President Barack Obama returns clubs to the cart while golfing at Vineyard Golf Club, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, in Edgartown, Mass., on the island of Martha's Vineyard. President Obama is taking a two-week summer vacation on the island.Steven Senne/The Associated Press
Barack Obama's golf obsession has been a thing for a while. He played his 100th round as President in June, 2012. Unlike basketball, which the President has played since his youth, Mr. Obama took to the links later in life. His desire to make up for lost time has been well documented. Mr. Obama played nine holes on a rainy Sunday in May, 2011, before joining his security team in the Situation Room to watch live video of a Navy SEAL team killing Osama Bin Laden. The President never bothered to change out of his golfing attire.
Americans apparently like to see their presidents out doing stuff. George W. Bush was regularly on display cycling and tending to his Texas ranch. Mr. Obama likes to play basketball and golf. We get to witness U.S. presidents at play because a pool of reporters and photographers follows them everywhere they go. When you have a pack of hungry dogs under foot, you have to feed it occasionally or risk its members going feral.
As with so much else during his star-crossed presidency, Mr. Obama suddenly is facing heavy criticism – and even blatant mockery – for taking time to enjoy his outdoor hobby. Dana Milbank, a columnist at the Washington Post, ripped Mr. Obama this week for putting his desire to play golf ahead of the optics of running off to golf course soon after he ordered a new bombing campaign in Iraq. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the latest spiritual leader of the Tea Party movement, told an audience in Iowa this week that Mr. Obama should "spend less time on the golf course and more time doing the job to which he was elected." Even the mongrels that rely on the White House of scraps have taken to openly mocking the way the President chooses to spend his downtime. "Well, for those of you who guessed soccer … I'm sorry to disappoint but POTUS is once again playing golf," Michael Shear of the New York Times wrote Tuesday in a pool report that is transmitted to hundreds of recipients.
There's something sad in all of this. There are thousands of Americans who bend over backwards to squeeze a round of golf into their schedules, and there probably are even more who keep their vacation plans even when things are hectic at the office. Yet Mr. Obama is ridiculed for it. There's a website that tracks Mr. Obama's golf games alongside a tally of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama's time spent golfing has increased as Washington's productivity has decreased. Congress reached a new low last month when it broke for its August recess without a response to Mr. Obama's request for funds to adequately shelter the thousands of young Central American refugees spilling over the southwest border with Mexico. The message from House Speaker John Boehner to Mr. Obama: you fix it. Days earlier, Mr. Boehner won a vote in the House giving him a mandate to sue Mr. Obama for abusing his executive authority. The episode took dysfunction to a new level, although it's already mostly forgotten as the U.S. finds itself facing new entanglements in the Middle East and caught in a difficult geopolitical chess match with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Obama presidency will be a difficult one for historians. His victory inspired hope and broke barriers. He survived an historic recession and within two years signed legislation that broadened health coverage and overhauled banking regulation. Yet the recovery from that recession was painfully long, raising lots of questions about whether more could have, or should have, been done. Mr. Obama's greatest achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was undermined by the administration's failure to execute after the bill was passed. The new banking rules still are being finalized four years after the Dodd-Frank Act was approved by Congress. History may judge things differently, but for now these are messy victories.
But it's also true that a nation thrust its hopes for better days on Mr. Obama and then slowly abandoned him. The moderate Republicans and independents that preferred Mr. Obama to Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008 have done little to force the Republican leadership in Washington to work with the White House over the Tea Party insurgency. Mr. Obama's initial approach to governing was to let Congress work out the details. Republicans accused him of failing to lead. This year, Mr. Obama said he would ignore Congress and go it alone. Republicans pledged to sue him for it. In November, those same Republicans could win enough seats to retake the Senate. This prospect makes it hard to imagine Mr. Obama is fully enjoying his vacation.
I once ran with a pack similar to the White House press pool. We covered the U.S. treasury secretary, so the group was smaller. John Snow, who was Mr. Bush's second of three treasury chiefs, once asked his entourage to name the sport that most closely mirrored life. I offered hockey was and quickly dismissed. For Mr. Snow, there was only one answer: golf, a sport where success rests entirely with the individual, just as it does in life. This always struck me as a very American conclusion. But maybe Mr. Snow was right. Mr. Obama started out playing a lot more basketball, a team game. All those hours more recently devoted to a more solitary pursuit should be as preparation for Mr. Obama's final two years in office, as he most likely will be facing them alone.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article contained incorrect information. This version has been corrected.