President buys $32 worth of books because daughter has an assignment
Then he hits the golf course for a round of foursomes
First Lady arrives with daughters on separate government jet just a few hours before her husband
Additional cost to taxpayers will be in the thousands
President begins holiday with terrorism briefing before going to book shop
New poll shows only 11 per cent of Americans are happy with conditions
Sarah Palin calls Obama 'tone deaf" for continuing with his vacation at $50,000-per-week farm house
With the economy in turmoil, the national debt rising and millions of American families struggling to make ends meet, Barack Obama today decided to practise his golf swing.
Teeing off his holiday, Mr Obama was driven to Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown for a round of foursomes golf.
Aides this afternoon said the President played the links course with long-time Chicago friend Eric Whitaker and two White House staffers.
Earlier in the day Mr Obama visited the Bunch of Grapes book shop in Vineyard Haven with daughters Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10 and picked up five or six books.
'They've got to buy some books,' he said, adding that one of his daughters had an assignment.
After going upstairs and looking around the store, Mr Obama was seen with copies of 'Brave New World' and 'The Bayou Trilogy'.
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel about a state which controls the behaviour of its people by using technology to keep them superficially happy. Republicans may well read into the purchase.
The Bayou Trilogy is Daniel Woodrell's work centred around a detective fighting crime in a Louisiana swampland.
Ahead of any relaxing though, Mr Obama began his holiday with a national security briefing from John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism.
Before it had even started in earnest, the much-maligned vacation became a PR nightmare, after it emerged this morning that he and his wife took separate government jets to Martha's Vineyard just hours apart.
Michelle Obama was revealed to have arrived at the Massachusetts retreat, only 500 miles from Washington, four hours before her husband yesterday.
She was accompanied by their daughters and landed at around 2pm - four hours earlier than the President.
The extra transport to get the the First Lady to the island for only a few more hours of vacation time will have cost taxpayers thousands in additional expenses.
The costs related to Mrs Obama’s solo trip mainly include the flight on the specially designed military aircraft she took instead of Air Force One, as well as any extra staff and Secret Service that had to be enlisted to go with her.
She would also have had her own motorcade from the airport to her vacation residence.
The President had already drawn scorn for using two helicopters and Air Force One to get to Martha's Vineyard.
He yesterday left the White House aboard Marine One on his way to Andrews Air Force base to hitch a lift aboard Air Force One - along with First Dog Bo.
After landing at Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, he then took a final helicopter to his holiday destination to complete the remarkable 500-mile journey.
The President arrived on this wealthy Massachusetts island retreat as the stock market plunged and a new poll showed just 11 per cent of Americans are happy with the way things are in the country.
He also drew fresh criticism from Sarah Palin for even going on the vacation while the country is in such a poor situation.
The President will be staying with his family at the Blue Heron Farm, a sprawling, $50,000-per-week estate with plenty of room for staff and Secret Service agents accompanying him on the trip.
The family are to spend 10 days in a rented compound.
Sarah Palin yesterday labelled Mr Obama 'tone deaf' for continuing with his holiday while America faces economic problems.
Speaking during 'America Live' on Fox News, Mrs Palin, a potential Republican presidential candidate, said: 'He's very, very tone deaf. I wouldn't (go on vacation) if I were he, especially not to Martha's Vineyard. I do predict that he is not going to be gone the full ten days.
'He is going to get the advice from his advisers that he needs to get back to work to the White House and he needs to start working very closely on a bi-partisan measure with Congress and start plugging in these new solutions.'
Former Alaskan governor Palin's criticism came as a new Gallup poll released this morning shows only 11 per cent of American are happy with the situation in the country.
That is the lowest number recorded in the poll's 30 years - bar the week immediately following the 2008 economic collapse, when only seven per cent said things were going well.
Jeff Jones, senior editor of the Gallup poll, said high levels of pessimism were down to the economy, coupled with growing frustration with the political system.
'There are big problems and people don't trust politicians to be able to solve them,' he said. 'And many of the things they have done, people hated.'
Those poor numbers followed survey results released on Wednesday, which showed a startling loss in the commander-in-chief's favourability.
That Gallup poll showed the President’s handling of the economy at a new low of 26 per cent in the aftermath of a bruising fight with Congress over federal spending.
71 per cent of Americans said they disapproved of Mr Obama's handling of the economy, up 11 percentage points from mid-May, when Gallup last questioned people about the issue.
Approval of his handling of the economy fell by 11 percentage points from 37 percent in mid-May.
The President had similarly low approval ratings on other economic issues.
Only 24 per cent of Americans approved of Mr Obama's handling of the federal budget deficit, while 29 per cent approved of his efforts to create jobs.
On the jobs front, the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose back above 400,000, suggesting that the U.S. economy is creating jobs but not nearly enough to make a dent in the staggering employment rate.
That data, combined with world economic fears, led to a sell-off on Wall Street with the Dow spiralling sharply at opening as it dropped 500 points - or four per cent. It closed 400 points down.
