Shannon Bow O’Brien is Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and author of Why Presidential Speech Locations Matter, a new volume in our book series The Evolving American Presidency.

Listen to her SpringerNature's Storytellers Podcast.

Read a chapter from Why Presidential Speech Locations Matter, “All Work and No Play: How Presidents Use Vacation Locations” free until October 6.

I think where presidents go matters.  Locations tell us about where they want to spend time away from the White House.  When I first started doing work on my dissertation, I noticed that George W. Bush spent quite a bit of time at his Texas ranch.  It made me curious about other presidential vacations spots… where they go, what they do, and how it affects the presidency.  Interestingly, however, the idea was set aside until I started work on my book Why Presidential Speech Locations Matter in earnest in 2017. That summer was spent reading and counting days in the presidential daily diaries.  If you aren’t familiar, they are day-to-day manifests logging where and how the president spends their time.  I found out Richard Nixon spent over 47% of his entire time in office at vacation spots, Jimmy Carter took a riverboat cruise as president, and that one of the old presidential yachts was infested with raccoons.  Some presidents loved Camp David, while others avoided it.  Ronald Reagan kept a hotel room in Los Angeles for business meetings so his ranch could be for more private relaxation.  Bill Clinton was a massive University of Arkansas sports fan with their football and basketball schedules (with television channels) printed in the daily log.  Though Mar-a-Lago is President Trump’s frequent vacation spot, it has a longer history with American presidents.  It was the former home of Marjorie Merriweather Post and she bequeathed it to the government as a place to host foreign dignitaries.  Richard Nixon, however, preferred his Key Biscayne home and chose to not use it.  It was eventually returned to the Post Foundation and later purchased by Donald Trump in 1985.  Every time I discuss the property, I inevitably begin humming “Circle of Life” from The Lion King since the property had to pass into private hands to eventually become what Post originally envisioned.

Richard Nixon preferred to wake up to a phone call from the White House switchboard every day.  Bill Clinton had jogging listed as the first thing on his daily itinerary for years until it was quietly removed.  All of these things make these men feel like people we know.  They are not always grandiose distant figures, but average people living in extraordinary situations.  Some had vacation homes, like Johnson, and would have very little scheduled while they were at their ranch.  Others, like Carter, Clinton, and Obama, did not have regular vacation locales and traveled to various locations.  Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan took considerable time off almost every weekend.  Clinton and Obama, on the other hand, rarely took time off, only taking summer and holiday breaks.

I also got a sense how well organized administrations are from the records they left for us.  While I was just interested in their time off, I had to read every page in the diaries to accurately log their locations.  Surprisingly, the Reagan diarist was hands down the worst.  When President Reagan was not at the White House or it was over the holidays inside the White House, the diary was often non-existent.  The person in charge simply did not record anything for those days.  The archivists pieced together these days from what looks like the Secret Service transportation logs that account for all the president’s movements. 

These glimpses into various Presidents’ personal lives give a better understanding of these men.  I can tell you that Dwight Eisenhower loved golf.  On vacation, he played golf almost every day of the week.  He did not play on Sundays, but one got a sense from the records that he abstained only to placate his wife.  Gerald Ford started the regular summer two week vacation period.  Before him, most administrations would take large blocks of time off throughout the year.  Richard Nixon often had 4 day weeks to accommodate travel to Florida and the Bahamas.  If you look through many of the daily diaries, you can see what movies they watch at the White House or Camp David.  President Carter watched Animal House on November 10, 1978, while President Reagan watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on June 21, 1986.  The thought of American presidents watching either of those movies makes me snicker a bit. 

Presidents are us.  They were not hatched in a lab or created by scientists.  They are people with families, lives, preferences, and favorite places.  I really loved writing the vacation chapter of my book “All Work and No Play: How Presidents Use Vacation Locations” because it allowed me to really see who these men are who shape our country.  They all had their quirks, styles, and preferences.  After reading through a diary for a bit, I could tell you exactly what they were going to do at certain points of the year.  The Reagans always spent between Christmas and New Years in California, the Clintons spent Thanksgiving at Camp David, and Kennedy went to Palm Beach to spend the holidays at his father’s home there.  These places and choices tell us so much about them and it was not just valuable research, but also fun to have the chance to really look into their lives.