Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina President JOE BIDEN is trying to get out of Washington for a summer break. But the world keeps intervening. He’s got the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic — including the Delta-driven spike in cases right as unvaccinated kids are getting ready to go back to school — and still-not-yet-final infrastructure legislation looming over him. It’s all happening as he’s experiencing a slight dip in his approval ratings. And so, the president is taking what can only be described as a quasi-break. He is currently in Wilmington, where he’s been since Friday, but he’s expected to head back to the White House this week. A White House official told West Wing Playbook to “expect” Biden “to continue to have meetings over the next couple of weeks, both from the White House and from Delaware, and he will continue to speak directly to the American people about how the administration is working to boost vaccinations across the country, keep people safe, and stop the spread of the Delta variant.” An AP report suggested he could head to either Rehoboth Beach or Camp David later this week. He appears likely to be working on and off and on again through it all. On Monday, a “lid” — the end of public presidential activities for the day — was called at 11:27 a.m., although a White House official noted that Biden also held private meetings with staff while in Wilmington. There likely won’t be daily briefings this week or next week, except if something truly terrible or remarkable happens. But the White House is still consistently putting out statements and communicating via email on everything from the new Covid-19 vaccine mandate for service members to a Department of Justice filing about Sept. 11 documents and new sanctions against leaders in Belarus. Communication about Covid-19 is also expected throughout his “break.” No president is truly, ever off the clock. Rest and relaxation don’t come with the job. But as old hands in Washington, Biden and his top White House aides are also surely aware of, and eager to avoid, the curse that often comes during the dog days of August. “History happens in August. The beginning of World War I; Hitler amassing troops for the invasion of Poland; Truman's dropping the atomic bombs; LBJ's signing the Voting Rights Act; Nixon’s resignation; Reagan's firing the air traffic controllers, the invasion of Kuwait for George H.W. Bush; Clinton’s grand jury testimony and the strike against Bin Laden; Katrina. I can go on,” presidential historian JON MEACHAM reminded us. “You can govern from anyplace, but the optical risk of appearing to be away from the office is a real one,” Meacham added, noting those considerations have grown greater in the last 30 years, with the rise of cable television networks. “The downside outweighs the upside, and you don’t want to be on a golf course when people would rather think that you’re working for them.” For a White House, the mere location of a “vacation” can be cause for concern. LANNY DAVIS , former special counsel to President BILL CLINTON, said he remembered worrying about where the president should go on vacation. He wanted a place with good optics, like a national park. “This optics issue is important, because people have a double standard. Everybody would agree that you need a break, a vacation, and if you don't do that, you're actually harming yourself and the people you're trying to serve,” Davis said. “There is a paradox, as there is in so many other things in politics, where people apply certain standards to themselves, but then there's a separate standard by which they’re judging the president.” Biden’s disjointed vacation — to nearby areas — allows him not only to return quickly to the White House, as needed, but also helps fend off the inevitable partisan critiques of his time away from Washington, and the cost to taxpayers. Obama was often pilloried for going to Hawaii (the late COKIE ROBERTS said it had the “look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place”) and for the cost of those trips. DONALD TRUMP spent well more on personal travel than Obama, and did so in a way that was less ethically sound: racking up bills to his private clubs on the government’s dime. GEORGE W. BUSH was chastised for hitting the links while the country was at war, so much so that he ultimately dropped the hobby during his presidency BILL DALEY, former Obama chief of staff, said he expects infrastructure to dominate Biden’s trip over the next two weeks, and he’ll be surrounded by staff. But does the president actually get to relax? “The president does,” said Daley. “The staff less so. It’s the staff that’s still working. There’s a little more anxiety around that if you’re a staff person, whereas the principal, he’s just chilling out more than he can do in the White House.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you MICHAEL D’AMATO? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
