In the Arena

Golf

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I don’t care. This isn’t Bush going off to his ranch for a month–and I didn’t even care about that. Bush worked from his ranch. Presidents deserve a break. If they want to play golf (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Bush Elder and Younger, Obama) or softball (Carter) or touch football (Kennedy) or racing a cigarette boat (Bush the Elder) or clearing brush (Bush the Younger), I say: go for it.

In my experience, most of these guys work too damned hard anyway. Exhaustion–physical and mental–is more of a threat to the successful execution of their duties than recreation is. Making a big deal, or any deal, of how a President recreates is usually the work of numbskull partisans or of journalists who find reporting or thinking about the issues of the day too much heavy lifting.

Enough. (And to compare the workaholic President with the posh, skeevy Tony Heyward–who wanted “his life back”…that is, his freedom to consume egregiously and not be bothered by small people–is ridiculous.)