Opinion: From Iowa State Fair to Martha’s Vineyard

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Running for president doesn’t allow time for a traditional summer vacation (unless one’s idea of a holiday is traipsing about Iowa in oppressive heat and humidity). Still, the demands of the chase for the White House do have their compensations.

In the ongoing quest for campaign cash, Hillary Rodham Clinton spent part of August’s first weekend in the Hamptons, hobnobbing with the wealthy at their resort homes on Long Island. Come Aug. 24, she’ll be raising money at a party on Martha’s Vineyard, the famed island off the Massachusetts coast.

As the New York Daily News recently detailed in a story headlined, ‘Dough Days of Summer for the Clintons,’ guests at the event (minimum ticket price: $1,000) are expected to include Mary Steenburgen (an Arkansas native and longtime friend of the Clintons) and her husband, Ted Danson; Marlo Thomas and her husband, Phil Donahue; and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

Clinton is paying her dues. Today finds her making the requisite stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, where the fare includes lots of pork on a stick, fried candy bars and fried Twinkies. After a couple of days at home in Chappaqua, N.Y., she’s back in Iowa on Saturday to attend a ‘corn boil.’

We imagine the offerings at that bash on the Vineyard will not spark memories for her of the heartland.

-- Don Frederick