President Biden often returns to Delaware for some R&R, and he’s done so many times already this year.
Although Mr. Biden does not own a property in Kiawah, he is returning there on Wednesday.
This little beach town is less well-known to Americans who have followed his travels, but it may someday rank among presidential holiday favourites like Kennebunkport or Rancho del Cielo in their recollections.
The president’s official summer vacation, which starts Wednesday evening in this tiny seaside town after more than two weeks of COVID-19 solitude, lasts through next Tuesday, when he returns to Delaware for stints at his properties in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach.
While the president is away, a number of maintenance tasks around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will continue to be carried out by White House grounds and facilities employees, which was unable to be done last year due to the tumult surrounding the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
Over the course of his long career, Mr. Biden has travelled to South Carolina numerous times for a variety of political and personal reasons. Friends believe that these trips have assisted him in beginning to accumulate decades’ worth of goodwill with influential operatives and voters in preparation for his crucial victory in the state’s 2020 Democratic Party primary.
“One of the reasons he trounced everyone in the South Carolina primary is not only his work with Jim Clyburn, but his relationship over the years with many, many people around this state, many, many Democrats,” said Dick Harpootlian, a longtime political ally of Biden’s and a state senator from South Carolina.
“He seems at home here, in my opinion. He has visited this location for vacations for a very long time. He may also benefit from some insulation without being completely insulated.”
A request for comment about the president’s vacation received no response from the White House.
Long before that momentous triumph in 2020, the Biden family had been visiting this location on the map, which is 40 minutes south of Charleston.
It started at the invitation of his close friend, the late Democratic Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, who lived nearby and became close to Biden in the 1970s, when the senator was just out of college, still adjusting to life in Washington, and was still mourning the loss of his wife and young daughter.
Since then, he has visited South Carolina numerous times for vacations, including five during his time as vice president, Democratic Party fundraising dinners, the infamous fish fry dinner hosted by his friend Rep. Jim Clyburn, eulogies for Hollings and the late Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond, and other events.
In 2015, soon after the death of his eldest son, Beau Biden, he made his last vacation to Kiawah. His autobiography “As he recalled, “promise me, Dad, that in the wake of our loss it was more more crucial that we go on with the activities that had always meant so much to the family. that we had to keep our customs alive.”
The trip took place at the same time when there was a lot of news chatter about his maybe running for president in 2016.
In the end, he made the decision to withdraw from the campaign even though he thought he might win the nomination, despite lengthy meetings with family and friends and some public support shown for him while on the trip by South Carolina backers.
A rich community of barely 13 square miles, Kiawah. It has around 1,600 residents and is mainly known as a golfing and private beach resort.
It was first utilised for logging and cattle farming, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that it started to really grow as a tourist attraction.
The Bidens are expected to go there far less often than they do to Delaware.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report by former CBS News Radio White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, Vice President Biden visited Camp David 18 times and Delaware 46 times in his first 18 months in office.
In comparison to locations like George H.W. Bush’s retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, or Barack Obama’s preferred Martha’s Vineyard and Christmas vacations in Hawaii, this summertime location is less likely to be frequented by the president, his advisers, security, and the press corps that follows him.
The president apparently like Kiawah because it is so “serene” and “not too commercial,” according to Harpootlian.
He could go about without creating a throng if he wanted to, the man recalled, adding that I had been down to play golf with him while he was vice president.
Now that it would be more challenging, Harpootlian advised his old pal to be quiet.
After signing three big pieces of bipartisan legislation this week and as Democrats are ready for the final approval on Friday of a huge health care and climate change plan that the president spent more than a year negotiating with legislators,
This is the right moment for him to mentally celebrate the triumph and unwind, according to Harpootlian.
“On this trip, I don’t believe he will engage in any political outreach. He shouldn’t, in my opinion.”