Follow the leader

By Ted Widmer

updated 11:00 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2008

It would be an exaggeration to say that a great president is by definition a well-traveled one—Abraham Lincoln never left the United States—yet for most, leaving Washington now and then was both edifying and expedient. Rutherford B. Hayes, the first president to see the Pacific, vanished so often that he was dubbed "Rutherford the Rover." William Howard Taft may have been our heaviest president, but he lumbered around the nation at a rapid clip, logging an average of 30,000 miles a year on trains. But if a president spends too much time away from the office, he runs the risk of being dubbed a "Vacation President," as a certain brush-clearing resident of Crawford, Texas, has found after spending 469 days at his ranch to date. Well before the advent of Air Force One, which can whisk presidents across the nation and back in a single day, nearly all of our presidents could have been called frequent fliers. We single out a few and preview some of the travel habits of the two contenders hoping to move into the White House next January. For more fun tracking the candidate's travels this campaign season, visit our sister site Jaunted.com.

For a complete slideshow of Presidents as Travelers, click here.

1. Theodore Roosevelt

Where the eagle landed: Brazil, Congo, Cuba, Kenya, Panama, Sudan

Home and abroad: It was fitting that Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to leave U.S. soil while in office, for travel was a lifelong diversion. As a child, he was brought to Europe and the Middle East on family tours, and when, at 26, his world was shattered by the death of his wife and mother on the same day, he recuperated with a long stay in North Dakota, where he learned some of the cowboy skills that would come in handy later as a Rough Rider in Cuba. Roosevelt had two presidential yachts, the Mayflower and the Sylph, but for his trip to Panama in 1906 he traveled a bit more safely, in a naval convoy. Roosevelt did not slow down a whit after leaving office in 1909. He went on a safari from 1909 to 1910 in Africa, visiting remote sites in what are now Kenya, Sudan, and the Congo River Basin, and bagging a staggering total of 11,397 animals (you can see many of them, in stuffed form, in museums across the United States). In 1913 he went deep into the jungles of Brazil to explore the ominously named River of Doubt. The expedition was murderous in every sense (one of his party killed another), and at one point Roosevelt, ill and exhausted, contemplated suicide. Yet he survived, damaged but intact, and to this day a long stretch of the river is known as the Rio Roosevelt.

2. Ronald Reagan

Where the eagle landed: China, France, Germany, Iceland, Soviet Union, United Kingdom

Home and abroad: Ronald Reagan did not pay a great deal of attention to the world as a young man in Illinois, or even as a Hollywood actor. As president, he clearly loved his vacations at his California ranch, where he spent 335 days of his two-term presidency, and Camp David, where he spent 517 days over 186 visits, the most of any president. But Reagan still showed a surprising capacity for growth as president, and when the cause was just, he was never above hitting the road. Despite his age (at 69, the oldest candidate ever elected), he traveled extensively and gave some of his most memorable speeches on foreign soil, including the famous crowd-pleasing speech in Berlin when he demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall." During a six-day visit to China, Reagan compared his height to one of the famous terra cotta warriors, and joked, "You're dismissed", as he turned to leave. Not all of the trips were easy—Reagan stirred intense controversy when he placed a wreath at a cemetery of Nazi soldiers in Germany—but he generally impressed audiences with his earnestly stated views. And despite the occasional joke about obliterating the Soviet Union, he pursued an aggressive diplomacy with his counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, including a dramatic summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, that nearly resulted in the abolition of both nations' nuclear arsenals.

3. Thomas Jefferson

Where the eagle landed: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, United Kingdom

Home and abroad: Thomas Jefferson traveled widely as Minister to France from 1784 to 1789, also taking in England, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German Rhineland—journeys that accelerated his far-ranging intellectual development. Jefferson adored Paris in particular, glorying in its scientific and literary culture, enjoying its food and wines, and falling in love, exactly as one is supposed to do there. But as president, he slowed the pace, in part to pacify those who had previously objected to George Washington's showy trips, but also because, as a widower, he took solace in the comforts of home, barely venturing outside of Washington except to return every summer to Monticello (the original "Western White House"). Still, even if he didn't travel a lot as president, he did much to expand our territory, spearheading the Louisiana Purchase, and kicking off the great American tradition of adventure travel by sponsoring the expedition of Lewis and Clark.

