If you’ve lived on Earth for the last 8 years, you know that George Bush played a lot of golf while he was president. And it was a big problem!
Here’s the Washington Post on Aug. 5, 2002:
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine, Aug. 4 — It’s a ritual when President Bush golfs: As he gets ready to tee off, reporters toss out a few questions about the news of the day from their perches on a nearby sand trap. This morning, Bush wasn’t waiting. He sprang from his golf cart at 6:15 a.m. and said he was “distressed to hear about the latest suicide bombers in Israel…”
Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand. The rest of his foursome, including his father, former president George H.W. Bush, was waiting. However incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead. “There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” he said. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”
His business out of the way, Bush barely paused for breath before saying, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”
The abrupt segue illustrates the dilemma Bush will face over the next month as he relaxes and works at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., at a time of global political volatility…
Can you believe that? He barely paused for breath. How could he goof around playing golf while there was so much global political volatility? This became what the kids call a “meme” about the Bush presidency. “Now watch this drive” became shorthand for “This guy is arrogant and heartless and out of touch.”
Michael Moore thought it was such a self-evident indictment of Bush, he made it a trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11 all by itself:
Pow! He really showed ol’ Shrub, huh? And years later, Moore posted the following on his official Youtube channel:
Moore’s headline? “George Learns He Shouldn’t Golf While Soldiers Die.”
And of course, makers of t-shirts and other merchandise had a field day:
Here’s the description of that shirt:
As George W. Bush famously put it when choosing to finish his golf game rather than confront the disastrous Iraq War, “Now Watch This Drive.” Elitist snob!
And that, boys and girls, is just another reason George W. Bush was the Worst President Ever.
…
Oh, hey, guess what? Yesterday, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller posted the following on Twitter:
Today – Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.
Let’s see, January 20… October 26… Okay, so that averages out to about a round of golf every 12 days. That’s pretty good, considering the country’s in such a mess after the Bush years and Obama is the only one who can fix it.
Say, has there been any global political volatility lately? Are there still Americans overseas giving their lives for their country? On top of the health care crisis and the climate crisis and the unemployment crisis and all the other crises? Apparently not, or else everybody would be outraged that Obama can play golf all the time instead of dealing with it.
Remember when Obama said that his nomination as the Democratic candidate would be remembered as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”? Guess he was mostly worried about all the new water hazards.
Update: My mistake, Obama’s golf habit is a big problem for the press. Because until the other day, he hadn’t played with any women.
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Whatever. As long as it keeps him from being president.
Hey who are those guys in bla-?
**dragged out door**
“Guess he was mostly worried about the water hazards.”
Classic! I spit out my Diet Coke all over my work monitor and keyboard.
Good post. By the way, Simon, if you can dig up someone explaining exactly how Iraq was a ‘disaster’, I’d like to hear it. Frankly, it doesn’t look as if history is going to treat it that way, so since Bush left office, you just don’t hear that knee-jerk accusation anymore.
Obama is exactly the idiot the liberals accused George W Bush of being. Let’s hope he is a one term blunder.
Obama gets a complete pass on smoking cigarettes, too.
My prediction on Robert Gibbs rebuttal:
“Helen (Thomas)… I can’t just can’t help thinking that this is just a bunch of right wing racists upset that a (half) black man is on the golf course.”
Bush was such a dick it was funny. Any President after him is going to look good. (Maybe!)
Gee Obama. Where are your priorities? I mean, it should not have taken you this long to invite a women to golf. Geesh.
Oh yeah, let’s push back Afghanistan just one more day cause we are experiencing Indian Summer.
So he hasn’t played with any women. Thats a change from the previous Dem president the rapist Clinton. He played with women even when they didn’t want to.
All I have to say is One Second After…. read it. It’s the only thing to take us out of this mess. (Wishful thinking on my part, I guess) And take note of what happens to the sitting pres. (don’t want to jinx anything!!)
Oh Sh%t….I probably shouldn’t of said that
At his worst, Bush may have been a dick. But Obama is a pu**y. At his BEST.
Bush’s wars don’t count against Obama. Neither does Bush’s economy (which this will be until it turns around, then and only then will it be Obama’s). C’mon Simon, this is standard left wing rationale. As a person who write a blog, you should know this. Didn’t you get the tweet from the White House?
I love you Beige! That was CLASSIC!
And really Bush’s response was very good. Give a thought-out statement, end with a joke to say ‘no animosity here let’s all get along’, and then walk away before he can be attacked.
And you know if Obama did exactly that, it would have been painted as wise, noble, hilarious, etc. And there would be pro-Obama t-shirts with his quote on it worn by idiots everywhere.
And Beige with the epic WIN. :^D
Ya’ll know they’ll (BO supporters) just say he does his best thinking on the golf course. And that he deserves the “quiet time” to collect his thoughts because being POTUS is such hard work and he gets hounded all day long on his job to fix things right now.
I guess this explains why Parade labeled him as one of the two sportiest presidents (other was W). I didn’t know you saw him doing much other than the occasional basketball throw since the bowling debacle. I stand corrected.
I would like to know how BO is sportier than Bush I. He’s still parachuting in his ’80s, played tennis and golf, and IIRC, played baseball at Yale. I bet he could take Obama. Teddy Roosevelt could probably take them all.
