Life after the Presidency
"I'm tired of Presidents with ranches," muttered Chris Mathews in 2006. Hitting on an interesting trend, in the last 45 years half of US Presidents owned and spent their leisure time on ranches and half of those did so in Texas. Lyndon Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush were/are all proud ranch owners in and out of the media spotlight. These are powerful men who could go anywhere and chose wisely (TX Hill Country as #1 NY Times vacation destination).For the Texas Hill Country, perhaps the most obvious ranch owning President was LBJ. The ranch LBJ bought in 1951 was the ranch he was born on and the ranch his father had lost when he was a teenager. In part, the ranch helped fasten his legacy. Mike Wallace recounted: "Back in 1964, when LBJ was in the exuberant early days of his presidency, reporters covering him wrote and broadcast vivid accounts about his harrowing high-speed rides around the ranch. On at least one of those occasions, Johnson drove with just one hand on the wheel, while in the other one, he clutched a beer can from which he heartily guzzled." A character for sure, he also had disdain for other vacation spots such as Martha's Vineyard which he referred to angrily as "some female island" when finding out his top advisors were all there.
Richard Nixon’s life after the Presidency
Following LBJ, Carter and Reagan both owned and enjoyed ranches. Carter, though taking the fewest vacation days for a President (79 days), enjoyed spending time on his GA peanut farm. Reagan's ranch was in California and meant a great deal to him as well. "From the first day we saw it, Rancho del Cielo cast a spell over us. No place before or since has ever given Nancy and me the joy and serenity it does." It is worth noting that Reagan really ate up the whole experience as there was no air conditioning or heat on his ranch and he was quoted as saying that "taking care of a ranch is the best workout there is."Most recently it has been George W. Bush's Presidency that has focused on his time on the ranch. Though reportedly paying less than a thousand dollars per acre ($1.3 million for 1600 acres in 1999), his ranch has been criticized for not being in the heart of the Hill Country nor being as pretty as LBJ's ranch. Bush has said it helps him keep perspective and has admitted looking it up by satellite on "the Google" when he misses it.Let's not also forget Dick Cheney shooting his lawyer friend in the face on a South Texas ranch, the Armstrong Ranch, which was bought with the reward money that John B. Armstrong received for the capture of John Wesley Hardin in 1877. Coincidentally, the Armstrong Ranch spawned the likes of Karl Rove, whom the Armstrongs bankrolled directly in his consulting days for the 1978 election of Gov. Bill Clements.
As Bush moved toward the exit, it was John McCain's time on his Arizona ranch that was a point of interest. Aside from grooming Sarah Palin there and also despite the fiasco with how many houses he has (there are 6 houses on the ranch alone), McCain said one of his ways to relax during his campaign was barbequing for guests on his ranch.As Presidents past, present and possibly future have confirmed, there is no better place to spend your time than on a ranch! Six out of the past eight elections, a Texan has been nominated. Should this trend continue, many more ranch legacies will be born!
