Rancher Will Hit the Trail for a Spell

Ten days after President Bush arrived at his ranch for a monthlong holiday, and about nine days after critics began grousing about the length of his stay, the president is interrupting his vacation to do some roadwork.

He is expected to visit Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado today for a bit of brush-chopping and trail-clearing to highlight a YMCA program. Then it’s on to some fund-raising in the political underbrush (he’s bringing in bucks for one of Colorado’s incumbent Republican senators and its Republican governor) and a baseball game between the Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves.

On Wednesday, there is more fund-raising planned in New Mexico, plus a visit to an elementary school there and a speech on small business before Bush returns to Crawford.

But his departure from the 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch here serves largely to underscore the sensitivity Bush and his staff have shown to any suggestion that the president is goofing off.

Call the time in Texas a trip home, not a vacation. That’s the message from Bush and his aides.

“Get used to it, because this is where I’m coming back to,” the president said adamantly to reporters Monday. “Some people say, ‘Well, this is a vacation spot.’ Actually, this is our house and home.

“I’m a Texan,” he said, for anyone who--ignoring the accent, the faded jeans and the considerable belt buckle bearing the imprint “Governor George W. Bush”--may have missed the point. “This is where I was raised; this is where I’m going to retire; this is where I’ll pass away--in Texas.”

In insisting on a real break from Washington, Bush is, if nothing else, emulating a president he admires: Ronald Reagan. During his eight years in office, Reagan’s time in California added up to almost one year. Much of it was spent on vacation at his ranch northwest of Santa Barbara; he regularly passed large chunks of each August there, with no apologies.

The brouhaha stirred up last week when Bush’s trip prompted a lengthy defense on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Richard Miniter, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe, offered a history of presidential vacations, back to George Washington’s trips from New York and Philadelphia to Mount Vernon.

Reagan would disappear from the public eye for days on end, unless one counts the minuscule image produced by long-lens television cameras perched on a distant hillside that could capture the sight of him on horseback.

A longtime aide, William Henkel, could recall only a few events at the California ranch to which reporters were invited, the most notable being Reagan’s signing 20 years ago of landmark tax-cut legislation.

By contrast, in just the first week and a half of his summer vacation, Bush has given a televised speech to the nation from the ranch, signed farm legislation here Monday at a ceremony to which a few reporters and neighbors were invited and granted the ABC-TV news program “20/20” an interview.

The current White House, Henkel said, is sending a mixed message: Either the president is on vacation or he is not; either a vacation is justified or it is not.

“They’re counterbalancing their claim [that Bush is entitled to his vacation] by this appearance of just throwing things on the schedule,” said Henkel, who worked as an advance man for Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford before his duty with Reagan.

The farm legislation will provide $5.5 billion in assistance to farmers, including $176.6 million for California agriculture. “This is, I guess, maybe the first bill-signing ceremony ever in Crawford, Texas,” Bush said. “I don’t think it will be the last.”

Tying the farm bill to the theme he has introduced for his vacation, “home to the heartland,” Bush used the word “values” nine times in four sentences. For instance, he said that in America’s farm families, one finds “the values that have made this country unique and different: values of love of family, values of respect for nature.”

In case the message that this is more than a vacation spot had escaped anyone, a blue-and-white placard bearing the presidential seal and the words “the Western White House” is on prominent display behind the lectern in the gymnasium of the Crawford elementary school--visible to television audiences during occasional briefings.

But Bush himself joked Monday about whether he is on vacation.

Talking with reporters during a break in a round at the Bosque Valley Golf Club about 50 minutes from here, Bush explained that his previous golf outing had produced a tie. “If I hit every shot good, people would say I wasn’t working,” he said.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.