There's a spectacular summer getaway in rural Maryland that, by federal decree, doesn't show up on maps. Appointed with a gleaming fitness center and a chapel, and manned by a congenial if armed security force, this woodsy hideout has historically offered bowling, skeet-shooting, sledding, horseshoes and tennis. It sits on a mountain near Thurmont, about an hour's drive from Washington, D.C., which makes it an easy commute for the only person free to visit without an invitation: the president of the United States.
This is Camp David, first adapted as a retreat by FDR, who called it Shangri-La. Since everyone's getting baldly likened to Hitler these days, it's worth noting that Shangri-La was long suspected to be FDR's American answer to Berchtesgaden, the skiing town in the Bavarian Alps that was home to Hitler's lavish hideaway. In October, 1945, the Southeast Missourian newspaper thoroughly debunked that story, revealing Shangri-La to be an oaken, unpretentious hideaway full of "castoff furniture" and pesky mosquitoes.
Not exactly a yin palace, then, or a feminist redoubt or a Women-Who-Glamp Hotel and Spa. Camp David is cartoonishly boyish in the way of Webelos and obsolete preppies — and it's rather hard to imagine what a woman president (say, Hillary Clinton) might make of it.
Camp David turns out to be a library of rich commentary on who the American president is expected to be — and what his leisure time is expected to entail. Curiously, Shangri-La was originally not styled as a place to relax after the stress of presidential life, but rather as an antidote to the "tedium" of that post, according to the 1945 article. Judging from the pictures, stimulation meant rocking chairs, S'mores and tetherball. Amid the scent of Citronella.
To whom is this pleasure? To FDR, presumably, who liked it so much he brought Churchill there. They sat awkwardly together, smoking, on a rickety bench. Midcentury bros. And to Jimmy Carter, who thought the rustic getaway was the perfect place to hang with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. They huddled around an exceedingly low table, in frugal patio furniture, to hammer out the Camp David Accords.
How will Clinton fare in these environs? Should she get elected — the woman who, right-leaning pundits complain, works too hard and never has fun — will she have to pretend to like skeet-shooting and billiards? And grilling? The reason "happy camper" has broad application becomes clear every summer: You really are either a happy camper — overjoyed in bunks, cabins and mucky swimming holes — or you're not. I suspect Clinton is an unhappy camper, which may be among the best things about her.
But that doesn't mean, as David Brooks charged last spring, that Clinton does nothing for fun. It's rather that women's leisure time is largely opaque to men. The activities that are mysteriously laudable as "hobbies" — throwing horseshoes, for crying out loud — are pastimes many women would demand a high six-figure salary to do on anything like a regular basis.
So what might an HRC Camp David look like? Well, first off, she'd be free to rename it. Eisenhower changed its name to honor his grandson David. Following suit, Clinton could call it Charlotte — and to change the vibe she might drop the "Camp" entirely. Clinton might consider the word Retreat, which has a nice ring of thread-count and Netflix to it.
