As Barack Obama approaches his 200th round of golf since his election as president, here’s a fact to put that into perspective: Since January 2009, Tiger Woods has played 269 rounds of golf.
And Tiger, beleaguered by injury, is almost certainly done for the year. So that means the president, if he keeps up with his pace of play during his 15-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard (a round a day) and his normal weekly round, will pass Tiger sometime next spring.
Think about that for a minute. The president of the U.S., juggling the American economy and the entire world’s problems — Iraq is in full meltdown, the Middle East is a powder keg, Russia is moving on Ukraine — has played golf nearly as much as a guy whose day job is playing golf.
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3 Responses
Just like we should be in favor of government funded sports programs for inner city kids, because it keeps them off the streets and out of trouble, so too we should be happy when the president plays golf.
As I would expect from a right-wing rag like the Washington Times, this article is a good example of bad analysis, assuming that it even got the facts right.
The first relevant comparison would be frequency of golf played by US presidents since 1945, when (i) America became – and recognized that it was – a major world power, and (ii) federal spending as share of GDP was substantially above pre-1932 levels. This article, as posted here, omits that information.
The next relevant comparison would be time spent on recreational activities (including golf), by US presidents since 1945.
Criticizing presidential leisure time is a cheap political trick that all partisan journalists use, and this article from the Washington Times is just one example of the genre of cheap journalistic tricks.
No less important is the question of whether less recreation will lead to better governmental outcomes. For those who generally believe that Mr. Obama is a foreign-born, America-hating socialist out to destroy America, his vacation time should be a relief that he is not up to his evil mischief when he is at leisure.
If the Washington Times wanted to do something meaningful (which I doubt), they could dig up the information that I think is needed in an article about US presidents at leisure.
One other point: assuming a golf season of March through November, Mr. Obama has been in office for 182 golf-suitable weeks. 200 rounds of golf in that period, including vacation time, strikes me as average for a man of his age and responsibility.
fwiw,
good point! at least when he’s playing golf he’s not ruining the world