“Historically, it is a summer playground,’’ said Barbara Kellerman, public leadership lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
And for politics-sensitive presidents, she said, the region is “a totally noncontroversial choice and authentically welcoming.’’
It certainly has a bipartisan attraction. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower set up a Summer White House in Newport. The GOP’s William Howard Taft preferred Beverly. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, cruised along the New England Coast from Massachusetts to Maine one summer.
August shutdowns are a Washing ton, D.C., tradition. Built on a former swamp, the city many years ago posed health hazards in the summer. And in the days before air conditioning, the Capitol was intolerable. Train routes running straight up the East Coast made getting to cooler climes relatively easy.
“You had to get out of Washington for practical reasons. It was so hot. You had malaria, mosquitoes carrying diseases. It was in your best interests,’’ said Boston University social science professor and presidential scholar Thomas Whalen.
But even after modern conveniences like air conditioning and Air Force One made it possible for presidents to go nearly anywhere, commanders-in-chief continue to flock to New England states for their summer breaks.
Obama - who is reportedly renting the Blue Heron Farm estate in Chilmark for his brief break - becomes the third sitting president to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Grant spent time there in 1874, while Bill Clinton made six trips to the island.
“The Vineyard has a calming and soothing effect on everyone,’’ said Representative Bill Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat whose district includes the island. “It’s an elixir for presidential stress.’’
Some presidents have retreated to the comfort and familiarity of family estates. John F. Kennedy went to the family compound in Hyannis Port, while George H. W. Bush spent Augusts in Kennebunkport, Maine. His son, George W. Bush, swapped the Yankee vacation for cowboy-themed August break at his ranch in Waco, Texas, but still made shorter trips to Kennebunkport during his presidency.
