President Obama, it turns out, is by far the most golf-mad of all the Presidents in history. Yesterday, the President was playing the 66th round of his presidency, and his fifth round in five weeks, as US special forces prepared to move in on bin Laden. There’s nothing wrong in all that golf. The odd thing about being President is the amount of time you have on your hands, punctuated by sudden moments of extreme tension, requiring great decisiveness – like the correct and admirable decision to attack bin Laden’s bunker.
What is unfair – not that this is Obama’s fault – is the criticism meted out to President George W Bush for his golfing. He only played 24 times in all eight years of his presidency, but was cast as the country club plutocrat for his love of the game. Michael Moore mocked him in his documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, for condemning “terrorist killers” on the golf course in 2002, before adding, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”
None of this is either to attack Obama or praise Bush – just to say that it’s OK for presidents, both Republican and Democrat, to swing a club from time to time, even at moments of great political and military importance. Source
