WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – As he stood in the Rose Garden celebrating his first major legislative victory, President Joe Biden gestured at the White House and said it was a “magnificent building” to live in.
Except on weekends.
Of the eight weekends since Biden took office, he has spent three at his long home in Wilmington, Delaware, including this weekend. Provisional plans for another weekend visit were scrapped due to Senate action on Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
Biden also spent a weekend at Camp David’s presidential retreat in Maryland.
Many presidents have complained at one time or another that they feel confined to the White House. Biden has already echoed previous presidents in comparing the experience to living in a “golden cage.”
So changing the 132-room executive mansion for a less confined, relaxing weekend stay can help presidents relax, University of Chicago political scientist William Howell said.
“What I wanted to be was president,” Howell said. “It’s not the White House itself that’s the draw.”
The White House is advocating for Biden’s leisure travel at a time when both he and federal health officials have called on the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, even avoiding unnecessary travel.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It is his home. This is where he has lived for many, many years, ”said press secretary Jen Psaki. “And as you know, as any president of the United States does, take a private jet called Air Force One to travel there.”
“I think most Americans would also see it as a unique circumstance,” he said of the government plane available for Biden.
No president travels alone, no matter how private the plane. It requires a lot of other people to travel as well. And costs are rising rapidly.
In addition to the Air Force flight crew, the president’s travel group includes Secret Service agents, White House personnel, journalists, and family members. Depending on the destination and purpose of the trip, lawmakers, cabinet secretaries, or other guests may fly with the president.
Biden occasionally carried some of his six traveling grandchildren when he was vice president, as well as during last year’s presidential campaign.
Presidential travel is not cheap.
Federal agencies invested about $ 13.6 million in four trips that then-President Donald Trump took to the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in February and March 2017, the 2019 the Government Accountability Office.
The figure includes $ 10.6 million to operate government aircraft and ships and $ 3 million for transportation, lodging, meals and other expenses for government personnel supporting the president on the road, according to the report.
But not all presidential trips are the same.
Trump picked up the more familiar version of Air Force One, a modified 747, on the two-hour flight to West Palm Beach, Florida’s commercial airport. Biden has flown a smaller version of the plane for about half an hour’s flight to Delaware National Air Guard base. He made the trip this weekend in the Marine One presidential helicopter.
Trump’s home in Florida is in the water, which required the addition of Coast Guard security patrols.
Biden returns to his long home near Wilmington, where he lived as a senator before being elected vice president in 2008 and where he returned after his time in that office ended.
It’s now Biden’s weekend getaway, where he watched Tom Brady, the new quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, win his seventh Super Bowl ring in February. While there, Biden often meets with counselors, attends church, and enjoys Sunday dinner with family.
“We try to hold Sunday night dinners,” Jill Biden told TV talk show host Kelly Clarkson. “I mean, he’s been a little busy lately. We still do, and the kids are waiting for it. ”
Biden has a second home in the beach community of Rehoboth, Delaware. He hasn’t visited him since he became president, but more action could be seen as time warms up.
During a tearful farewell in January as he left Wilmington for Washington, Biden credited the state with helping shape his values, character, and worldview. “It all comes from Delaware,” he said.
Biden lived most of his 78 years in Wilmington after his parents moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was a child. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate for 36 years and was a regular passenger on the Amtrak train to and from Washington.
“Leaving the White House was heavier than it is now,” said Doug Wead, a former White House aide and author of books on presidents and their families.
The first presidents were sent on crashed trains, he said. But the bodies, Air Force One and Marine One help clear the way for a modern president to the nation’s capital.
But there is no presidential playbook on how and where to spend the weekend.
Trump spent many weekends at Mar-a-Lago or his Trump golf club in central New Jersey, and led critics to accuse him of trying to take advantage of the presidency.
Barack Obama spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Washington because his young daughters belonged to football and basketball leagues over the weekend.
George W. Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Howell said Biden – who has cultivated his image as a “regular Joe” – has strong connections to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, which he wants to keep.
The president’s first wife, Neilia, and her daughter, Naomi, who died in a 1972 car accident, and their son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, are buried in a cemetery. of the church where Biden attends. services.
People close to Biden also notice the strong affection he has for Delaware.
When he left the state in January, Biden, of Irish descent, alluded to an Irish poet believed to have said that Dublin would be written in his heart when he died.
Biden, excited, said, “When he dies, Delaware will be written in my heart.”