Media Sneers At Presidential Travels

Let's see. MSNBC decides to run some puff piece from a partner site called concierge.com regarding the travel habits of our presidents. President Clinton gets lauded for traveling to the Middle East, but President Bush, who also carried out trips to the Middle East, including two visits to Israel, gets a sneering reference to wanting to spend time at his Crawford Ranch rather than stick around inside the Beltway.

But if a president spends too much time away from the office, he runs the risk of being dubbed a "Vacation President," as a certain brush-clearing resident of Crawford, Texas, has found after spending 469 days at his ranch to date.

I'm more impressed by the travels of those like Jefferson or even FDR who went to far flung destinations without the modern creature comforts that we take for granted, like jet travel aboard Air Force One or even carrying out foreign missions during wartime.

Still, if we want to compare Presidents, how about stack Clinton up against President George W. Bush. I think they'd be roughly comparable in terms of where they've gone overseas. In fact, I think President Bush might actually win that argument.

As per MSNBC, President Clinton visited: Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, the West Bank.

Where has President Bush gone? Iraq (several times), Afghanistan, Israel, West Bank, Russia, Belgium, Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Liberia, Germany, Italy, UK, Vatican City, France, Slovenia, Thailand, China, South Korea, Australia, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and I'm sure I'm missing a few other countries as well.

That took me all of five minutes to do. MSNBC, your bias is showing.

UPDATE:
Anonymous email writes that the National Taxpayers Union cataloged President Clinton's trips, and found that he visited a total of 133 nations. Impressive.

Of course, that impressive travel itinerary also runs into the problem that Clinton was the vacation president and not President Bush and would further suggest that the writer of the story undercounted Clinton's trips to discourage making the connection with overseas travel and being labeled the "vacation president".

Unfortunately, President Bush doesn't have a single page where all the nations visited are listed. Bush also visited the Republic of Georgia, Albania, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Romania, India, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Azores, Mexico, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Pakistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and still others.

That's 53 and counting for President Bush.

The reporter who put this story together clearly engaged in haphazard research. Nice.

UPDATE:
Still more countries visited by President Bush: Japan, Peru (thanks to the comments), El Salvador, Argentina, Panama, Mongolia, Canada, Qatar, Latvia, Austria, Scotland, Slovakia, Turkey, The Netherlands, and I think I got most of them.

Also, watch for the developing meme that Gov. Sarah Palin has limited foreign travel under her belt as a sign that she's unprepared for the Vice Presidency. That was a refrain commonly heard during President Bush's campaign leading up to the 2000 elections and beyond. Some of the criticism over President Bush's first foreign trips as President were framed by that critique.

What I have found so far is that President Bush didn't travel nearly as much as President Clinton with Bush traveling to about 68 countries, compared with Clinton's 133. Take that for what it's worth, which isn't much. Just a fact for the curious.

UPDATE:
Add Estonia, Philippines, Hungary and Denmark to the list. The White House has a list of President Bush's trips here, but it is incomplete and doesn't include all visits abroad.