Ok, so I did the math. Comes to [roughly] $99,357 (assuming your numbers are accurate). So how on Earth do you figure this trip cost $4 million? Especially given that you attributed the bulk of the cost to just flying there and back?
Even what you think of as low-hanging fruit is far too high for you to reach. Reagan's statement was that Mt. St. Helen's produced more pollution than all the automobiles in the country. Try getting him off that hook. Try it after considering that the actual statement was all the cars in the coutnry IN TEN YEARS. Try it after realizing that at its peak, Mt. St. Helen's was releasing about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day into the atmosphere as against the 80,000 plus tons of sulfur dioxide per day released into the air at the time by automobiles. Reagan was a rube preaching to yahoos. And he always had an audience.
It hasn't become any less of a mindless partisan cheap shot, however. The dime-store right-wing propaganda mills spin up some sort of criticism of EVERYTHING Obama does. It was mindless Republican intransigence that stretched this whole cliff thing out until the last minute. Put the extra vacation cost blame on them. Also whatever extra costs the IRS has to run up now in order to get tax forms and instructions ready in time for April 15. Right-wingers are dyed-in-the-wool losers who would boo Obama if he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh wait...
No, he's exactly right. The "Bush ranch" was a hog farm purchased and dressed up in 2000 to serve as a manly PR backdrop in emulation of Reagan's bounding about across his Santa Barbara spread. But Bush indeed did not know how to ride and looked ridiculous on a horse. So they substituted clearing brush with a manly chainsaw instead, something that an actual rancher would not do since brush provides erosion control for the washes and gullies when the rains come. The whole ranch act was Hollywood. Even the cattle were trucked in. The post-presidency Bushes have been spotted in Waco/Crawford from time to time for Easter and Christmas retreats, but they don't live there. They live in Preston Hollow, the same overstuffed moneybags Dallas neighborhood they lived in before the clown ran for governor. Back to his spoiled brat, silver-spoon roots.
The point is that like so much else about the man, the Bush "ranch" was a phony public relations gimmick from start to finish.
The quote was an on-the-record statement for an article in Time magazine to appear just weeks before the 1980 election, and it was made in the context of defending against criticisms of his weak environmental policies. And this was hardly the only dingbat thing he would say toward that end...
Tweet! Reagan took eighteen (18) trips to Santa Barbara in the first three years he was in office, during which time we were indeed experiencing the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. Unemployment was above 10% for ten straight months, you know.