The Importance Of Being Idle

Washington is wrapped up in getting work done—even if a hot August won’t produce anything. Time to take a break

- Peter Coy

Gina McIntosh was born in France to Italian parents, is married to a Canadian, and runs a bed-and-breakfast in Saint-Saturninlès-Apt—about an hour-and-a-half drive north of Marseille—that caters to travelers from all parts of Europe as well as South Africa, Australia, and the U.S. So she knows a thing or two about different nations’ attitudes toward time off from work. Nobody, she says, takes vacations as seriously as her fellow French: “French people, for sure, they take their vacation in August. That’s not even a question. You can’t touch the vacation of French people. That’s part of their right. They fought for it. It is something that is very engraved in the rights of the French people.”

Americans are … different. Sure, they dig their toes in the sand every summer, but they don’t believe vacations are enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Vacationing Americans are more likely to sneak a peak at their work email once a day, or once every 10 minutes. They’re torn between worrying that the office won’t function without them or—worse—that it will function just fine without them. And it’s laughably easy to get Americans to feel guilty about taking time off when they haven’t accomplished what they were supposed to get done before they left.

On July 19, President Trump played on the vacation guilt of members of Congress when he demanded that they postpone their August recess until they managed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. “We shouldn’t leave town until this is complete—until this bill is on my desk and until we all go over to the Oval Office,” he told Republican senators at a White House lunch meeting.