As a senator, John F. Kennedy scored political points on Eisenhower by mocking Ike’s golf obsession--while taking pains to keep his own golfing gifts under wraps. (As Van Natta recounts, JFK forbade the media from photographing him at play.) Bushes 41 and 43 were both slammed for golfing during wartime. It has been posited that W. quit the game in part because of the stinging coverage of comments he made on the golf course in August 2002, following a suicide bombing in Israel. “There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” Bush told the assembled journalists. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.” The tone-deaf clip eventually made its way into Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It was not one of golf’s finer moments.So JFK hypocritically criticized Ike for playing golf even though he was a golfer (don't even get me started on JFK sending Pierre Salinger to buy all the Cuban Cigars he could find before announcing his boycott of Cuban imports). And George W. Bush made stupid comments on a golf course. Obama should thus quit golf because he can be falsely accused by some hypocrite? Or because a stupid President made stupid comments on a golf course?
This is what happens to liberals when they consider golf. Their minds go numb. Then there must be the ritual comment that golf is a white elitist pastime. This can only be said by a non-golfer. I played today at Wilson Golf Course in LA. The course is a United Nations meeting. I doubt there is a place in America -- except on other public golf courses -- where you get Blacks, Whites, Jews, Hispanics, and Korean Americans interacting in such a friendly, equal, manner. Obama's natural constituency plays golf at public courses all over America.
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