In sharp contrast to previous Presidential visits, the public will be shut out when Barack Obama and his family arrive on the Vineyard somewhere in a five-hour window on Sunday afternoon.

As the Martha’s Vineyard Airport and later a White House spokeswoman confirmed yesterday, there will be no chance for the media, or, more importantly, Islanders to see the First Family.

“It will be what’s called a closed arrival,” said the airport manager Sean Flynn.

Saturday morning; most of the Island still sleeps. The rising sun breaks through the tree line on the eastern edge of a field that wears a heavy coat of dew. Today the bright August sun practically commands a beach day. In the vast farm field across the way the hay crop is finally in, good only for mulch this year after a summer that has been thick with rain. Tiny swallows swoop in and out of the freshly cut stubble, foraging for insects. A gossamer veil of mist floats above the ground like some elegant genie just released from her bottle.

Presidents are never really on vacation, as George W. Bush discovered to his great cost, about four years ago.

As his critics are fond of pointing out, Bush the younger was on vacation down on the ranch when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. And he stayed on vacation for three days afterwards. Now, when people enumerate the many failings of his Presidency, the first three nominated are usually the economic crisis, the Iraq war and the failure to respond to Katrina.

Andrew Young never formally studied economics. But he learned early in his time as a civil rights leader what a powerful tool for good it could be.

“Young people look back now and think the civil rights movement was about marching, getting beat up and bit by dogs, but the whole civil rights movement was really about the economy,” he said yesterday.

“The economic withdrawal campaign was what really changed the South.”