All in all, it’s been an active, odd-hours time for the military and civilian workers who help move the president from one place to another: a quick trip from Westchester to Washington to pick up the Obama family to head back to Westchester for a wedding; another quick trip from Martha’s Vineyard to Washington for a bachelor party, and then back to the Vineyard. It’s what happens when a busy social schedule mixes with the complexities, and expense, of presidential travel.

Of course, no one should begrudge presidential travel; it’s part of the job. And it is necessarily expensive for a President of the United States to move from place to place. But in recent days, the combination of Obama’s frenetic travel, for less-than-urgent reasons, and his admitted lack of a strategy for dealing with pressing national security issues, has underscored the impression of a president who is constantly in motion, but doesn’t know where he is going.