Our globetrotting president sets records
By THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service
June 02, 2000
WASHINGTON - Although President Clinton boasts about his domestic
agenda, he also has set records for foreign travel by a chief
executive with 47 official trips to 63 nations.
During his two terms, Clinton has spent 226 days abroad,
according to a travel log obtained from the National Security
Council, which oversees the president's foreign excursions. That
figure does not include his eight-day trip to Portugal, Germany,
Russia and the Ukraine ending Monday.
No chief executive in U.S. history has come close to this level
of travel.
The only president in the jet-age to complete two full terms,
Ronald Reagan, spent 120 days abroad in a series of 26 trips,
according to travel logs obtained from Reagan's presidential
library in Simi Valley, Calif. Clinton seems certain to at least
double Reagan's total travel before he leaves office in January.
President Dwight Eisenhower did relatively little foreign travel
and was incapacitated by a heart attack during his presidency. No
other president has had the necessary time in office and access
to jet transportation to challenge Clinton's record.
"Even though there are a great many trips to be made, this
president has made more than any other," Sen. Craig Thomas,
R-Wyo., complained during floor budget debates last year.
Clinton's rate of travel has increased steadily through his
administration. He spent only eight days abroad in 1993 during
trips to Korea, Japan and Canada. Last year, he was out of the
country for 50 days in 11 separate trips that included Macedonia,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Morocco, New Zealand, Turkey and Kosovo.
White House officials bristle at suggestions that Clinton's rate
of travel is the result of frustration over his status as a lame
duck who can accomplish little with the Republican-dominated
Congress.
"There is an emphasis on domestic issues because the president
has said, from the beginning, that he's going to be an activist
president until the last day he's here," White House Press
Secretary Joe Lockhart said last year.
But Clinton's agenda appears to be increasingly focusing on
foreign matters, where he can claim successes. In Germany on
Friday, he was awarded the prestigious International Charlemagne
Prize for his work in promoting European unity.
"This trip, at least in part, is an opportunity to take stock of
the progress that has been made and to build on the vision that
the president articulated in 1994 (of) a peaceful, undivided,
democratic Europe for the first time in history," National
Security Adviser Samuel Berger said last week when explaining the
purpose of Clinton's current eight-day travel.
Congress is increasingly critical of the cost of Clinton's
trips. Republican senators ordered the General Accounting Office
to conduct a spot check by auditing the cost of three trips the
president made to Africa, China and Chile in 1998.
The most expensive of these was Clinton's six-nation tour of
Africa, which included a retinue of more than 200 White House
aides, 13 helicopters and enough communication and security
equipment to require 98 air cargo missions. The tally for the
trip was $43 million.
The GAO estimated the cost of all three trips that year at $72.1
million, of which 84 percent was charged to the Department of
Defense, which supplied the necessary military transport
aircraft.
"Does not it appear excessive to pin $72 million on three trips
billed as goodwill tours?" asked Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., in a
House floor statement late last year. "Bill Clinton gets my
Porker-of-the-Week Award."
Clinton apparently set an all-time record in travel expenses in
March during a nine-day trip to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and
Switzerland. The U.S. Air Force estimated it spent as much as $75
million to provide an armada of 76 transport and support aircraft
for the trips, although a final tally has not been released.
"I don't think there has been a time in recent history where a
president has embarked on a foreign tour in the extensive way
that he did and come up totally empty-handed," said Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz. "It again emphasizes the need for a steady hand
at the tiller, a person who is interested really in foreign
policy and doesn't view it as a photo op, which apparently this
trip was primarily motivated to achieve."
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Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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