BAR HARBOR, Maine — It has been 100 years, the local newspaper reports, since a sitting president chose this picturesque seaside village as his vacation spot.

President Barack Obama arrived here Friday for a summer weekend getaway with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9 — a precursor to a longer family vacation they are planning next month on Martha’s Vineyard. But what sounds like a much-needed family escape from the literal and political heat of Washington to some sounds like hypocrisy to others, given recent statements by both the president and first lady urging Americans to spend their vacation time and money along the shores of the oil-stricken Gulf of Mexico.

Bill Clinton and his family traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo., in the summer of 1996 after polling showed that Americans viewed Martha’s Vineyard as too elitist. George W. Bush caught so much flak for spending a month at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in the summer of 2001, said his former press secretary, Ari Fleischer, that his staff printed T-shirts listing all the work-related side trips he had taken. Fleischer may disagree with Obama’s policies, but he said he was protective of the president’s right to “recharge his batteries” wherever it suited him.