A hundred years from now, the scholars are going to wonder why on earth Bush was so reviled by the media and gullible Americans, and what anyone saw in BO. Just saying.
AllyKat I am with you 100%. Bush will be vindicated and Obama will be reviled as a president who did the most damage in the least amount of time.
BEige, FTW!
Y’all are assuming we’ll still have a country when Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al get done with it. But yeah, provided they don’t succeed in reducing us to Kenya-level Third-World poverty and desperation, scholars are going to be pretty intrigued.
Meanwhile, I’ma be over here in my heavily-fortified compound, waiting for the jackbooted thugs to come get me for blaspheming against Dear Leader…
That is okay Beige. I am over here hiding with my guns, ammo and bible. Maybe he will be too busy playing golf to notice us?
Or too busy shutting down half the city to go buy arugula at the farmer’s market.
Did Obama start two wars? The answer is NO. Did Obama LIE the nation into war for OIL? The answer is NO. Did Obama mismanage 7 years of war and leave it for the next guy to fix? The answer is NO. Bush started two wars. Bush lied the nation into a war for oil; and we never got the oil. Bush mismanaged and squandered 7 years, 4000 American lives, and countless Iraqi lives all while playing golf, even after he said that he “quit’.
Don’t assign Bush-golf playing atrocities to Obama. Obama didn’t create and economic disaster, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney did. Obama is trying to fix the mess left by the Bush administration. Take another tact…this one is lame at best.
“Thistle be a good list of talking points,” he mused…
But thanks for the advice on taking another “tact.”
A war for oil? People still seriously think that? Sean Penn? Is that you? 2 wars? Remember 9/11? CAuse I do. And let me tell you, I would rather have my husband over there fighting then to be in the US fighting them on our soil. They were planning that attack for 4 years – which means CLINTON was in charge and CLINTON even thought the Taliban were bad and taht SADDAM had WMD.
And Bush played golf in almost 3 YEARS as much as Obama has in the first 10 MONTHS all while Obama is saying that we are going to hell in a handbasket. Did Obama sign into place stimulas packages that have done nothing for the economy? Check. Bush was no longer in office, therefore did nothing to pursuade Obama to do anything. While Bush did leave the office after signing the package to bail out the automakers, Obama has tripled the national debt since then. Time to quit drinking the kool-aid and actually watch something other than Olberman, CNN and MSNBC.
Sing it, Army Wife! And thank you to your husband for his service — from one military spouse to another. Go Navy — beat Army! (LOL Sorry I couldn’t resist!)
Dude. Thistle. No one said he did.
“Obama didn’t create and [sic] economic disaster, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney did.”
That’s not even CLOSE to being true. The economic WORLD (that’s “world” not “US” – Bush was not the “world” president – get it?) situation we are in predates Bush. Some economists track it back as far as Carter. The stock market, if one is looking at that alone, is on a slide that began around the dotcom crash. (Which, believe it or not, Bush ALSO did not cause.)
Obama, in fact, IS and WILL BE REMEMBERED BY HISTORY as exacerbating the downturn by creating an enormous amount of additional debt, which has at best only delayed the full extent of the downturn. That’s ALL he has done – postponed the day we pay the piper. Welcome the return of stagflation.
Watch the stock market in the next few weeks…
You know, Thistle, if you’d gotten your fashion sense from five years ago, and IT were that garbled, the Fug Girls would beat you like a foster kid. As it stands, it’s only your talking points that suck that bad.
CMS – right back at ya! And my best friend is a Commander in the Navy so you all are not that bad
Besides, my husband has to get to the sandtrap somehow 
“As George W. Bush famously put it when choosing to finish his golf game rather than confront the disastrous Iraq War, “Now Watch This Drive.” Elitist snob!”
Yes, Bush really should have been focused laserlike on the disastrous Iraq war in August of ‘02, almost a year before it began. Lefty logic. Ya gotta love it.
Duh, I didn’t even catch that. Oh well, it’s only facts.
Don’t forget the mantra: EVERYTHING is Bush’s fault.
Even the “balloon boy” hoax: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2009/10/26/ny-timess-frank-rich-finds-anti-bush-argument-balloon-boy-saga
Remember back in 2007 when Pelosi got elected? One of the things she promised was that Democrats had a “common sense solution” to the high gas prices…which, despite the over $100/barrel price for crude, was Bush’s fault.
It’s been almost three years since then…and no plan has surfaced. And the “it’s Bush’s fault” argument faded away shortly after.
Hmmm…
How did I miss that? I remember the war also started in MArch, 2003 as we were in Vegas on vacation. My husband was deploying the next week to Astan and was wondering if he would be diverted to Iraq. Do’h!
I wish that all Obama did was play golf.
I can’t believe that NYT editorial. I especially like the jab about Gary Condit, when it was the stupid media that convinced everyone that he had anything to do with Chandra Levy, not the police, government or general public. I think the real bad guy is Big Media. BO’s much more one of them than anything else. All flash, no substance.
Gee, I thought ‘balloon boy’ was a parable about the Obama administration. You know: Starts out all banner headlines, then turns out to be a big fake.