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Ellison's Must Read of the Day

Ellison must read
August 25, 2014

My must read of the day is "The Golf Address," by Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times:

FORE! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our forecaddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible — even when it seems totally inappropriate, like moments after making a solemn statement condemning the grisly murder of a 40-year-old American journalist beheaded by ISIL. […]

ISIL brutally killing hostages because we won’t pay ransoms, rumbles of coups with our puppets in Iraq and Afghanistan, the racial caldron in Ferguson, the Ebola outbreak, the Putin freakout — there’s enough awful stuff going on to give anyone the yips.

So how can you blame me for wanting to unwind on the course or for five hours at dinner with my former assistant chef? He’s a great organic cook, and he’s got a gluten-free backyard putting green.

We will always groan about the vacations of presidents. If your guy is in office you'll be more inclined to defend it, and if it's the opposing party, quicker to complain. The attack is cyclical and no one avoids the criticism. Consequently, some of those attacks can be brushed off as partisan, but this week people on the right and left appropriately criticized the actions of President Obama.

The typical defense of Obama is that he's spent less time away from the White House than his predecessors, namely George W. Bush.

"Bush took over 400 days off," they say, "Obama's only taken 125 days—go ahead, ask Mark Knoeller at CBS." Okay fine, fair enough, but that argument ultimately misses the point and the problem.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) may have explained it best when she told CBS "I think he has to look at the perception, but I don't begrudge him going on vacation."

Take a vacation, go play a round of golf, play laser tag for all I care, but be aware of when you're going. Perception is everything, and what makes it worse is that the president knows that too. (Bush was so aware of it he stopped playing golf during the Iraq War.)

The primary argument is that it appeared disconnected and out of touch to go straight to the golf course after making a statement on the brutal beheading of an American—but it wasn't out of touch. To say something is "out of touch" implies a lack of awareness. "Out of touch" is Hillary Clinton claiming her family was "dead broke" at a time they were buying an additional million-dollar home.

For all the flack he received from golfing trips in the past, it is illogical to think Obama was anything other than aware of how this outing would look.

All of it, the decision to golf and stay in Martha's Vineyard while the Middle East is in turmoil, to go to a party while Ferguson is ripped apart by riots, can only be described as one thing: apathy. To call it anything else wrongly demeans his intellect.

The post-presser golf run wasn’t out of touch. It was a conscious choice. A "frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn" moment.

Published under: Barack Obama