Obama revives GOP glory years of Sunnylands

WASHINGTON >> President Barack Obama spends his Christmas holidays in an oceanfront rental house on the windward side of Oahu. But Hawaii has never really staked a claim to being the home of the western White House. That status increasingly belongs to Sunnylands, the lush estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where Obama plans to welcome leaders from 10 Southeast Asian nations for a summit meeting next Monday.

Obama has become a loyal visitor to that 200-acre oasis of olive trees and artificial lakes near Palm Springs. He has used the estate, which was built in 1966 by the publisher Walter H. Annenberg, to confer with VIPs like President Xi Jinping of China and King Abdullah II of Jordan. But its real appeal for this warm-weather president is as a place to unwind with old friends, who join him for getaway weekends to play golf.

On this visit, his sixth, he will arrive three days in advance to get in a few rounds before the diplomacy begins.

“The president does genuinely love the desert, and I don’t think he expected that,” said Geoffrey Cowan, the president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, which converted the estate into a high-end conference center in 2012. “He has found it a wonderful place to spend time and for world leaders to meet in a relaxed setting.”

For Sunnylands, it is a welcome return to the sun-faded glory of the 1970s and ’80s. Ronald Reagan celebrated New Year’s Eve there every year, Richard M. Nixon retreated behind its pink walls after Watergate drove him from the presidency, George H.W. Bush played host at a state dinner for the prime minister of Japan, and Dwight D. Eisenhower played the nine-hole golf course where the current president now tees off.

Obama is not an obvious candidate to extend this legacy. While Rancho Mirage calls itself the city of the presidents, those presidents tended to be Republicans. Gerald R. Ford, another frequent guest at Sunnylands, liked the desert so much that he built his own house in Rancho Mirage, where he died in 2006 at the age of 93.

To the extent there is any echo of Democratic presidents, it is in the street name Frank Sinatra Drive, which runs along the south side of the property. (Sinatra was married at Sunnylands.)

But Obama shares a passion for golf with his Republican forebears, and the nine-hole private course at Sunnylands is considered one of the finest in the country. Laid out by the architect Dick Wilson, it is designed to be played as an 18-hole course, with alternative tees that allow golfers to retrace their steps but play different shots.

At the moment, the normally green fairways are brown, Cowan said, because the estate is complying with restrictions on water use amid a protracted drought in California (the last time the president visited, in June 2015, critics grumbled that he should pick up a more environmentally-sensitive hobby).

“I don’t think it reduces the golf experience,” he said.

Even some of Obama’s work-related visits have seemed an elaborate excuse to hit the links. In February 2014, he and Abdullah were both in Washington for the week before they met at Sunnylands. The king had 15 meetings in the capital, including breakfast with Vice President Joe Biden. He then flew to California for dinner with Obama, after which he left for Jordan.

After seeing off Abdullah, Obama linked up with three of his childhood friends from Honolulu, Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme and Mike Ramos, for a golf weekend. In addition to Sunnylands, they played at Porcupine Creek, a 19-hole course at a nearby estate owned by Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle.

When Michelle Obama accompanied her husband on one of his visits in 2014, it prompted rumors that they were looking to buy a place in Rancho Mirage after they left the White House. They stayed in a house owned by Michael Smith, an interior designer who redecorated the residential quarters of the White House, and James Costos, a former HBO executive whom Obama named ambassador to Spain.

Most of the president’s visits have been solo, however, and Michelle Obama is not expected to join him this time, a senior official said, even though Valentine’s Day falls on Sunday.

White House officials insist Sunnylands has tangible diplomatic value, as a sort of “Camp David West.” (Obama, as it happens, spends little time at Camp David, compared with his predecessors.) For someone like Abdullah, who has seen a lot of the Oval Office, it confers added prestige, like being invited to visit George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“From a leader’s perspective, it’s now seen as an honor for the president to invite you to Sunnylands,” said Thomas E. Donilon, the former national security adviser, who choreographed Obama’s first meeting there, with Xi, in June 2013. “It has global cachet.”

It is also a more relaxed setting than the Oval Office. During the Obama-Xi meeting at Sunnylands, Donilon arranged eight hours of meetings over two days, but left time for a sunset stroll beneath the San Jacinto Mountains and a leisurely dinner of porterhouse steaks and cherry pie cooked by the celebrity chef Bobby Flay.

If all that personal time was meant to break the ice, it is not clear it worked. Obama and Xi have continued to clash on issues including cyberhacking and China’s maritime ambitions in the South China Sea, though they found common ground on climate change. The so-called “shirt sleeves summit” did not turn the two men into superpower soul mates.

Nor is it clear that the Southeast Asian leaders will appreciate the gesture of meeting in the desert for the first gathering of the Association of Southeast Nations ever held in the United States. Unlike Xi or Abdullah, these leaders are not regulars at the White House. (Some, like Hun Sen, the authoritarian prime minister of Cambodia, have never been there and are not likely to get an invitation any time soon.)

“They’re willing to humor the U.S. on this, but they’re Asians — symbolism is very important,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior fellow and expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Going to a retreat center; how can that be serious? They would much prefer a trip straight to the White House.”