Living in the Western US, it takes me about the same amount of time to fly to the East Coast (usually JFK or ATL, as I typically fly Delta when going to Europe) as it does to fly from the East Coast to Western Europe.
I am usually pretty wiped out for a good 24 hours after getting there, and the older I get the longer it takes me to recover…
No, not until you need one.
If you weren’t others were. This idea that liberals are more interested in travel than conservatives are is what I was talking about. Read the first response to your OP.
Don’t forget all those Mormons heading off for their overseas missions. What do you think the ratio of Democrats to Republicans are? There are lots of reasons for getting a passport, and I suspect one’s political outlook is not at the top of the list.
If you are in the mitary you don’t need one except for personal use just like everyone else. To travel on military business you need your military ID and a copy of your orders.
What about dependants and the like?
They are also on the orders if it’s a permenant change of station.
I think this is probably the major factor. Most of the rest of the world would think that TWO WEEKS of paid time off is ridiculous. (It is). How is one expected to justify the cost and carbon footprint of transcontinental travel for a two week trip?
My last job in Australia gave me six weeks of paid time off and as much sick leave as I ever would need. Now, I’ve been scraping together comp time, working overtime as much as possible, and have, for the last two years, taken three week trips. It’s not enough. I can feel my traveller’s soul shrivelling up and dying inside me.
I agree with John Mace that having a passport probably has a lot more to do with being rich and being able to afford to travel internationally than with one’s politics.
Also, note that until fairly recently, Americans didn’t require a passport to go to Canada or Mexico. So passports were really only for intercontinental travel, which again makes fewer people need or want them. I also wonder how the process and cost of getting a passport compares between the US and most of Europe? Getting one in the US costs over $100 and takes several weeks and an in-person application. It’s a pretty big hassle if you don’t expect to use it in the near future.
This is outside the scope of the OP, but I found it interesting in a pre-conceived notion shattering way anecdote.
In Trinidad the section of immigration that deals with tourists and immigrants is seperate from the other roles, so if you are the spouse of a citizen and need a visa extension or are applying for permanent residency you and your spouse must go to that office building and spend a lot of time in the large waiting room with plenty of time to talk. It ain’t hard to spot the couples where one has a american accent, so what would you guess would be the political affiliation of the american?
Republican by far, tend older too. Now maybe it is just the older thing, and of course this population is not anything like what the OP was looking for. I found it surprising is all, it wasn’t what I expected.
Lulz at this thread
What I was trying to express and IMO did not do well, was this. Rural and small town denizens, who tend to vote Conservative/Republican, IME are less interested in the outside world and tend to see it as alien, where City dwellers tend to be more exposed to other cultures and are more interested in the rest of the world. This is oversimplified but as a numbers game, this would indicate that more Liberals/Democrats would have passports. I am not trying to insult anyone, I am just talking about a cultural difference. I have lived in both.
Capt
I used to live in the Philippines, which is a country that is very popular with retired American men. The majority of the men that I met there are Republicans.
But, they were men that had made the journey to the Philippines to live out their remaining years in one place.
Most just want to stay at their home in the Philippines, drink, and complain. In my opinion, they are not men that spend a lot of time exploring other cities or countries.
IMHO, the American men that would stop in the Philippines on their travels around Asia are mostly Democrats. The ones that sit in one place and wait to die, are Republicans.
This.
My sister and I have talked about going to Europe, but have permanently dropped the idea due to irreconcilable differences over where to stay and where to east. In Paris I’d want to eat at McDonalds and sleep at a Super 8 or whatever equivalent they have there, my sister would want to eat at a snobish French restaraunt and stay at a cute, expensive hotel. And we have different areas we’d like to see, we agree on the Czech Repulic but she wants to see England and southerne Germany I want to see France and eastern Germany. Probably just as well, it’s cheaper to travel in the US and there’s so much to see here I doubt we’d run out. Niagra Falls, Philadelphia, California, the Grand Canyon are all areas we haven’t been to .
Oh, and we’re both Republicans. I have a passport just for Canada, she plans to get one for that purpose.
That is possibly true, but there is also the opposite effect, which is that rich people travel more than poor people, and very rich people travel internationally much more than poor people. Very rich people tend to be Republicans.
Is this because of cost, or are you not interested in foreign foods/customs?
Well they will be waiting a long time then, the guys I saw were mostly 40-50 
I was just trying to convey that thinking republicans are insular and avoid foreign countries is simplistic at best.
These are harsh stereotypes, yet roughly compatible with my own anecdotal evidence in SE Asia. A third group, businessmen, tend to be independent or Republican.
Comparing Americans to Europeans who travel within Europe may not be fair. But consider instead, for example, Cambodia, which is about as hard to reach from either Europe or America. As shown at this pdf it gets more visitors from just France and U.K. together than it gets from U.S., despite that U.S. has 2.5 times the combined population of France and U.K. Perhaps that’s partly because Europeans are more used to the idea of foreign travel. (Socialistic governments that force these people to take 6 weeks of paid vacation may be partly to blame.)
It may also be due to the fact that we don’t have to go as far for a beautiful tropical beach vacation. If thats what I’m looking for I’m going to be thinking of flying for a couple of hours to the Caribbean. Beautiful beaches, much cheaper and I don’t have to blow half my vacation on travel time.
There certainly seems to be a cultural aspect behind the relative lack of Americans that travel internationally. I have stayed in hostels all over Canada, the USA, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, and after a while you really start to notice that no matter where you go, the hostel is almost always full of Australians and Canadians, with a smattering of Brits and Germans thrown in for good measure. I met comparitavely few Americans in hostels, especially when you consider that the population of the US is so much larger than all those countries.
I agree that there’s lots to see in the US, but Canada and Australia are similarly large and geographically diverse, yet seem to produce lots of overseas travelers. I’m sure the lack of vacation time Americans get is an element, but American culture also just doesn’t seem to place value on international travel the same way as some other cultures, particularly for young people.
Having said that, I don’t necessarily think that’s a negative thing. I like to travel, but I don’t think it made me a better person or anything, and I think that the idea of going off to backpack around Europe and ‘find yourself’ is silly at best (and at worst produces snobby 20-somethings who think that getting blotto in a bar in Paris is akin to some kind of enlightening experience). Still, it’s interesting that there is such a difference in how people think about traveling.
That’s a good point, but I imagine you could live like a king for a month in Cambodia for what a 3-day weekend on most Caribbean islands would run.
(I assume when you say “much cheaper” you mean that getting to the Caribbean from the USA is gonna cost a lot less than getting over to S.E. Asia would be)