Under the Dome
By TIMOTHY EGAN, NYT
In Key West, Fla., where chickens and cyclists roam the town with willful lack of ambition, a concrete buoy marks the southernmost point of the contiguous United States. Lopez Island, Wash., in the opposite corner of the country, shares many of the same personality quirks, though with better seafood.
More than 3,500 miles, and a whole lot of U.S. of A., separates the flat keys of Florida from the forested paradise of the San Juan Islands. It’s a shame that a modern American president, whether on vacation or on an official Beltway break, will see so little of it. The trappings of the office, and its security and media accessories, have made it all but impossible for a president who is curious enough about the country he governs to soak it up.
What’s more, before the age of hyperpartisanship turned summer pastimes into tasteless stunts (see the rodeo clown in a Barack Obama mask egged on by a crowd in Missouri last week), presidents used to be a part of the land’s listless days. Now they vacation under a dome filled with like-minded people.
President George W. Bush preferred to spend his downtime in the reddest part of Texas; he took 77 trips to his sun-scorched patch of dirt near Waco during his two terms, and reality rarely intruded. President Obama likes his air on Martha’s Vineyard, bluest of provinces, where he’s now vacationing for the fourth time since he took office.
A president who can’t hear a back-porch fiddler in Tennessee, eat a buffalo burger in the Badlands of South Dakota or check out the truly awful array of yard-art trolls from chain-saw artisans off old Highway 2 is missing more than a story to drag back home.
(More here.)
In Key West, Fla., where chickens and cyclists roam the town with willful lack of ambition, a concrete buoy marks the southernmost point of the contiguous United States. Lopez Island, Wash., in the opposite corner of the country, shares many of the same personality quirks, though with better seafood.
More than 3,500 miles, and a whole lot of U.S. of A., separates the flat keys of Florida from the forested paradise of the San Juan Islands. It’s a shame that a modern American president, whether on vacation or on an official Beltway break, will see so little of it. The trappings of the office, and its security and media accessories, have made it all but impossible for a president who is curious enough about the country he governs to soak it up.
What’s more, before the age of hyperpartisanship turned summer pastimes into tasteless stunts (see the rodeo clown in a Barack Obama mask egged on by a crowd in Missouri last week), presidents used to be a part of the land’s listless days. Now they vacation under a dome filled with like-minded people.
President George W. Bush preferred to spend his downtime in the reddest part of Texas; he took 77 trips to his sun-scorched patch of dirt near Waco during his two terms, and reality rarely intruded. President Obama likes his air on Martha’s Vineyard, bluest of provinces, where he’s now vacationing for the fourth time since he took office.
A president who can’t hear a back-porch fiddler in Tennessee, eat a buffalo burger in the Badlands of South Dakota or check out the truly awful array of yard-art trolls from chain-saw artisans off old Highway 2 is missing more than a story to drag back home.
(More here.)
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