Reading The Pictures: I'm Sure Smirky's Golf Game Wasn't That Hard To Cut Loose

(before de Mello)

(after de Mello)

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

-- Bush Says He's Not A Golfer In Wartime (WAPO - May 14, 2008)

In light of the disclosure above, I think most people will look at this White House shot from May 5, 2007 and simply make the argument that Bush views golf as a sport and cycling as physical fitness. That was, after all, the circumstance of this White House pic.

Knowing Bush, however, and the avid biker he's become (1, 2), I think the reason he has forsaken golf is not because he feels it's inappropriate so much as because of the immediate shame he felt having been caught on the golf course at the wrong moment.

As WAPO goes on:

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

He said he received word of the attack while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Tex. Press reports at the time indicate he took the call from Condoleezza Rice, then his national security adviser.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said in yesterday's interview.

Just like he never felt any need for collective sacrifice, it is just not in Bush's make-up to have made this decision in the broader context of "the appropriate behavior to set in wartime." (If that was the case, then how would one explain the multitude of examples -- such as this one or this one -- where Bush, in the most public of wartime settings, has acted like a complete goof ball?)

No, being the concrete and stubborn guy he is, there just is not much difference in Bush's cocky pre-war, adolescent manner and the wartime manner he brings to everything, including replacement forms of recreation, such as fishing and biking. It's the same smirky smirk.

Perhaps the jolt he received actually broke through Dubya's otherwise impermeable wall of denial. Between truly examining his larger, gung-ho attitude toward the war, however, and adopting the gesture (just between him and himself) of jettisoning his golf game, I'm sure the golf wasn't that hard to cut loose.

For more of the visual, visit BAGnewsNotes.com.

(image 1: J. Scott Applewhite -- AP via WAPO. image 2: Joyce Boghosian/White House. May 5, 2007. Beltsville, Md. whitehouse.gov)

Follow Michael Shaw on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bagnewsnotes

Comments

[shanen]

I'll be darned. The Karl "Elvis" Rove really has left the [White] house. He was never that out of touch with the political realities, and he surely would have pulled Dubya's shut-up string if he was still among the puppeteers there. I guess the Big Dick Cheney really did run him out of town. This idea of solidarity without golf is so stupid that you're almost sure Dubya came up with it by himself--except that Dubya generally isn't even that creative in his stupidities.

I'd like to see Rove do a special commentary on Dubya's golf comments. This should call for his best Elvis impersonation, since he was still in the house when Dubya was in the process of giving up golf.

[THEhillbilly]

"Smirky"?! Good lord. You're lamer than a three-legged dung beetle. This is not news, of course, but it's a timely reminder.

[sugarmoes]

"...and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do..."

interesting choice of words... it's not "worth it"...

i'll finish the sentence... it's just not "worth it" anymore... politically.

hey duhbyuh... you're whole presidency (existence?) has been "just not worth it".

[fairwitness]

No, Bush, in his incomparablely awkward syntax, just meant that continuing THAT particular round of golf "was just not worth it anymore to do". The news of the de Mello catastrophe intruded on his delusions of golfing grandeur and ruined his buzz. Reality as rude-but-temporary intrusion in an otherwise groovy idyll.

He indulged in the game at later dates, during which, I guess, it WAS, after all, "worth it anymore to do".

We are in need a whole new language to adequately express our disgust for this man.

[MrHHusseinMA]

There are pictures of him playing golf in October 2003. He is lying to us again!

[themunz]

Above all else, the game of golf expects personal integrity as a given. The game assumes that the player will volunteer any transgression of the rules. Does that sound like GWB?

[NotWaldo]

Golf is 99% mental. He probably wasn't very good at it anyway !

[TRYKER]

If he has a golf course at Crawford, how would anyone ever know IF he was golfing or not...no one ever gets on the ranch.
A bigger gesture would be uh um oh say...like stop the warmongering and killing of innocents anywhere and everywhere.

[HenryClay]

So he doesn't go to golf courses.
Or the funerals of any soldiers killed in his wars.

[Jen85]

If being a liberal is about being filled with hate like 90%of the comments on here are then sign me up as republican. Bush has attended some funerals of lost servicemen and talked to some of the mothers who have lost their children in this war. It's just like everything else, the liberal media doesn't want you to see that or anything good he does so they never report it. Sites like this and some of the liberal media tilt things how they want you to see it...some times it's not how it really is. I have friends whose brothers have gone back to Iraqi on more than one occasion and done more tours because things in that country are changing for the better. The Iraqi kids idolize some of our servicemen like rock stars when they see them, the women come out into the streets to offer food, it's not uncommon to hear a thank you from some of the Iraqi people. I've heard my friend say that her brother can't understand our media not reporting all the good things that are happening, it's hurtful. It's not all the bleak scenes the media wants you to believe it is. Just be thankful we live in a great nation where we can get on forums like this and disagree about our own government if we so choose to. I choose to support mine...but that's my choice and I'm glad I have a choice.

[texasprogressive]

Oh sure, like conservatives aren't full of hate? Haven't you ever read anything by M'Ann Coulter or Michael (Wiener) Savage? Talk about hate. I guess it's par for the course for Repugs to to through life with blinders on about their own hate-filled rantings.

[coexistor]

Jen85, if we truly had a 'liberal media', Bush's and Cheney's impeached asses would be on the stand right now answering to war crimes charges.

[indypete]

Thank you, Herr Goebells.

[rilke1218]

is this the same reason he gave up reading camus?

[mach]

Hey...all you fanatical Bush haters....

How
is
that
impeachment
coming
along?

[SamEllison]

What does your post have to do with mourning our dead troops?
Sounds to me like you are a fanatical America hater....

[zendem1]

As well as your lobotomy evidently. Not sure which is needed the most..Guess it's a tie.

[BushBites]

Translation:

My advisors didn't want photos of me playing golf getting out when soldiers were dying in my Vanity War.

[Boboday555]

Boy those neo-cons have a funny idea of sacrifice don't they?
But, what did you expect from a guy who went AWOL to avoid Vietnam, but still has the nerve to refer to himself as the WAR PRESIDENT?

[robeson]

What did he give up for killing?

[sleepless]

Another post suggests that his knees were bad, thats why he stopped golfing. Regardless, I want him gone. I want habeus corpus, the magna carta back. I want John Edwards a.g.