At Christmastime, George W. Bush was Santa, Obama is Scrooge

Every year, in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I think about George W. Bush.

It was in that week each year for the eight years I covered him as a reporter that he gave me a spectacular gift — and he knew it.

I started covering the newly elected president in 2000, when I was in my 30s. Back then, as a reporter for The Washington Times, we went everywhere the president went. If he went to Charlotte, North Carolina, to give a 30-minute speech on an airport tarmac, we went. Up at 4 a.m., an hourlong commute to Andrews Air Force Base, in place on the ground hours before POTUS landed, and there for hours and hours after he left — sometimes right through the evening news so network reporters could file live from the site.

We also went with the president to Texas every summer — often for a month — and every winter, too, over the holidays.

But here’s the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never. Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, would always depart the White House a few days before the holiday and hunker down at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. After a few years, I asked a low-level White House staffer why.

I still remember what she said: “So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.”

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