We know that this president is a lightning rod who risks a direct strike every time he raises his head. In an election season when the chairman of the Fed can be accused of treason for printing money, the dust-up du jour can be about nothing.
This one is about less than nothing. Presidents have been taking vacations since Washington kicked back at Mount Vernon a couple of hundred summers ago.
That didn't keep GOP front-runner Mitt Romney from casting the first stone, even though, as governor of Massachusetts, he was known to take in the sun at Martha's Vineyard himself.
"If you're the president of the United States and the nation is in crisis - and we're in a jobs crisis right now - then you shouldn't be out vacationing," Romney declared.
Someone pointed out that Congress was on a vacation that started before and ends after the president's. Romney had an answer for that.
"And, yeah," he snorted, "go back to the office yourself, pull back members of Congress and focus on getting the job done."
Now, there's an idea whose time has come and gone. Another two weeks like that Capitol Hill slapfest over the deficit-reduction plan and we would all need a vacation.
This contrived controversy followed a two-day whine on the president's use of an expensive bus for his tour of the Midwest. Veterans of the school-desegregation wars will remember the phrase, "It's not the bus, it's us."
This is not about the bus or the beach. This is about a president whose opponents are flush from their victory in the deficit wars. They smell blood in the water. It's a feeding frenzy.
Which is why I'm all for having him take a long, soothing vacation. It's no more than the minute that fighters take between rounds so that their trainers can rinse their mouthpieces with cool water and wave a towel in front of their faces.
Barack Obama fights like a guy who is observing the Marquess of Queensberry rules against a guy who has a horseshoe hidden in his glove.
