Of course, to any attack on Obama being out of touch by going to Hawaii could easily be countered with:

"Hawaii is where I was born. If John McCain and the Republicans think that by taking my family to visit the place I grew up is out of touch, that's their call.  But I don't think that voters will see me taking my daughters to visit the place their father was born and raised in a negative light.  My opponents are trying to turn my family vacation into a political event: I guess that's what they do, but sometimes a vacation is just a vacation, and I think voters know that."

"I know he grew up there and all."

It is McCain, if I am not mistaken, who is married to an heiress and who has seven houses, right?  And a private jet?  And you think Obama's choice of an AMERICAN STATE where he grew up is going to be made into an issue, because Hawaii is far from the "heartland"?  This is the same thing as Kerry windsurfing?

Incidentally, had he chosen a "nice cottage beside some Illinois lake with a wholesome name", you and Tep would have reminded everyone that he grew up in Hawaii, and that his choice of Illinois might appear to some as "pandering and preening" and appearing to be like the Common Folk, when in fact he is anything but, with the "wholesome name" held up as yet another example of Obama playing hypocritical politics even with his kids' vacation time.

Man, Derida was right.  If you are "always-already" within a particular framework, anything and everything will fit into specific and predetermines patterns.  And so Obama goes on vacation, and the hand-wringing and second-guessing and monday-morning-quarterbacking starts ...

P.s. Kerry lost the moment he got onto that podium at the Convention, saluted and said, "ready for duty".  A hokier, more inappropriate opening to a campaign I cannot remember.  He sounded fake and his entire campaign a stunt.  Right then, it looked to me as if his testimony on the war thirty years earlier has been prepared with an eye to the Convention.  And of course he was an aweful campaigner, and Bush-Cheney outdid themselves in lying and cynical politics.  That's why he lost, not because of showing some leg on a surfboard.

Mr. Crowley, you should have stopped after your first sentence.  

Honestly, go back and read that out loud.

"I know he grew up there and all."

End of story.  You wind up pushing the meme that the Republicans want to push, and in the process (might as well used the tired cliche) throw an entire state under the bus.  What, Hawaii is no longer a part of the United States?  Because somehow going to Hawaii seems 'elitist'?  Must we always have to have our Presidents act like pseudo-ranchers and pull up in the pick-up truck at some weather-beaten font of all manly ruggedness?  My god, I am sick to death of our fear.  Must we always be surrounded by the 'myth' of the country-boy as President?  As if that were the only 'real' America?

What if he happens to feel comfortable heading back to someplace that feels like 'home'?   Does that not enter into this discussion?

Guess not.  The optics are bad.  The low-rent, knuckle-dragging, pseudo-populists of the Republican party will make fun of him, and so therefore he has to run scared and play nice and sit in some god-forsaken Illinois corn-field, and trundle off to dinner at some bland Ameri-Prot mom and pop place that serves a horrifyingly bad chicken-fried steak, because, by God, that is the only way for us to identify with our Presidents!

Enough.  

Oh, come on.  It's his home.  Maybe he'll visit his (white) grandmother, and maybe there can be pictures.  Besides, we ask that our candidates endure a lot of stupidity on the path to the White House, is it really necessary to ask them to pretend that they're not from the state they're from?  

I think the "family value" of visiting his roots and his sister should rebut any of those attacks effectively, provided they stay out of the public eye for the most part and throw in some sweet down-to-earth moments of visiting the children at the school he went to, his old 5th grade teacher, etc.

"I might have counseled a nice cottage beside some Illinois lake with a wholesome name.... "

You haven't spent much time in Illinois, have you?

You know what sends a bad signal? Worrying about this BS.  Get out of the defensive crouch Crowley!

Besides, it is presidential:

starbulletin.com/.../story1.html

Of course, all of these problematic optics can be solved if Obama just goes hunting in Hawaii, preferably after some endangered species, and carries his trophies back in an SUV . . .

Well, everyone has pretty much said it all for me. Just to pick up on kagoss718, all he has to do is to visit his grandmother, take a few family photos, and if Republicans dare say anything mocking he can then shove those family photos so far down their throats it will come out where the sun don't shine.

"I knew he grew up there and all" Good God if I have to read such nonsense on TNR then I know America is pretty much doomed to a McCain Presidency.

Also, a few photo ops with Tom Selleck would fix things too.

oh, and the two links, the Time article is pretty standard, and the Republican one's crap could have come from anywhere, like this: Chevron (Kuhio Highway, Princeville, Kaua'I, Hawaii): This gas station sells a gallon of regular unleaded at $4.78 a gallon.  Also available: air for your tires, tire gauges to substitute for a comprehensive energy plan, including domestic exploration.  Recent reports show Chevron contributing more to Senator Obama than Senator McCain.

This is pretty harmless. Crowley is letting his inner paranoia shine through.

I think the consensus among commenters is spot on. I was born and raised in Las Vegas. My parents were born and raised in Nevada too. Were I a candidate, should I not go there because someone might think of me as a gambling whore master? The idea that only states in "the heartland" are "wholesome" really bothers me. Come to think of it, wasn't this notion one of Obama's main ideas in his 04 keynote speech?

I agree with everyone who commented above.  Should Obama be so intimidated by the vewy scawy Republicans that he can't visit the state where he grew up?

