags you as elitist no matter how many g’s you drop.”) and the timing is wrong:
On the timing, there’s an air of economic crisis hanging over everything, a sense that other shoes may drop. Actually it’s a sense of something impending, with unemployment high, Europe broke and the Mideast reaching full boil. A politician who wanted to impart a sense of leadership in crisis, who passionately wanted to keep the presidency, and who was prudently anxious about his prospects, just might let such a moment change his plans.
Change one phrase to “and passionately wanted to keep his Congressional seat,” and you could ask – as few in the rightwingerati have – why Capitol Hill lawmakers aren’t canceling their vacations.
What’s sauce for the obtuse is sauce for the panderers.
Campaign Outsider 
Not only are the liberal rich there, but they’re educated as well, and Carly Simon lives there, too. Of course, they keep a stable of struggling natives, and non English speaking imports to serve them, so it’s all good. I guess if he spent months dragging brush around his dusty ranch, that would be just swell. Speaking of which, I wonder if he goes there anymore, or is it a surplus property, now?
I believe that ‘W’ used that ranch in TX as a prop to portray himself as a man of the people. Once he left office, he high-tailed it to a gated community in Dallas (since Texas cities disdain the practice of zoning, the uber-rich must needs ensconce themselves in enclaves of wealth). The internets are replete with images of the brush-clearer at Rangers’ games.
Where have all the Congressmen gone?