So, the little boy wipes the tears from his eyes and explains to his mom why he threw a rock at little Sally, “Well, Jimmy did it.”

What should she tell her little boy? Let’s say she has two choices:

Tell him that if Jimmy did it, then it is OK and that she is sorry she smack his little bottom.

Tell him he cannot let Jimmy’s bad behavior be an excuse for his bad behavior.

Bush
That’s pretty much where I think we are with presidential travel. Right now, with Mr. Obama in office, republicans complain about the taxpayers paying for unnecessary presidential travel. Democrats counter with something like, “Yeah, but what about all of Bush’s trips to Crawford, Texas?”

That is a good point to discuss for two reasons. One, George W. Bush might have abused his travel privileges and, if so, what he did is not justification for any current travel abuses. Two, now that we have the opportunity to stop unnecessary presidential travel, we are negligent if we allow it to continue.

Cost
The chart above shows the hourly operating cost of both planes that go where the president goes, the VC-25 presidential plane and the C-17 cargo plane. What these figures do not show are the related costs for ground travel, advance preparation, security and who knows what else.

One example
Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s Valentine date night in Chicago required about 2.5 hours in the air and aircraft cost of about $190,000 for the round trip (2.5 hours X $76,150). In addition, we taxpayers picked up miscellaneous costs such as security. We have different opinions about whether taxpayers should pay for this particular trip but mine is we should not.

Figure it out
So now you know the hourly cost of each plane. But, you don’t know, and probably will never know, the total costs of any trip. However, you know enough to calculate the approximate air cost for any trip. To determine the numbers of hours, divide total miles by 535 miles per hour, a good workable average for the cruising speeds of the VC-25 and the C-17 when considering slower speeds for taking off and landing. That’s about the best we can do without factoring all the variables such as ground time with engines running and the wind influences on cruising speed.

Necessary and unnecessary
We likely have different thoughts of which trips are necessary and which aren’t. Looking back, it is easy to say Mr. Obama’s Copenhagen trip wasn’t necessary since he didn’t deliver the Olympics. I will go so far as to say it wasn’t even a good idea and should never have been undertaken. I say this because, and this is my personal opinion only, this kind of a sales pitch dilutes the image of a United States president.

The point is that we the people - the little people - don’t really know what trips are necessary. But, with today’s technology, perhaps almost all are unnecessary. The main advantage of videoconferencing is cost reduction. Why not use it now that we are fortunate to have the ability?

Of course, I don’t know how much business Mr. Obama conducts by videoconferencing. Maybe to the fullest extent possible. Perhaps all trips now are made in good faith. But, Mr. Obama hasn’t always been considerate to the taxpayers.

Mr. Obama might be catching on though. We complained loudly at the $25,000 he and Mrs. Obama spent as our uninvited guest at a Broadway play in May of this year. Our complaints might be the reason they celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary at a Washington restaurant.

And, maybe not.