Call it the audacity of hope. The White House media office had this to say on Monday — “The President does not have plans for a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard at this time.” But no one on the Island, let alone the national media, was going to let that stand in the way of this story.

However audacious the sources, Islanders shaking off a hard winter were ready for some hope in the form of an Obama Vineyard vacation stimulus plan. After all, nobody believes a rumor in Washington until it’s officially denied. So never mind the don’t-use-my-name Presidential spokeswoman, Vineyarders were going with Trader Fred.

“This is one of the most exciting things that will happen this year,” Fred Mascolo told the Boston Globe’s Web site Monday afternoon. The real estate broker and owner of Trader Fred’s in Edgartown noted that the Clintons would visit at the same time, and he added cheerfully, “When Obama said he would fix the economy, I didn’t think it would be this soon.”

Since President Obama’s Inauguration in January, it’s been the most-asked question on Island: would Barack be back? By mid-March, Islanders were writing on each others’ Facebook walls that the First Visit would be for two weeks in August.

By last weekend, the speculation had become more specific: late August at an East Chop home. Whose home? Wayne Budd, the politically well-connected Boston lawyer now at Goodwin Proctor, was the name most whispered.

On Monday, Mr. Budd responded to Gazette queries on the matter via e-mail from Chicago: “Don’t know where that rumor is coming from .... As far as I know we haven’t had any contact w/ anyone concerning the President and MVI.”

Yet in Tuesday’s newsprint edition of the Globe, the gossip item, flagged on the front page, added to the Trader Fred tip: Oak Bluffs summer resident and Harvard lecturer Charles Ogletree was quoted saying Obama would likely use his time on the Island to read, play golf and spend time with his wife, Michelle, and the couple’s two girls, Malia and Sasha. Oh, think of the ice cream shop photo ops! The Mansion House’s Susie Goldstein coyly confirmed reservations were up for late August. “I’m comfortable telling you rumors are flying that he’s coming here,” she told the Globe.

And with that, their flight got faster — rumor being the most efficient of press agents. The Vineyard-bound-Obamas item was repeated as “The Boston Globe reports . . .” on a Washington Post blog, by Rueters, the Chicago Sun-Times, on the Huffington Post. It was all over Boston television Tuesday morning; before the clock struck nine students at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School were sharing the news as fact at their morning meeting.

The Cape Cod Times ran a Tuesday story, too, which began, fairly, “Rumors are rife . . .” Oak Bluffs police chief Erik Blake told the paper if it were true, the Secret Service eventually would gather Island security to plan. For now, he said, “all we have is rumor” — though the chief, too, had heard the story on Fox News. Robbed of new facts, the Cape story devolved into noting that Rev. John Saunders was among the first African Americans to settle here, in the late 1700s.

Still, the anchorman at NECN — tagline “Real News Right Now” — crossed live to a near-empty Cape Cod Times newsroom and asked, “Anything new since we first heard this (dramatic pause) rumor?” Times columnist Sean Gonsalves sheepishly replied, “Well no, other than . . . the buzz.” He did offer that Vice President Joe Biden had spent Thanksgiving on Nantucket

Unabated, the buzz had Islanders swearing they’d seen Secret Service agents. Some sources pointed to Alan Schweikert of Ocean Park Realty as organizing their housing. “I have had contacts with people who I think are acquainted with him [the President],” Mr. Schweikert told the Gazette. Friends? Agents? Staff? Off the record? “I have nothing other than rumor,” he said reluctantly.

At the Wesley House, proprietor Peter Martell was holding a block of rooms for the period of the federal congressional break. But he admitted it was “all pure speculation — and believe me, I would know if it was not,” he said, noting he’d housed the agents before.

Ah, but rumor is one thing that gets thicker rather than thinner as it is spread. On Wednesday, Women’s Wear Daily had breathlessly posted this: “Michelle and Barack Obama are returning from abroad, but apparently their summer vacation will be closer to home. Secret Service agents have been spotted casing Martha’s Vineyard for what is said to be a late-August two-week getaway. The First Family’s destination is believed to be East Chop, the sleepier side of Oak Bluffs. Obama wouldn’t be the first president to hightail it to the Massachusetts isle for some sun ’n’ fun.”

Next came the obligatory mention of the Clintons, though this report did not, as many others did, recall the much-earlier Vineyard visit of President Ulysses S. Grant. Instead WWD reported that “Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are leading members of the Island’s brain trust” — information that may come as a surprise to Islanders searching for a brain trust at town meetings in the coming week — and then offered a recitation of Vineyard-spotted celebrities from Spike Lee to Jay-Z.

Few of the stories mentioned the many hedge fund managers and Wall Street bankers with homes here; would it be a good look for the President to holiday with their likes while arguing that he can’t do much about stopping their bailout-burnished bonuses? Instead, media focused on the Vineyard’s long history as a home to the black middle class. Some stories noted the Obama trips here in the past with friends who are seasonal residents.

The stories might have added that Vineyard voters favored Obama overwhelmingly in his November election. And that it’s so much closer to Washington than Hawaii, where travel and time zones really just wouldn’t make sense.

Vineyarders who didn’t say, “Ugh,” at the thought of traffic and security and hoardes of journalists — and there are plenty of those around — were saying, think of the business, the parties, the lobbying, the possibility of seeing POTUS at the beach? It was all too brilliant to bother parsing the buzz.

So, don’t attribute this to the Gazette — just call us a news outlet close to events — but the Vineyard could, would, might just be, possibly, the First Vacation Spot again. Or maybe not.