worth reading The Bigger Picture

Last week I posted a brief item about the criticism President Obama often takes for playing golf.

Just so there are no misunderstandings, let me add this to the discussion: I don't give a rat's ass if Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or anyone else wants to give Obama a figurative black eye. That's politics. That's their business.

What I don't particularly like is that every time a Republican with an agenda takes a swing at Obama's love of golf, he takes a swing at my business. And if you want to know the whole story, what really riles me is that none of the so-called leaders in our business are fighting back to defend golf's image.


We need to stand up for golf. We need to promote the playing of golf. And we most certainly need the free advertising that a golf-playing president -- like a golf-playing athlete or movie star or celebrity chef -- so generously gives us.

I'm tired of hearing loudmouths with microphones taking cheap shots at golf, even if they're only doing it indirectly. Such talk hurts our entire industry.

It's important for those of us who make a living in golf to let the American public know that our business is still alive and at least somewhat well, to counter all the negative publicity that has socked us of late. So when the president's political opponents suggest that golf is an endeavor best suited to malingerers and ne'er-do-wells, or for rich folks with nothing better to do, we need to draw the line.

In a recent post at Slate, John Dickerson addressed this issue. Here's part of his take on the subject:

Presidential golf jokes may be the laziest of all political humor, with the possible exception of jokes about presidential vacation time. Jokes about presidential appearance are also lazy, but they're just cheap shots. Golf jokes are not only intellectually lazy, but, like teleprompter jokes, they encourage the audience to be lazy, too. No one has to bother thinking about what a president actually does.

Why do we care about this dumb joke? Because it is politically potent. You'll probably be hearing variations of it a lot during the 2012 campaign.

More important, we should care because it exposes a larger problem in the way we view presidents and evaluate candidates. For presidents, who can never escape their job, we should encourage golf playing, not mock it.

A president's critics always go for the golf joke because it irritates people at a gut level. And the gut level is where you need to go if you want to pick up votes. To say a president is wrong on some policy issue or another is only so damaging. To suggest he is so clueless that he's lining up his putt while the world burns is what really gets a voter outraged. . . .

Every time you see Obama golf, [Newt] Gingrich wants you get enraged. If things really work out for Republicans, golf will start coming up in David Axelrod's focus groups, and maybe Obama's advisers will have to suggest to the president that he stop playing.

Obama should resist -- and regardless of party, we should all want him to.

The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're “having fun,” you do so in quotation marks. At parties or a baseball game, you're watched to see if you're having a good time. If you play basketball, your on-court demeanor is analyzed for clues to your leadership style. You don't drive. You can't keep a diary (they can be subpoenaed). You can't smoke (the kids are watching). You can't take a stroll through your old neighborhood.

All of this distorts the mind. . . .

You don't have to like golf to recognize that being able to walk in relative freedom and hang out with friends is an obvious pleasure and escape. The more tightly someone is confined, the more necessary it is to escape. One of the great problems for any president is a loss of perspective. A distraction, even for a moment, from the constant and attention-shredding duties of the day is one way to gain perspective. . . .

A president's job is to have a vision, convey that vision to others, and make the hard calls when they come to him. It's about making smart decisions, not how many hours a president spends making a decision. . . .