The vacation's over

You've 47 years old and you've just spent the past 18 months of your life in the most grueling mental and physical contest imaginable for an elected official -- the race for the White House.

And it isn't over yet.

So you take a vacation. August is traditionally the time when politicians in Washington take a break. President Bush goes to his ranch in Crawford, Texas and the entire Congress goes out of town until Labor Day.

But Barack Obama takes a vacation during this time and he gets criticized.

Should he be in Hawaii?  Should he let John McCain seize the media spotlight for a week? And should he be taking a vacation when a war is breaking out with Russia and Georgia? 

Welcome to the presidential campaign.

"For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia." So writes New York Times reporter Michael Falcone. 

Falcone suggests "the candidates' images have been reversed within a matter of a few weeks. When Mr. Obama was overseas last month, Mr. McCain's foreign policy bona fides seemed diminished, if only because he could not attract the news media attention received by Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Now, Mr. Obama's voice seems muted at a time when much of the world has been worriedly watching the conflict."

But Obama was criticized last month for acting too presidential on his trip abroad, and now that he's taking a break he's still getting criticized.

Last month, McCain's campaign attacked Obama as an arrogant politician who already thought he was president. This month, it was John McCain who called up the president of Georgia during the Russian crisis and said he was dispatching his own envoys, Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham to the former Soviet republic.

ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper couldn't help notice the irony in that turnabout and played it up in a headline on his official ABC News blog: "President McCain Sends Secretary of State Lieberman and Defense Secretary Graham to Tbilisi."

Or as the Washington Post put it: "Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president."

The Post continues: "Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: 'If I may be so bold, there was another president . . .'

That was a sentence construction that suggested he thought he was already the president. But McCain "caught himself and started again," the Post reported.

The story continues:

With his Democratic opponent on vacation in Hawaii, the senator from Arizona has been doing all he can in recent days to look like President McCain, particularly when it comes to the ongoing international crisis in Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he talks to McCain, a personal friend, several times a day. McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia's government. McCain also announced this week that two of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), would travel to Georgia's capital of Tbilisi on his behalf, after a similar journey by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The extent of McCain's involvement in the military conflict in Georgia appears remarkable among presidential candidates, who traditionally have kept some distance from unfolding crises out of deference to whoever is occupying the White House. The episode also follows months of sustained GOP criticism of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who was accused of acting too presidential for, among other things, briefly adopting a campaign seal and taking a trip abroad that included a huge rally in Berlin.

While Obama was walking along the sand, visiting Pearl Harbor, body surfing at Sandy Beach, and eating shaved ice with his daughters, McCain was trying to look presidential. And with the polls showing a close race, every move by every candidate will be scrutinized by critics, pundits and observers. 

So if the polls close in McCain's favor, Obama's vacation will be criticized. But if Obama maintains or expands his lead, the pundits may forget about his little vacation. Either way, he's going to get plenty of media attention in the next two weeks as he announces his running mate and prepares for the Democratic Convention at the end of the month.

But that's still a week or two away. Is anybody paying attention right now? August is traditionally a time when Americans take vacations. And for the past week, NBC's coverage of the Olympics has dominated much of the public's attention. So it's not clear if the criticism of Obama will resonate with the public.

But the vacation is now officially coming to an end. And now Barack Obama and John McCain will spend the next 3 months of their lives -- and ours -- in the biggest political contest in history.