POLITICS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Washington needs a vacation from itself.
‘Doing nothing is exhausting,’ said Jason Chaffetz, the former Republican congressman from Utah, whose head start began with a surprise resignation in June.
Yet for those who remain in Congress — and across the city’s motley roster of aides, journalists, consultants and lobbyists — the collective exhaling over this August recess has been complicated, as ever, by President Trump.
No commander in chief in recent memory has rendered elected officials more vacation-ready. Nor has any exacted a greater psychic toll on them once they got away.
The result has been a recess on edge, with daily prayers to the swamp gods that the president refrain from any sudden movements that would upset the hard-won quiet…
It has indeed been a particularly long seven-twelfths of a year, by any measure except math. Tweets have been tweeted. Resisters are resisting. Bills have rarely become laws, but the journey has been taxing.
Of course, the first rule of a Washington vacation is that it must not be labeled a vacation.”
-Matt Flegenheimer, “Even on Break, a Congress Weary of Trump Gets No Respite From Him,” The New York Times online, Aug. 9, 2017