The Clintons know the importance of setting in forming public image. President Clinton interrupted his vacations to deal with crises when they came up. In August 1998, he returned to the White House from Martha's Vineyard in order to announce missile strikes against terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. He knew the importance of that image coming from the Oval Office.
In the pictures below, we see Secretary Clinton speaking on Monday at Johns Hopkins University about the Global Health Initiative (while the POTUS was away from D.C. campaigning). She flew to New York to make a speech about the Pakistan floods at the U.N. General Assembly late Thursday afternoon. Now one would think (I did) that being in New York late on a Thursday, she might make a long weekend of it and stay there, which is why I was surprised when the schedule for Friday had her back in D.C. for a "brief statement." Those pictures of her with George Mitchell are from that event. Did she fly back to D.C. to make this brief statement? Yes, she did.
(Video courtesy of Team Hillary Clinton)
The media is spinning the Presidential vacation as a "working vacation" and the NBC take is that he gave the task of making the announcement about the Middle East talks to Hillary. Maybe he did. I think the message is a bigger one, though, since he has taken multiple vacations, and she just goes home to Chappaqua on weekends when she is not traveling . She has not had a vacation in more than a year. She even passed up a chance at a long weekend, cheerfully, to go back to the State Department and stand on that dais with P.J. Crowley and George Mitchell to make this announcement. It could have been teleconferenced from New York. She chose not to. She could have recorded it in advance, but she did not. She flew back down to D.C., walked out on the dais with P.J. and Mitchell with all the energy, cheer, and friendly humor with the press, and made this administration look heroic and very classy, even while the POTUS relaxed on the Vineyard. Well, he can afford to relax. The government is safe in her pretty hands.
