[ad_1]
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – As he stood in the Rose Garden to celebrate his first major legislative victory, President Joe Biden waved to the White House and said it was a “magnificent building” to live in.
Except the week-end.
Of the eight weekends since Biden took office, he has spent three at his longtime home outside of Wilmington, Delaware, including this weekend. Tentative plans for another weekend visit have been erased due to Senate action on Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
Biden also spent a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Many presidents have complained at one point or another of feeling confined to the White House. Biden has already echoed previous presidents by comparing the experience of living in a “golden cage.”
So swapping the 132-room executive mansion for a less confining, more relaxing weekend can help presidents unwind, said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
“What he wanted to be was president,” Howell said. “It’s not the White House per se that is the draw.”
The White House is defending Biden’s leisure travel at a time when he and federal health officials have pleaded with the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, including avoiding unnecessary travel.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It’s my house. That’s where he lived for many, many years, ”press secretary Jen Psaki recently said. “And as you know, like any President of the United States does, he takes a private plane called Air Force One to get there.”
“I think most Americans would see it as a unique circumstance as well,” she said of the government plane made available to Biden.
However, no president travels alone, regardless of the privacy of the plane. It requires a lot of other people to travel as well. And the costs are rising rapidly.
In addition to the Air Force flight crew, a president’s travel party includes Secret Service agents, White House staff, journalists and family members. Depending on the destination and purpose of the trip, lawmakers, Cabinet secretaries, or other guests may travel with the President.
Biden sometimes brought some of his six grandchildren on trips when he was vice president, as well as during last year’s presidential campaign.
Presidential travel doesn’t come cheap.
Federal agencies spent about $ 13.6 million on four trips then-President Donald Trump made to his Mar-a-Lago waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla., In February and March 2017 , reported the Government Accountability Office in 2019.
The figure includes $ 10.6 million for the operation of government planes and boats, and $ 3 million for transportation, accommodation, meals and other expenses for government personnel supporting the president on the route, according to the report.
But not all presidential travel is the same.
Trump took on the more familiar version of Air Force One, a modified 747, on the more than two-hour flight to the commercial airport in West Palm Beach, Fla. Biden flew a smaller version of the plane for the roughly half-hour flight to Delaware Air National Guard base. He made this weekend’s trip on the Presidential Marine One helicopter.
Trump’s Florida home is on the water, which necessitated the addition of Coast Guard security patrols.
Biden is returning to his longtime home near Wilmington, where he lived as a senator before being elected vice president in 2008 and where he returned after his term ended.
Now serving as Biden’s weekend hideaway, he saw Tom Brady, the new Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, win a record-breaking Super Bowl seventh ring in February. While there, Biden often meets with counselors, attends church, and enjoys Sunday dinner with the family.
“We try to keep Sunday night dinners,” Jill Biden told TV show host Kelly Clarkson. “I mean, it’s been a little busy lately. We still do and the kids are looking forward to it. “
Biden owns a second home in the seaside community of Rehoboth, Delaware. He hasn’t visited it since he became president, but he might see more action as the weather warms.
In a tearful farewell in January as he left Wilmington for Washington, Biden credited the state with helping to shape his values, character and worldview. “It’s all from Delaware,” he said.
Biden lived the majority of his 78 years in Wilmington after his parents moved from Scranton, Pa., When he was a boy. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate for 36 years and was a regular passenger on the Amtrak train to and from Washington.
“Getting out of the White House was more complicated than it is today,” said Doug Wead, former White House aide and author of books on presidents and their families.
The first presidents were sent on bumpy trains, he said. But motorcades, Air Force One, and Marine One all help ease a modern president’s path out of the nation’s capital.
But there is no presidential playbook on how and where to spend the weekend.
Trump has spent many weekends at Mar-a-Lago or his Trump Golf Club in central New Jersey, which has led to critics accusing him of trying to profit from the presidency.
Barack Obama spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Washington because his young daughters were in football and basketball leagues on weekends.
George W. Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Howell said Biden – who has cultivated his image as an “ordinary Joe” – has strong ties to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, which he wishes to maintain.
The president’s first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter, Naomi, who were killed in a car crash in 1972, and their son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, are buried in a church cemetery where Biden attends. services.
Those close to Biden also note the strong affection he has for Delaware.
Leaving the state in January, Biden, of Irish descent, alluded to an Irish poet who allegedly said Dublin would be written in his heart when he died.
Overwhelmed with emotion, Biden said, “When I die, Delaware will be written in my heart.”
[ad_2]
Source link