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At Camp David Retreat, Biden Hangs Out, Shows He's Got Game

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden spent his third week in office
   visiting the Pentagon, touring the National Institutes of Health and
   working on the administration's COVID-19 response.
   He capped it off by beating one of his granddaughters at Mario Kart
   during his first presidential visit to Camp David, the historic retreat
   for U.S. leaders.
   That's what Camp David has traditionally offered presidents: a respite
   from Washington where they can shed their ties and relax with family.
   The compound in the Maryland mountains just 60 miles (97 kilometers)
   from the capital features everything from a bowling alley to an archery
   range.
   It's been used by every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt first
   went there in 1943 as a personal hideaway and has been the site of
   major diplomatic negotiations and policy discussions throughout
   history, according to Michael Giorgione, who served as commander of
   Camp David for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and wrote the
   book "Inside Camp David."
   With the exception of Donald Trump -- he generally preferred his own
   private clubs -- every president has used Camp David "for a personal
   getaway, an escape from the clamor and the noise and the likes of the
   White House, and really go to this exclusive mountain retreat. That's
   one purpose. And the other is to bring world leaders there," Giorgione
   said.
   When Roosevelt first arrived, the rustic retreat was "a hide-out with
   little hot water and with brush growing to the windowsills," former
   Associated Press White House reporter Dale Nelson wrote in his 1995
   history, "The President is at Camp David." Still, Roosevelt somewhat
   fantastically dubbed it "Shangri-La," the name of the utopian community
   in the popular 1933 novel "Lost Horizon."
   When Dwight Eisenhower took over, he added a putting green and a new
   name: Camp David, after his father and his grandson.

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