Takes Care of Nation’s Business During ‘Total Vacation’ : Bush Easily Mixing Work and Play

Every morning this week just before 8 a.m., a black Ford Tempo has followed the serpentine seaside trail of Ocean Avenue and turned right at the narrow driveway leading to President Bush’s 11-acre compound.

The driver is Robert M. Gates, the President’s deputy national security adviser, arriving to deliver the President’s daily intelligence briefing--an update on events around the world and a review of their impact on national security.

Gates’ visit is the one element of routine that varies little from the President’s workday in Washington. But, otherwise during his first of nearly three weeks of vacation in this coastal village, the President has developed a work schedule that doesn’t cut deeply into the raison d’etre for his visit here: jogging, fishing, boating, tennis, golf with his sons, playing with grandchildren, dozing off while reading a book on the living room sofa during the afternoon and, when the mood strikes him, going to bed at 8 p.m.

“He’s so energetic about his work and his play and he mixes it with such ease that it’s hard to sort it out,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

“Total vacation” is the way the President describes his sojourn this summer in Kennebunkport, where he says the crisp nights of late August produce “good sleeping weather.”

But there is some work getting done.

His aides report that he is in and out of his office “a couple of times a day” to keep up with his mail, the half-dozen messages from Cabinet members that have arrived over the last week and preparations for a nationally televised speech Sept. 5 on his anti-narcotics program.

In just the sort of mixture of pleasure and business to which Fitzwater referred, Bush spoke briefly and optimistically to reporters Thursday about the Polish situation after he docked his cigarette-class boat Fidelity at Chick’s Marina here. Then he went aboard an 86-foot boat owned by Edward H. Hennessey Jr., president of Allied-Signal Corp., to visit with South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr., former Marine Corps Commandant P. X. Kelley and Hennessey.

Later in the morning, Bush welcomed Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter to Walkers Point, his estate on a rocky promontory jutting into the Atlantic. The prime minister and his wife, Anne Marie, were spending about 24 hours as house guests of the President and Barbara Bush.

Next Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, his wife, Mila, and their four children will be overnight guests of the Bushes.

And, Bush said on Wednesday in an informal news conference, in the coming week he may also meet with several Cabinet members to discuss the anti-drug program. His speech is planned for the day after he returns to Washington.

The President’s office is situated in what was originally known as the gardener’s cottage, a two-story, two-bedroom guest house 100 yards across the family’s 11-acre compound.

In addition to the office, the house contains a very small kitchen and provides work space for a secretary and temporary living quarters for Don Rhodes, a longtime personal aide to the President. The secretarial position is being filled on this trip by Linda Casey, executive assistant to White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

The rest of the White House staff--such as it is--that accompanied Bush to Kennebunkport is housed in several of the old frame hotels typical of an established New England summer vacation town. This weekend, the three senior officials who accompanied Bush to Maine are scheduled to be replaced by three others.

But the Washington-to-Kennebunkport migration is a mere shadow of the movement of the government that took place each summer during the previous eight years. When Ronald Reagan returned to his California ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains near Santa Barbara, he often took with him an expanded team of his most senior aides and their mid-level assistants, who moved into the posh quarters of the Santa Barbara Biltmore Hotel.

Gone is the fleet of upscale gray sedans and military drivers from the White House motor pool that chauffeured the staff up to the ranch--on the rare occasions when Reagan met with his aides there--or about town to dinner appointments.

Now, aides in Kennebunkport who need to see the President make their way in small rented cars. When Sununu visited Kennebunkport on Monday and then made a side trip to hold a news conference, he and another senior presidential assistant, James Cicconi, eventually accomplished their getaway in the compact Ford, with Gates as their driver.

Typically, after the personal intelligence briefing--the vacationing Reagan generally received his on paper, rather than in person--Bush will speak with Fitzwater to discuss the approach the press secretary will take to questions he might face during his daily press briefing at 10:30 a.m.

Early in the morning, Cicconi, the White House staff secretary, will have reviewed documents, speech drafts, messages from Cabinet members and other correspondence dispatched to Kennebunkport by facsimile machine from the White House. That done, he drops off paper work for Bush.

There is no set time when the President might visit his office here.

“He’s a very secure man and he’s not afraid to say he’s on vacation,” Fitzwater said. “He does what he needs to do to run the government, but he also knows it’s important to have a vacation.”