The president's overall job approval rating among voters questioned August 11-14 was 41 per cent, slightly lower than other polls conducted in August.
In a recent interview with CNN, the President claimed progress was being made.
He said: 'When I came into office, I knew I was going to have a big mess to clean up and, frankly, the mess has been bigger than I think a lot of people anticipated at the time.
'We have made steady progress on these fronts, but we're not making progress fast enough.
'Ultimately, the buck stops with me. I'm going to be accountable.
'I think people understand that a lot of these problems were decades in the making.
'People understand that this financial crisis was the worst since the Great Depression.
'But, ultimately, they say, look, he's the president, we think he has good intentions, but we're impatient and we want to see things move faster.
The president ignited a firestorm on Wednesday after it was revealed he had a plan to boost jobs and revitalise the economy, but wouldn't reveal it until September.
A White House official said Mr Obama's proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for weeks and still supports, like his idea of an ‘infrastructure bank’ to fund construction jobs.
However, the American people won't hear details of the proposals, or any other solutions to the nation's economic woes, until Obama returns from his summer sojourn in Martha's Vineyard, the wealthy island enclave off Massachusetts, where his family will vacation for the third straight year.
Mr Obama's version will challenge the new 'supercommittee' of Congress to go beyond its goal of $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction.
Confirming the deficit-reduction part of his plan directly, Obama told a rural town hall crowd in Illinois on Wednesday: 'I don't think it's good enough for us to just do it part way. If we're going to do it, let's go ahead and fix it.'
Mr Obama's major economic speech will come right after the Sept. 5 Labour Day holiday. Republicans were underwhelmed.
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said via Twitter that Mr Obama could scrap the speech and just hand over a detailed plan to Congress.
'Seriously, just drop it in the mail. Podium not required,’ Mr Buck's tweet said.
Mr Obama will seek to use his economic proposals as leverage against Republicans in Congress, hoping to show a nation disgusted with gridlock that he is the one trying to get results.
Mr Obama's re-election campaign and the White House are also sure to use any specific ideas from the president as a way to blunt attacks from the Republicans hoping to run against him in next year's presidential election.
Already, Mr Obama has been previewing his line of attack.
Republican White House contender Mitt Romney, campaigning in New Hampshire, needled Mr Obama for showing up with too little and too late on the economy.
'But we appreciate the fact that he's going to devote some time to it,' Mr Romney said. 'Not just going to be on the bus tour, not just going to be vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, but giving some thought to the American people.'
Most lawmakers left town in early August, right after reaching a deal with the White House to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a potentially catastrophic government default.
Congress isn't expected to get back to work until early September.
With the lawmakers away, there's probably not much Obama could get done on the economic front even if he did cancel his trip. And even if Congress stayed in Washington, too, there are no quick fixes for the country's deep economic problems.
Rich Galen, a GOP consultant, said both Mr Obama and Congress 'don't have anything to act upon.'
He added: 'If anyone knew what the answer to this was, they'd do it.'
Then there's the issue of perception. Mr Obama will be vacationing at a rented multi-million dollar estate on an island known as a haven for the rich and famous at a time when millions of Americans are out of work and countless more are financially strapped.
The house rents for about $50,000 a week.
Bill Clinton's aides were so concerned about vacation perceptions that they polled the public before deciding where he should go.
While Mr Clinton preferred trips to Martha's Vineyard, polling sometimes pushed him toward places like the more rugged Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Former President George W. Bush was criticised for spending nearly 500 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, during his two terms in office.
He was there in August 2001 when he received a CIA briefing paper warning him of al Qaeda's intentions to strike the U.S. — just over a month before the September 11 attacks.
And in 2005, he remained on vacation after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans and devastated the Gulf Coast. His presidency suffered from his response to the storm and his decision to not immediately return to Washington.
Some of Mr Obama's prior vacations have come under fire as well. Last summer, he was chided for not taking his family on a Gulf Coast vacation following the BP PLC oil spill.
When he finally did travel to the Florida Panhandle for a weekend, his attempts to soothe public concern about the safety of the region's beaches were tainted when the White House released a photo of the president and daughter Sasha swimming in water that turned out not to be the Gulf.
Perhaps mindful of the president's image, the White House booked Mr Obama on a three-day, economy-focused bus tour through the Midwest right before the start of his vacation.
He also travelled to Michigan last week to speak at a factory that makes batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said he doesn't think the public begrudges the president a break to recharge and spend time with his family.
Besides, Mr Carney said, the President is never really off-duty, since White House advisers go with him and he still receives regular briefings on national security and the economy.
'The presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication,' said Mr Carney, also noting that Martha's Vineyard is close enough to Washington that Obama could make it home quickly if needed.
Obama has adamantly rejected the notion of calling Congress back from its break.
'The last thing we need is Congress spending more time arguing in D.C.,' he said during a speech in Michigan last week.
'What I figure is, they need to spend more time out here listening to you and hearing how fed up you are.'
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