hypocritexposer
Well-known member
Globe Trotter Obama Smashes Presidential Records
Sunday, July 12, 2009 8:00 PM
By: David A. Patten
President Barack Obama loves to fly and it shows!
This past week, Obama wrapped up his latest foreign sojourn, returning from a whirlwind trip to Moscow, Rome and Accra, Ghana.
But critics and political strategists contend that Obama's foreign globetrotting will end up hurting him with the American electorate.
With just 175 days into his first term and in the midst of the worst economic crisis he says the nation has faced since the Great Depression, the new president is shattering all previous presidents' records for overseas travel at this early stage of a presidency.
Put simply, no U.S. president ever has traveled abroad so often, so early.
In the first 171 days of his presidency, Obama spent 22 days -- the equivalent of one full month of working days -- out of the country. That means 13 percent of Obama's time in office has been spent abroad.
During that period, the president has made 17 visits to other nations, dwarfing the number of overseas visits -- seven -- that former President George W. Bush had completed at the same point in his presidency. Former President Ronald Reagan, who also took office in tumultuous times, made two overseas visits at this point in his presidency.
At the current pace Obama would, after only four years in office, shatter the record for total travel abroad by any U.S. president -- even those who served two terms.
Incoming presidents typically maintain busy travel schedules during their first year in office, when the world jostles to see the new American leader up-close and personal.
But Obama's pace is unprecedented: At the current rate of travel, he would complete some 145 visits to other nations by the end of his four-year term.
That would easily eclipse the mark for most overseas trips by any president, including those who served two terms.
Pundits warn Obama's torrid accumulation of frequent flyer miles could have serious consequences politically, at a time when opinion polls indicate his popularity has begun to waiver.
“It’s hard to believe the president," former GOP presidential contender and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tells Newsmax, "when he tells us his highest priority is to fix our economy at home and when he’s spent so much of his time and the taxpayers’ treasury traveling about the world to apologize for America, and to hang out with world leaders who are running from the very kind of high-tax, big government that he is running toward.”
Fox News analyst Dick Morris believes that Obama is leaving the country largely because he can't come to grips with the country's economic troubles.
"Obama is, essentially, a foreign policy president who finds himself beset with domestic economic problems that were never part of why he ran in the first place," Morris told Newsmax. "Iraq was always his chosen issue, not the economy."
In addition to the political cost, there is the financial one that has some fiscal watchdogs angry.
Demian Brady, a senior policy analyst with the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) in Alexandria, Va., notes: "Presidential trips involve a lot of advance work, are often accompanied by large entourages, and can be quite expensive."
Brady adds, "Although we are in an era of globalism, trips abroad involving the president should be chosen and planned carefully to ensure that costs to the taxpayer are minimized."
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_record_travel/2009/07/12/234667.html