Hillarysworld

PRESIDENT Barack Obama may have had a tough time picking his summer reading to take on holiday to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend. Three of the top five titles on the New York Times nonfiction hard-back bestseller list are currently anti-Obama screeds.

Obama was expected to arrive today at a rented estate on the popular island resort off the coast of Massachusetts after spending the earlier part of the weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

Earlier this month, he took his wife and children to Yellow-stone national park and the Grand Canyon. Before that, Michelle, Sasha and Malia joined him on business trips to London, Paris, Moscow and Ghana. For all his policy problems at home and abroad, no one is accusing the president of failing to exploit his limited opportunities for occasional R&R.

Yet the success of those torrid antiObama tomes suggests the president will have plenty to think about as he plays golf, basketball and tennis on the secluded facilities of Blue Heron Farm, the private estate where his family is expected to spend a week.

Also selling well is Dick Morris’s new book, Catastrophe, which is summarised as: “Stopping President Obama before he transforms America into a socialist state and destroys the health care system.” Third on the list is Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, yet another conservative manifesto taking aim at “Barack Nobama”.

With the president’s approval ratings charting new lows almost daily, he may well be looking forward to a respite from the bitter partisan exchanges that have soured debate over his healthcare reforms. Yet not even his holiday plans have escaped criticism as the first family’s taste for expensive getaways is being contrasted unfavourably with the difficulties currently experienced by millions of less fortunate Americans.

Presidential holidays have often turned into minefields, as George W Bush discovered when he spent most of August 2001 secluded on his Texas ranch. Within days of his return to Washington, the 9/11 terrorists struck.

Obama initially indicated that he would spend much of his free time as president returning to his native Chicago, where he continues to own a house.

He once assured Chicago residents, in a reference to the summer home of the first president George Bush: “My Kennebunk-port is on the south side of Chicago.” Yet security and other concerns have limited the president’s hometown visits, and few were surprised when he was reported to have picked a rural Martha’s Vineyard estate for his main summer break – even if the place is owned by a Republican multi-millionaire.

Slightly more surprising has been the president’s willingness to lavish tens of thousands of dollars on luxury accommodation. The Vineyard farm is reported to be renting for up to $50,000 (£30,300) a week, which Obama can easily afford from the proceeds of his own bestselling books, but which forced him onto the defensive last week.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6806422.ece