Obama Hawaiian Holiday: Tee Time
On the day after Christmas, President Barack Obama had an early morning conference call with national security advisers about the Northwest plane incident, went to the gym with his wife Michelle, went back to his Kailua holiday home and then… it was tee time!
Obama and four friends, yes that’s right a group of FIVE, went for 18 holes on the Kaneohe Klipper course at a nearby Marine Corps base.
Now for non-golf aficionados (like me) a foursome is the customary maximum for a golf game. So five would raise some eyebrows in golfing circles.
But of course, there is also a long-standing tradition that the President of the United States gets to play the game any way he wants.
For example, there are stories that Bill Clinton, when he was president, apparently had a rule that he was allowed as many mulligans — or do-overs — as he wanted (some called it the billigan).
George H. W. Bush apparently liked to golf quickly and frowned upon people playing with him taking too many (if any) practice swings (that comes from someone with first-hand knowledge).
The golf course where Obama is playing has some rules of its own: no muscle shirts, cut-offs, swimsuits, bare midriffs, or slippers (for those who go straight from bed to the green?)
Woman joins Obama golf entourage for first time
President Barack Obama’s weekend outings to play golf have become regular events, especially when the weather cooperates.
But Sunday afternoon, an almost picture-perfect fall day, marked the first time in Obama’s presidency that a woman joined the golf game.
White House domestic policy aide Melody Barnes was among those who headed out to the Fort Belvoir army installation in Virginia to play golf with the president. White House aides of varying levels of seniority typically play golf with the president but until Sunday, the games were all male.
“He golfed with women on the campaign trail but not until Melody this year,” White House spokesman Bill Burton was quoted as saying by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times/Politics Daily. Sweet was part of the pool of reporters who covered Sunday’s golf outing.
The golf game came on the same day that The New York Times featured on its cover a story looking at whether Obama’s White House was too much of a “man’s world.”
The Times article cited complaints that arose after Obama hosted a high-level basketball game that included no female players. It also quoted some women Democrats raising concerns that women advisers to Obama do not seem to be as visible as their male counterparts or wield as much influence.
Women voters are a crucial part of the Democratic base because they tend to support the party in greater numbers than men.
What Hawaiians call “slippers” are what we mainlanders call “flip-flops.”