C’mon Jeralynn- this is two lame attacks in as many days:
Why on earth does President Bush need an entourage of 700 for his four day jaunt to England? That’s ridiculous. What’s even more galling is we, the American taxpayers, are footing the bill.
Ahh, the convenience of partisan memory blocks:
President Bill Clinton, accompaniedby first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and an entourage of 800 government officials and press people, made a 12-day visit to six African countries–Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal–in March of 1998. The visit made history. It was the first substantial visit of that length by an American president. The trip was also designed to inaugurate a new era of mutual partnership and respect for those African states that are now making steady progress in building prosperity on the basis of market economics and political democracy.
Yawn.
*** Update ***
Matt Stinson was a bit harsher on TalkLeft.
HH
Almost as ridiculous as complaining about Air Force One being used to fly to a fundraiser… Hillary anyone?
DaveL
800 / 12 = 66.7
700 / 4 = 175
175 / 66.7 = 2.6
Bush is over 2.5 times as wasteful as Clinton!
Silliness.
Incidentally, is the press corp included in the 700?
Moe Lane
President Carter’s entourage apparently filled “sixentire hotels in and near Bonn” when he went to a 1978 G7 Economic Summit. I’m morally certain that Bush I, Reagan, Nixon and Johnson had similar numbers: I dunno if Ford had time to make any state trips and navigating through umpteen sites about Kennedy’s German visit sounds too much like work.
mark
I am curious who exactly is included.
DaveL asks about press. What about secret service. I know there are a significant number of them (and rightly so for any president).
In any case…yawn is indeed the correct word.
JC
I wonder how much it cost to keep the carrier off the coast of CA for another day so that Bush could land on it in victory.
Surely more than Clinton’s famous hair cut did.
‘s funny how quickly the right forgets.
Dean
JC:
Zero, zip, nada.
Didn’t happen.
You see, a carrier’s arrival at its homeport is planned months in advance. So, unless the ship had a rather major problem (say, a blown engine or the like), the idea that you would DELAY its arrival by a day is simply nonsensical.
The same applies to getting a carrier into homeport early.
You might want to consider that a carrier (w/ a crew of several thousand) has several thousand family members waiting—the idea that they’d be either KEPT waiting, or that they’d be told on no-notice that the ship was getting in a day early is one of those things that neither the military nor a smart political operative like Karl Rove would want to have happen.
But ‘s funny how little the Left actually knows about how the military that they want to keep safe actually operates.
Steve Malynn
DaveL, your math is off, lets say it costs $1 per person per day of an overseas trip. Clinton makes a 12 day trip with 800 people 1x12x800=9600; Bush makes a 4 day trip with 700 people 1x4x700=2800. 9600/2800 = 3.4285714, Clinton spent at least 3 times more to accomplish less.
Kimmitt
With all due respect to my brethren who know significantly less about the military than I do, one does not have to know much about a group of people in order to prefer that all of them remain alive.
madman_across_water
funny…figured most people had mothers that covered this argument…at some time you were caught doing something wrong…you said in defense…”but mom, billy did it too”…to which your mother replied…”if billy jumped off a cliff would you follow?”….apparently most of gop would take a header off cliff….