Nine of 12 panel members were appointed Wednesday, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has yet to announce three picks from among her caucus.

“If they’re willing to join hands and say maybe there are a few things we can get off the table with this super committee, then they should do it,” Felzenberg added.

One of the strongest arguments inside the White House not to call Congress back to Washington before September is how counterproductive it would appear -- and become. The majority of lawmakers hold dear their month-long summer break as an opportunity to reconnect with constituents, return to run family farms and businesses, to travel with relatives and colleagues, and to plan ahead for political and policy challenges looming ahead. Calling them back to Washington would infuriate most lawmakers, not focus their attention on national solutions and compromise.

“I don't think a stunt is what the American people are looking for,” Carney told reporters. “They’re looking for leadership and they’re looking for a focus on economic growth and job creation.”

Plus, members of Congress might benefit from less of Washington at the moment, not more.

“After the bruising debt ceiling process, perhaps one of the best things that could happen is if both sides go back to their corners for a while, while everyone tries to sort out what just happened,” said Jim Manley, a former Reid spokesman and a Democratic veteran of the Senate who now works in the private sector. In his decades of experience, Manley discovered that time for lawmakers’ reflection after an exhausting legislative drama proved important to the next phase of consideration and debate.

The same goes for the White House. And by the way, the politics and optics wrapped up in vacations are not new to the modern presidency, or unique to the Obamas. Because much of this president’s term has been sculpted by crises, wars and dire events, Obama is not new to swipes about his golf, his downtime, or the sacrifices average Americans make every day that the first family, because of Obama’s job, does not share.

For example, last summer, Michele Obama’s much-photographed and lavish trip to Spain with daughters Malia and Sasha invited some criticism. The Obamas’ travel costs are picked up by the taxpayers. This week, she slipped unseen out of the capital with family members to pay a private visit to her brother’s home in Oregon.

Critics of Obama’s summer schedule argue that most Americans don’t get a month off; U.S. troops can’t flock en masse to the beach during August; and global economic upheavals don’t go on pause for leaders in sunny climes. All true. Many Americans are nervous about being absent from jobs they could lose, and many fret they cannot afford even simple road trips because of tight budgets and high gas prices.

In contrast with Congress, 91 percent of private, full-time workers are granted an average of 10 days of paid vacation from employers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than a third of part-time workers also get paid vacation time. In that regard, Americans are more similar to Obama than Congress when it comes to the number of days envisioned for vacation.

Presidents in any era and under all kinds of psychological and physical stresses have needed the reflection time their vacations bring, sometimes even more keenly because of the catastrophes and global pressures they experienced during their terms. Franklin Roosevelt loved to travel by train to Warm Springs, Ga., to get away from Washington during World War II. Presidents Truman and Nixon enjoyed Florida. Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush chopped wood, hauled brush and cleared their heads under cowboy hats, albeit at different ranches in California and Texas, respectively. George H.W. Bush retreated to the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

President Clinton, like Obama, enjoyed Martha’s Vineyard -- that is until adviser Dick Morris sent him to Jackson Hole, Wyo., with a poll-tested recommendation that horseback riding and checked shirts before the 1996 election might appeal to voters more than hobnobbing at the beach with Carly Simon and lawyer pal Vernon Jordan. Clinton was subsequently lampooned for an inauthentic change of venue, and Morris later conceded that polling to pick a vacation spot did not serve the president’s political interests.

There is another argument for a restorative dose of detente between Obama and Congress in the next few weeks, and that’s the clash over taxes and spending that both parties already have teed up. Their politically inspired hand-to-hand combat may stretch from September through the end of 2011, and perhaps beyond. The super committee and the requirements of the debt-ceiling law almost guarantee drama that could mow through Thanksgiving and holiday recesses on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

“The Hill is gearing up for a run the likes of which I’ve rarely seen before in my 20 years up there,” Manley said. “They’re getting ready for an epic battle through early January.”