WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – While at Rose Garden celebrating his first major legislative victory, President Joe Biden gestured to the White House and said it was a “magnificent building” to live in.
Except on weekends.
Of the eight weekends since Biden took office, he has spent three at his longtime home outside Wilmington, Delaware, including this weekend. Provisional plans for another weekend visit were dropped due to Senate action on Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
Biden also spent a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Many presidents have complained at one time or another about feeling confined to the White House. Biden has echoed previous presidents by comparing the experience of living in a “golden cage”.
So swapping the 132-room executive mansion for a less confining and more relaxing weekend spot can help presidents relax, said political scientist William Howell of the University of Chicago.
“He wanted to be president,” said Howell. “It is not the White House itself that is attracting.”
The White House advocates Biden’s leisure travel at a time when he and federal health officials are asking the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, avoiding unnecessary travel.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It’s your house. It is where he has lived for many, many years, ”said press secretary Jen Psaki recently. “And as you know, like any president of the United States does, he takes a private plane called Air Force One to travel there.”
“I think most Americans would also see this as a unique circumstance,” she said of the government aircraft available to Biden.
However, no president travels alone, however private the plane may be. It requires that many other people also travel. And costs rise rapidly.
In addition to the Air Force crew, a travel delegation from the president includes Secret Service agents, White House officials, journalists and family members. Depending on the destination and purpose of the trip, lawmakers, cabinet secretaries or other guests may fly with the president.
Biden occasionally took some of his six grandchildren on trips when he was vice president, as well as during last year’s presidential campaign.
Presidential travel is not cheap.
Federal agencies spent about $ 13.6 million on four trips that then President Donald Trump made to his Mar-a-Lago beachfront property in Palm Beach, Florida, in February and March 2017, reported the Government Accountability Office in 2019.
The figure includes $ 10.6 million for operating government aircraft and boats and $ 3 million for transportation, accommodation, food and other expenses for government officials who support the president on the road, the report said.
But not all presidential travels are the same.
Trump took the more familiar version of Air Force One, a modified 747, on the more than two-hour flight to the commercial airport in West Palm Beach, Florida. Biden flew a smaller version of the aircraft for about a half-hour flight to Delaware National Guard Air Force Base. He made this weekend’s trip on the Marine One presidential helicopter.
Trump’s Florida home is on the water, which required the addition of Coast Guard security patrols.
Biden returns to his longtime home near Wilmington, where he lived as a senator before being elected vice president in 2008 and where he returned after his term ended.
Now serving as Biden’s weekend getaway, the home is where he watched Tom Brady, the new quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, win a seventh ring record in the Super Bowl in February. While there, Biden often meets with counselors, goes to church and enjoys Sunday dinner with his family.
“We try to keep the Sunday night dinners going,” said Jill Biden to talk show host Kelly Clarkson. “I mean, I have been a little busy lately. We still do that and the children are looking forward to it. “
Biden owns a second home in the beach community of Rehoboth, Delaware. He hasn’t visited him since he became president, but there may be more action as the weather warms up.
During a tearful farewell in January, as he left Wilmington and went to Washington, Biden gave the state help to shape his values, character and worldview. “Everything comes from Delaware,” he said.
Biden lived most of his 78 years in Wilmington after his parents moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was a boy. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate for 36 years and was a regular passenger on the Amtrak train to and from Washington.
“Leaving the White House was more complicated than it is now,” said Doug Wead, a former White House adviser and author of books on presidents and their families.
The first presidents were sent on turbulent trains, he said. But the races, Air Force One and Marine, all help to ease a modern president’s way out of the nation’s capital.
But there is no presidential handbook on how and where to spend the weekend.
Trump spent many weekends in Mar-a-Lago or at his Trump golf club in central New Jersey, leading critics to accuse him of trying to profit from the presidency.
Barack Obama spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Washington because his daughters belonged to football and basketball leagues on the weekends.
George W. Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Howell said Biden – who cultivated his image as a “regular Joe” – has strong ties to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, which he wants to maintain.
The president’s first wife, Neilia, and his baby daughter, Naomi, who died in a car accident in 1972, and his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, are buried in a church cemetery where Biden attends Services.
People close to Biden also notice the great affection he has for Delaware.
Upon leaving the state in January, Biden, who is of Irish descent, alluded to an Irish poet who is believed to have said that Dublin will be written on his heart when he dies.
Overwhelmed by emotion, Biden said, “When I die, Delaware will be written on my heart.”