Leaders Vacationing in Warm Spots When It’s Cold!
A perennial outrage.
Two related stories via memeorandum this morning.
New York Post (“Biden heads to St. Croix as winter blast kills dozens, cancels 10,000 flights“):
Wanna get away?
President Biden left the White House Tuesday night for a tropical vacation in St. Croix to ring in the New Year — as much of the country deals with extreme cold and snowfall that has killed at least 65 people and canceled 10,000 flights since Christmas Eve.
The 80-year-old commander in chief will bask in the Caribbean sun near an in-ground pool at a three-bedroom beachfront villa with sweeping views on the largest of the US Virgin Islands.
Meanwhile, travel chaos, widespread power outages and rising deaths caused by single-digit weather continue across the Midwest and East Coast, but especially in Western New York, where at least 32 people died in Buffalo’s Erie County amid more than 4 feet of snow.
It’s unclear who owns the vacation property or whether Biden will be paying for his stay, though he has a long record of staying for free at the houses of wealthy Democratic donors.
Gothamist (“Mayor Adams defends U.S. Virgin Islands trip as NYC prepared for winter storm“):
As a major winter storm brought frigid temperatures and flooding to parts of the city, delaying mass transit and sending holiday travel plans into a tizzy, Mayor Eric Adams was in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The mayor revealed his weekend whereabouts at an unrelated press conference Tuesday evening after his office hid them from the public for days. Adams stood by his decision to leave town and said he was mourning his mother during his second Christmas without her.
“After 365 days of commitment to this city, I decided to take two days to reflect on mommy. And to watch how you responded to my two days out of this city was really alarming,” the mayor told reporters after someone asked where he had been over the holiday weekend. “I deserve a good work-life balance like you do.”
Adams asked for sympathy from the city press corps as he noted that, in the past year, he has dealt with killings, fires and police officers dying — all without his parents. His mother died in 2021 while he was campaigning for mayor.
“If I take time off to get my mental capacity together, so I can take the city through the crisis, I deserve those two days,” the mayor said.
Adams added that he had followed City Charter rules, which place the first deputy mayor in charge in the mayor’s absence.
“Nowhere in the New York City Charter does it say I have to report to the New York City press where my whereabouts are,” he said. “I’m not going to do that. And I’m not going to apologize for having the mental and physical capacity that’s needed to do the second-most difficult job in politics in America.”
Adams’ self-righteousness notwithstanding, he ain’t wrong.
Let’s acknowledge that the optics of leaders headed off to the tropics—U.S. colonies, no less!—while a brutal winter storm hits are suboptimal. But we don’t hire Presidents or mayors on the basis of their expertise in weather response; they have people for that.
Leaders need downtime more than anyone. Making good decisions requires rest. Yet, there’s never a good time for them to be seen as not at work. (Presidents, at least, are never really off work; they can always be reached instantly.) Picking a time when the government is as close to shut down as it ever is—the week between Christmas and New Year—would seem to be the ideal time to get away.
caterwauling to score political points.
Gonna quibble with this – their need is the same as everyone’s, just expressed or scaled differently. The tired barista may make a fatal error and give someone anaphylactic shock and the tired general might miss some key info that causes the battle to fail. Their exhaustion resulted in death for the same reason (inattention due to fatigue) but the barista can kill less then the general with their screw up. Leaders don’t work harder then the guy loading trucks, they work differently in ways that cause different forms of fatigue. The CEO is not more tired then the person putting in 18hrs of labor per day but as anyone who’s sat at a desk for hours will tell you, mental work causes exhaustion and burnout too.
The reason it’s bad optics is you’re telling someone who’s physically tired your mental tiredness is exactly the same but you should get the nice expensive vacay while they need to settle for the staycation if anything. Its implicitly telling them their fatigue is lesser because they are lesser; Cruz gets to escape to Cancun while the cashier’s plane gets cancelled and they spend their time off without power. Leaders have the same right to go to the beach as anyone else but it looks bad when you *know* your constituents are going to be freezing and without power as you bask in balmy weather. Is it fair you should get to escape the cold when they can’t? Yes and no – not your fault Mother Nature came calling on a pre-planned vacation but being a leader means making tough choices and sacrifices that might inconvenience you. Why not make it a staycation instead or go somewhere local? Why does it have to be the tropical vacation you know others aren’t getting because the crisis has ruined it for them?
