This wouldn't be particularly important if not for the fact that the press made a point of criticizing our previous president for overindulging in exercise and recreation and supposedly "vacationing" too often at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
But they did, so a Tweet from CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller is worth noting:
Politico's Click blog picked up the story and put this twist on the tweet: "President Obama Ties George W. Bush on Golf."
Meanwhile, an unbylined Associated Press piece gave Obama backhanded props for finally including a woman in his golf foursome, but failed to mention the new First Linkster's fore-play frequency Knoller had cited earlier in the day:
Obama has been criticized for playing basketball with men and no women, most recently in Sunday's New York Times.
Whoever said that the Times never goes after the president obviously missed this hard-hitting critique. Actually, some women's groups are apparently annoyed that the President engages in recreational sports almost exclusively with men. Imagine that.
The AP felt the gender inclusion angle to be so important that it produced a TV clip just for the occasion.
At the Politico item, you'll notice a picture, with this caption: "President Obama has already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years."
Hmm. Since when does "two years and 10 months" not get rounded up to "almost three years?" Maybe it's because giving readers the incorrect impression that Obama has played golf more than twice as much as Bush (2 years vs. 9 months) is a little more palatable than the idea that he's actually played almost four times as much (34 months for Bushs's 24 rounds vs. 9 months for Obama's two dozen).
Bush 43 gave up golf after that 24th round in 2003 because he didn't think it was right to be playing during wartime.
Now there's the real news. Obama's love of the links may be the real reason why the term "War on Terror" is no longer used by the White House, instead being replaced by "overseas contingency operation."
Having defined the problem Bush cited away, Obama is now able to hit the links with a supposedly clean, dithering conscience.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
