This is going to piss everybody off, I fear. The President is in Afghanistan explaining how he has signed a deal to withdraw U.S.troops by the end of 2014, but MSNBC keeps running a banner saying that the deal will keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2024.
He’s saying the U.S. will not build permanent bases in Afghanistan, and that U.S. military personnel will be in some kind of supporting non-combat role. It’s going to take a while to digest this.
Does President Obama play too much golf? That’s what the wingnuts are screaming about today. I ran into some dippychick on Facebook who wrote (in this thread, which is a hoot in itself) that the President has done “More golfing than all other presidents combined.”
True? Well, those of us of limping into our vintage years might remember another president who played a remarkable amount of golf. This is from a Golf Digest article:
Dwight David Eisenhower got in his share of golf, and then some. A study of the 34th president’s daily itinerary during his eight years in office from 1953-’61 turns up a staggering 1,000-plus days of golf, including almost 800 rounds everywhere from Augusta National to Cypress Point to Turnberry and beyond.
This was while he was President, mind you. On top of that, Ike had a putting green installed on the White House lawn. Imagine what the wingnuts would do if the Obamas did that.
By contrast, according to this anti-Obama website, President Obama has played 95 rounds of golf since his inauguration, as of April 21. I suspect that’s about average for presidents. It’s probably good for their physical and mental health, frankly.
I was a lot younger then, of course, but I don’t remember people going ballistic about Eisenhower playing golf. They just joked about it.
According to CNN, Woodrow Wilson played even more golf than Ike did. Wilson played every day, it says, which I assume includes the duration of World War I. Which kind of makes the idea that a president must not play golf while troops are in the field kind of ridiculous.
There are claims that George W. Bush was savaged for playing golf during the war in Iraq, but I don’t think it was the golf that irritated people. It was the attitude.
He could have kept playing for all I cared. I just wanted him to can the attitude. But he canned golf and kept the attitude. Oh, well.
I don’t know how far back you’d have to go to find a President who played no golf at all while President. I remember reading that Ulysses S. Grant was introduced to golf while traveling in Scotland, after he left the White House. He said he thought the game was good exercise, but he didn’t understand what the ball was for.
Anyway — it appears that the Right is pushing the meme that the Obamas are living some ritzy, ostentatious lifestyle unseemly for a President and First Lady. They have been seen in public wearing evening clothes! How outrageous! No presidential couple ever did anything like that before!
Seriously. The only thing that would make these nitwits happy is if the First Couple dressed only in overalls and got their exercise pulling weeds in the watermelon patch.