OnBackground

An online journal of politics, policy, and society with a special focus on Maryland -- Contact: on_background at yahoo.com.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

At Work?

We all know that the presidents have to do a lot of travelling, both at home and internationally, but sometimes it seems that leaders of nations end up being just communicators rather than decisionmakers.

This is nowhere better illustrated than by a recent Post piece on just how much our presidents travel:

In his first three years in office, Bush took 416 trips to 46 states, compared with Clinton's 302 trips to 40 states during a similar period. More notable, the scholars found, was the heavy proportion of Bush travel to "swing states" -- those where the vote margin in the 2000 election was within 6 percentage points.