New England’s lure as presidential escape
Region called welcoming, ‘noncontroversial’
WASHINGTON - What began as a ride in specially appointed trains has evolved to a flight aboard Air Force One. But whatever the mode of travel, generations of presidents have headed north to New England in the summer when Washington and its politics got too hot.
So many presidents have flocked to its gentle mountains and Atlantic shores, going back at least as far as Ulysses S. Grant and winding up tomorrow when President Obama arrives on Martha’s Vineyard, that it perhaps offers some solace for New England’s poor showing in recent decades in producing a presidential winner.
“Historically, it is a summer playground,’’ said Barbara Kellerman, public leadership lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
And for politics-sensitive presidents, she said, the region is “a totally noncontroversial choice and authentically welcoming.’’
It certainly has a bipartisan attraction. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower set up a Summer White House in Newport. The GOP’s William Howard Taft preferred Beverly. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, cruised along the New England Coast from Massachusetts to Maine one summer.
August shutdowns are a Washing ton, D.C., tradition. Built on a former swamp, the city many years ago posed health hazards in the summer. And in the days before air conditioning, the Capitol was intolerable. Train routes running straight up the East Coast made getting to cooler climes relatively easy.
“You had to get out of Washington for practical reasons. It was so hot. You had malaria, mosquitoes carrying diseases. It was in your best interests,’’ said Boston University social science professor and presidential scholar Thomas Whalen.
But even after modern conveniences like air conditioning and Air Force One made it possible for presidents to go nearly anywhere, commanders-in-chief continue to flock to New England states for their summer breaks.
Obama - who is reportedly renting the Blue Heron Farm estate in Chilmark for his brief break - becomes the third sitting president to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Grant spent time there in 1874, while Bill Clinton made six trips to the island.
“The Vineyard has a calming and soothing effect on everyone,’’ said Representative Bill Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat whose district includes the island. “It’s an elixir for presidential stress.’’
Some presidents have retreated to the comfort and familiarity of family estates. John F. Kennedy went to the family compound in Hyannis Port, while George H. W. Bush spent Augusts in Kennebunkport, Maine. His son, George W. Bush, swapped the Yankee vacation for cowboy-themed August break at his ranch in Waco, Texas, but still made shorter trips to Kennebunkport during his presidency.
In addition to staying at his own summer White House in Beverly, Taft also vacationed in Bar Harbor, Maine - complaining in a speech to the villagers during his 1910 stay that two weeks of vacation was simply not enough.
“Two or three months’ vacation after the hard and nervous strain to which one is subjected during the autumn and spring are necessary in order to enable one to continue his work the next year with that energy and effectiveness which it ought to have,’’ Taft said, according to news reports at the time.
Obama, facing a recession and fighting to keep his health care overhaul plan on track, is taking just one week. And while Obama aides insist the president intends to take a genuine vacation, golfing and spending time with his wife and daughters, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president planned to “touch base’’ with members of Congress on the health care plan.
Two vice presidents were in New England when history promoted them to the top job: Teddy Roosevelt was at a fish and game reception in Isle La Motte, Vt., when he learned that President William McKinley had been fatally shot in Buffalo, said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont. And Calvin Coolidge was at his father’s home in Plymouth Notch, Vt. - a home without electricity or telephone - when he learned of the death of president Warren G. Harding, who had beaten Coolidge in the GOP primary but teamed up with Coolidge on the 1920 ticket.
Coolidge’s father, a notary public, swore in his son by the light of a kerosene lamp, and the new president was re-sworn in when he arrived in Washington.
“They were hiding in New England while disaster felled their predecessors,’’ Nelson said. “That’s why you vacation in New England, because harm will fell you elsewhere.’’
So why would a president even consider going somewhere else, when New England has so much to offer?
Vacations make a political statement, and some presidents took that into account when deciding where to summer. Bill Clinton, on the advice of his pollster, went on vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyo. in 1995 and 1996, ahead of his reelection campaign.
“Being seen as a Massachusetts elitist on Martha’s Vineyard wasn’t the best thing in the world’’ when Clinton was seeking a second term, said former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, who was not involved in the decision to have the Clintons vacation in Wyoming.
The lure of home appeals to some presidents, especially those who professed a distaste for the East Coast mentality. Richard Nixon went to the Southern California beaches of San Clemente (which became known as the “Western White House’’ during his tenure) while Ronald Reagan retreated to Santa Barbara.
“Nixon would have loved to blow New England off the map. Ronnie couldn’t care less about us, and [Jimmy] Carter was afraid he’d run into a Kennedy if he came to New England,’’ Nelson said, referring to Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Democratic primary challenge against Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
“By the time Bill Clinton became president, he didn’t have a Kennedy to worry about. There was no Kennedy in the wings hovering over his presidency,’’ Nelson said.
Globe correspondent Stephanie Vallejo contributed to this report. 