President Obama deserves to be given a break - but a holiday is out of the question

Out of America: The truth is that the leraders of the free world are never really on holiday – and as for going abroad? Forget it

Obama relaxes on the golf course in Kailua last week. For US presidents, Hawaii is as exotic as it gets (AFP)

It must be great being President of the United States. Christmas and the New Year beckon, and off you go each year with the family on Air Force One (cost to the US taxpayer $206,000 per hour of flying time) for a fortnight’s break in Hawaii – golfing, surfing and otherwise hanging out in America’s own Pacific paradise.

What a contrast with those poor Republicans vying for your job. Christmas and the New Year are not quite the virtual national shutdown here that they are in Britain. Nonetheless, hard-working candidates are surely entitled to some time off, even with the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire barely a month off, in this most contested and unpredictable of primary battles for the nomination.

Donald Trump was scheduled to be at it on Christmas Day itself, in Columbus, Ohio, while his current closest challenger, Ted Cruz, only wrapped up a week-long Midwestern and southern foray on Wednesday. Given the stakes, their trailing rivals have been more or less obliged to do the same. And in any case, most will be back on the stump on Monday.

But be careful what you wish for. If one of these Republicans actually wins the presidency in November, he or she will look back on campaigning as a holiday. No job on earth (with the possible exception of coaching one of England’s national sports teams) ages you like the presidency.

Just look at Barack Obama, as he boarded his plane for Hawaii. The eager-beaver youthfulness of the 2008 candidate has vanished. He’s still in terrific shape, but his hair has greyed, his cheeks look hollow. If anyone deserves a winter break, he does. The truth is though, a president is never really on holiday.

Once I had a polo shirt of which I was inordinately proud, bearing the presidential seal surrounded by the words “The Summer White House, Kennebunkport”. That, of course, dates back to the days of George H W Bush, who used to take his August break at his family home on a magnificent bluff jutting out from southern Maine into the Atlantic Ocean.

Many presidents have had similar getaways. Nixon had his in San Clemente and Reagan his Rancho del Cielo, in the hills behind Santa Barbara. Both these Californian retreats were dubbed “the Western White House”. So too was the ranch at Crawford, where Bush Jnr relaxed by chopping back brush and going for jogs in the 100F midsummer heat of the Texas plains. Doubtless Obama’s hideaway in Kailua, on the island of Oahu, has a similar moniker. And they’re not just to sell souvenir polo shirts. An American president never really escapes the White House pressure cooker.

Yes, I used my August 1991 trip to Kennebunkport to write about “Bush 41” on holiday, indulging in his pastimes of sailing, horseshoes and playing rounds of golf. But I was primarily there to cover a working visit by the then Prime Minister, John Major. A few days before there had been an attempted coup in the Soviet Union to topple Mikhail Gorbachev.

The cack-handed adventure failed, but for the three days that it lasted the world’s eyes were on Kennebunkport: would the leader of the other nuclear-armed superpower condemn the coup, or tacitly condone it? Bush, after a moment’s wavering, did the former. The point is, a president is never off the job.

And so it will be for Obama these next two weeks. Things look relatively quiet. Trump et al are hogging the headlines, while Congress, amazingly, has wrapped up a budget – meaning none of the “fiscal cliff” deadline dramas that forced Obama to cut short his Hawaii break a few years ago. But the wider world doesn’t respect a president’s desire for peace and quiet. Just last Monday, a Taliban attack killed six US soldiers – an unseasonal reminder for Obama, the commander-in-chief in a war in Afghanistan which, try as he might, he cannot bring to an end.

And though it doesn’t seem like it, the world’s most powerful person is oddly limited in his holiday options. American presidents have been getting away from it all for as long as there have been presidents. Theodore Roosevelt liked to go bear hunting; his cousin Franklin loved his “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia, the spa whose waters he once hoped would help cure his polio, and where he died in April 1945.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan horseback riding at Racho Del Cielo (Rex)

JFK had the family estates – aka “Kennedy compounds” – in Massachusetts and south Florida; Eisenhower had his farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he raised cattle and practised his putting. Obama, incidentally, has racked up more time on the golf course than any president except Eisenhower; but in terms of total “holiday” time taken, he ranks low among his modern peers. One thing, however, unites them: even if they wanted to, they couldn’t leave the country. A foreign vacation? Forget it.

British prime ministers do as they please, unmolested. Mrs Thatcher used to go to the Swiss and Austrian Alps in summer, David Cameron pops down to Portugal, while Tony Blair would grab whatever freebie was on offer from his rich pals, be it Tuscany or the Caribbean. Not so, occupants of the White House.

For one thing it would be deemed unpatriotic; “What’s wrong with the US?” would come the cry from the four corners of the land. More importantly, it’s simply not feasible. Presidents don’t go on holiday with just a couple of secret servicemen. It’s the whole works, or almost: the briefcase with the nuclear launch authorising codes; a decent complement of advisers and sundry officials; plus a media pool and motorcades here, there and everywhere.

Parachute all that into the hills of Chianti or the Algarve and once the novelty had worn off, the host country would probably consider signing up with Isis. For an American president, Hawaii is as exotic as it gets. And you can’t say he hasn’t earned it. Even if the round trip on Air Force One costs a cool $3m.