@KM:
I’m repeating something I learned long ago in the military. The tendency is for leaders to get less rest than their subordinates because they have more to do and because they want to be seen outworking everybody. But a physically exhausted person can continue to march a very long time through sheer willpower; you can literally walk in your sleep. But, at the end of the march, the leader has to make decisions. You make really poor decisions when you’re mentally exhausted or sleep-deprived.
As President, Barack Obama followed the trend of some other famous leaders and thinkers in simplifying his wardrobe so that he didn’t have to expend mental energy on what to wear each day.
That’s about money, not position. Most people simply can’t afford to get away. (My late first wife and I went somewhere warm for Christmas a couple of times when it was just us. I’d love to make that an annual tradition but, even with two pretty decent incomes, that’s just not justifiable with a family of seven.)
EDIT: I do get the optics issue. “Leaders eat last” is a perennial leadership principle in the Army and Marine Corps. But, even then, colonels and general can afford to go on nicer vacations than privates and corporals.
@James Joyner:
You misunderstand me – I’m referring to people who had vacations similar to leaders already planned / scheduled but can’t go because of the crisis that somehow didn’t affect the politician’s vacation. Many “leaders” use resources associated with their power, wealth or position to be able to travel when Average Joe can’t get anywhere. For instance, there was a travel ban in Buffalo but the Bills were given a priority dig out and an escort to the airport; in other words, they were going to work during a time when travel was supposed to be essential workers only. Buffalo is nuts for the Bills but it rubbed a lot of people wrong that they were sanctioned to travel while others are still stuck inside, not to mention anyone else who might have been scheduled to go on vacation but missed the chance due to the ban.
For a lot of people, seeing a politician get on a plane when they should be but can’t is extremely problematic as a show of “rules for thee, not for me”. Leaders are definitely entitled to down time but if they’re making it out when no one else is, it’s problematic as they got out *BECAUSE* of who they are. Its not a money thing, it’s a position thing when they get to fly out and you are prevented from taking the trip you’ve already paid for.
@KM:
Ah. Yes, that’s fair.
Yeah, I don’t love that. I guess the rationale was that millions of folks would get a respite from their woes cheering for the team. But it’s a bad look.
I think there are leaders/bosses who use their position to make sure they make the most money and have the shortest work hours with the most time off. I dont think that is true for the conscientious ones. I am a bit of a workaholic but I am always in to work 30-60 minutes ahead of everyone and usually there a hours or so later and do lots of work at night and on weekends. When I take vacation I make sure people know how to get hold of me right away. For my staff they largely go to work and then go home. That’s it. I am an advocate of servant leadership and I think that if you are going to help people develop to their fullest potential it takes a bit of time. Or maybe I am just slow.
Steve
The feds fund stuff. They don’t operate much in the way of road crews or cop shops or fire departments. Unless nationalized, they don’t even command the National Guard. As Ian demonstrated, FEMA seems pretty well up to their jobs. There’s really not much Biden could or should have been doing to prep for a storm. Maybe be ready to declare a state of emergency somewhere, which he’s easily able to do with the staff and equipment that travel with him.
Governors and mayors probably do have stuff to do for a storm and don’t travel with the prez’s resources. Although I expect the mayor of NYC travels with more than his family and his cell phone. Ted Cruz probably did just have his cell phone, but he had no real responsibility for storm response, except maybe calling as a senator to grease a few skids.
But they’re all professional politicians and the optics are bad. Being absent during a crisis is professional malpractice. Less so for the prez I think. I make it a point to read FOX and other conservative stuff, and I was unaware Biden was out of DC. Except for the NY Post nobody seemed to be making a thing of his absence. I just glanced ant FOX and didn’t see anything. Also, Biden left yesterday, with the storm pretty much over.
@James Joyner: More, I think, a question of how much shit the Buffalo pols would have taken from the Bills fans had they not moved heaven and earth to allow the Bills to play.
The problem with Adams was not that he took a vacation. It’s that he was AWOL during a natural disaster and no one seemed to know where he was.
The only one criticizing him for being on vacation is, ironically, Eric Adams himself, as he tries to cast reasonable questions about why he disappeared during an emergency as some sort of unreasonable behavior by the press.
This is also part of a much larger and ongoing problem with Eric Adams, who apparently thinks being mayor makes him the boss of New York, and thus reacts to any sort of questioning about anything by anyone like a form of insubordination.
Maybe instead of going to some warm, sun-drenched, tropical paradise, high local and federal officials should go skiing instead?