4. Richard M. Nixon

Where the eagle landed: China, Russia, Venezuela, Vietnam

- / AFP/Getty Images file Former U.S. president Richard Nixon toasts with Chinese Prime Minister, Chou En Lai in February 1972 in Beijing during his official visit in China.

Home and abroad: As Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president, Richard M. Nixon enthusiastically represented the United States abroad, earning plaudits for his highly publicized "kitchen debate" in Moscow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and for his calm when jeered at and spat upon by students in Venezuela. But Nixon may have taken travel too seriously during the 1960 presidential campaign, when he promised to go to all 50 states, a grueling effort that cost him more in effort than he received in votes. Still, after finally winning the presidency in 1968, Nixon became every bit the globe-trotter John F. Kennedy had been. In his first years as president, he visited 15 nations, including Vietnam. But the summit of his achievement remains the unforgettable trip he took to China in 1972, changing forever the history of both nations. Not all of Nixon's speeches were memorable: At the Great Wall, he remarked, "I think you would have to conclude that this is a great wall." But he practiced the art of chopsticks, gave toast after toast to the Chinese leaders, and irrevocably entered the pantheon of history with this voyage. Long after Nixon resigned in disgrace, his China adventure lives on as perhaps the most important trip overseas ever taken by a U.S. president.

5. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Where the eagle landed: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Gambia, Haiti, Iran, Morocco, Trinidad, Ukraine

Home and abroad: When it came to travel, FDR shattered the mold and then some. It was not merely that he covered 243,827 miles by train—which the historian Richard J. Ellis correctly compares to the distance to the moon—this most earthbound of all presidents also ventured fearlessly into the air, flying in the most perilous conditions to attend wartime conferences in remote locations such as Casablanca, Cairo, Tehran, and Yalta. Roosevelt was the first president to set foot in South America, when he visited Colombia in 1934, and he continued to travel around the region with visits to Haiti, Trinidad, Brazil, and Argentina. On his way to the Casablanca Conference in 1943, he spent nearly 90 hours in the air, in small planes that were forced to touch down and refuel in Trinidad, Brazil, and then–British Gambia. Many journalists and advisers worried about the dangers of FDR's penchant for air travel, but he laughed it off, later naming his plane the "Sacred Cow" and nearly accepting Walt Disney's offer to design a logo of a smiling cow with a halo over one horn and an Uncle Sam top hat over the other. With that not entirely dignified image, America entered the age of presidential air travel.

6. Bill Clinton

Where the eagle landed: Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, the West Bank

Home and abroad: At a 1992 debate, then-President George H.W. Bush joked that Bill Clinton's idea of foreign policy was a long meal at the International House of Pancakes. Clinton had the last laugh when he won the White House that year, and turned out to be the best traveled president to date. President Clinton wins the jackpot with 133 trips—including one to Chobe National Park, Botswana, in 1998—that's a little more than 16 per year. These trips did not always please the critics, angry at the journeys' expense and distance from the United States. But Clinton's travels were successful outreach efforts that became easier to believe in as the 42nd president tried to solve global problems through shuttle diplomacy—succeeding in some places (Northern Ireland) and failing in others (the Middle East). With his limitless enthusiasm for long discussions with world leaders, policy roundtables, state dinners, and huge crowd events, Clinton simply wore out most of the cynics, building better relations in the long list of countries he visited, especially in Africa, Latin America, and China. Post-term, Clinton's travels have continued, as Condé Nast Traveler has reported, with the aim of highlighting causes such as AIDS, the eradication of poverty, and tsunami relief.

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