And why is a liberal blog enabling the Republican message machine like this?  Maybe the GOP's smear campaigns wouldn't be so effective if respectable outlets like this didn't spend so much time and effort discussing them.  You're lending them your own credibility.  Stop it.

Well, a) he's visiting his family, darn it, so cut him some slack. This appears to be the consensus among Planksters. I think one of the appealing things about Obama is that he doesn't run his whole life according to the dictates of some poll-tested script.  Anyway, b) if he was going to stay in the Midwest, he should've rented a cottage along the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan, like in Michigan City. Lots of free publicity in a swing state.

Many people thought Kerry was aloof and out of touch. His vacation reinforced that image. Obama seems like a young hip guy. Young hip guys vacation in Hawaii. Meanwhile John McCain is a straight taker even though he is the biggest flip flopper ever and Hillary Clinton is a cold ruthless woman even though everyone who has met her says she is incredibly nice. I don't know why politics is like this but narratives are impenetrable and mostly the press would prefer to repeat them over and over rather than find out the truth.

He's going to visit his grandmother. Who can't travel. Who wants to see her great-grandchildren. End of story.

Yeah, your meme-pushing, however inadvertent, is getting tiresome.

Michael, the evacuation from Chicago to Wisconsin and Michigan has been a cottage industry since the days of Capone (Lake Geneva, WI). A drive alone the Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan is more like the Dan Ryan if one is counting license plates. All routes into the city on a Sunday evening in the Summer are as choked as any weekday morning. But I'm not sure a week in the mid-west would be much of a vacation when breakfast at an outdoor cafe attracted a mob. In the Spring a visit to a tiny VFW in a tiny Indiana town was unannounced. Within fifteen minutes the phones were buzzing and block by block people were marching to the hall.

And I don't know if he'll have any more peace and quite in Hawaii but the RNC will be reliably critical till the election and his vacation destination was bound to displease. Remember the two responses they had at the ready, depending on whether he visited Landstuhl or not? Black shoes or brown, his choices will be condemned so he may as well see his family and take a break from the swing states.  No campaigns are pretty but the signal to noise ratio so far must be at an all time low. McCain can't win unless he savages Obama and nobody is willing to challenge his rules for this contest. Regardless who wins, upon reflection this cycle won't be a shining example of a free press unless we see a pandemic of conscience break out. I suspect the only lesson the Swift Boaters taught was sensationalism is great for revenue.

How about Kennebunkport? Or Martha's Vineyard? Or Sea Island GA? Newport RI?  All renown GOP vacation spots...and much more expensive than HI... Or there's the private ranch in Sedona....McCain's favorite...

For Republicans, Alaska is a real state, but Hawaii is an erotic fantasy.

dbhuff, this campaign isn't about McCain the war hero maverick with experience. His $500 shoes, connections to the corrupt and failure to set foot in this century are out of bounds.

I need to get a copy of the style guide for this election. I think the title is "How You Can Increase Profits By Disseminating McCain's Tabloid Talking Points". The subtitle is 'Bush's 1% Solution Is A Rich Idea'.

As a proud Californian (where I too am visiting my family right now), I have to laugh once again at the never ending myopia and self importance of the East Coast. I live there, as most of you have suffered through being reminded of incessantly, in the belly of the beast - the Upper West.

Um...Hawaii is not just a vacation destination.  Its a complicated place where millions of Americans live, become educated, grow up and work too.  It has an enormous enfluence on the culture of the west in many ways.  

There are even football teams and highly regarded universities there.  It has an exotic history and a native population, but then so does most of America folks - except of course the nucleaus of the universe Manhattan/DC right?  Everything outside of there is either an elitist vacation spot or moronic flyover territory.

Sometimes I think we should have to move the capitol of the US to a new city every 40 years, lock stock and barrel - pull up the capitol building and bring Abe Lincoln too.  Ya'll need to get out more.

Paranoid much, Mr. Crowley?

The key to Obama's success will be to convince voters to like him and trust him for who he is - he will damage himself considerably if it appears that he's molding himself to make himself likeable or trustworthy. That's the Hillary-Penn-Shrum-Lt. Kerry-Earth-tone Gore road to ruin. And his grandmother (and daughters' great-grandmother) lives in Hawaii for crying out loud! (She used to live there anyway - I heard something disturbing about her getting thrown under a bus a while back, but hope she's recovered by now.)

Besides, Hawaii is not an elite vacation spot - it's the go-to dream destination for middle-class dreamers and strivers. If you offered a free vacation to a roomfull of Joe and Jane Sixpacks, a majority would pick Hawaii. Biff and Muffy Hedgefund would pick some place most middle-class folks have never heard of.

At the Stump, Mike thought Obama's choice of Hawaii for a vacation spot could hinder his ability

I think Obama wanted an actual vacation, Mike, not a poll-tested retreat to the log cabin Lincoln was born in.

Bad optics? Whatever. He'll come back with a nice tan!

Where's he 'sposed to vacation?  The Great Lakes?  Kennebunkport?

Hawaii earned its right to be part of America at Pearl Harbor.  I'd back off on this one.

Sheesh, did you engage in some pillow talk with Cokie Roberts over the weekend, Crowley?  She was parrotting your pabulum on Sunday morning.  Sometimes I think my five year old son is more astute politically than some of you folks.  How sad.