He mocks his teammates for bad shots and fouls. In basketball, a game he’s been playing all his life, Obama is a relentless teaser. Perhaps Boehner can give the President tips. As Politico’s Glenn Thrush points out, rare video footage shows Obama has similar hitch in his backhand – causing his head to pull up and the ball to dart of course. He has an estimated 17 handicap and, staff says, isn’t planning to win when he plays with Boehner. Obama, meanwhile, is new to the game – taking it up regularly only after he became President and found it was a great escape from his protective bubble. It’s ugly, but it gets the jobs done: Boehner’s got a 7.9 handicap and is one of the best golfers in Washington. “If you play with him, you can’t watch him swing,” Cincinnati businessman Jerry Vanden Eynden, a lifelong friend, told the Associated Press. In hitting the links, they might find out they have more in common than they think.īoehner is famous for his hideous swing: a backhand waggle he picked up when he switched from hitting lefty to righty nearly 30 years ago. While the relationship between Obama and Boehner is more important than ever, the truth is, it’s not easy to get to know someone surrounded by 20 staffers in the Oval Office or through a handful of phone calls.
This time, things are going to be infinitely more difficult. Boehner won $34.5 billion in cuts to the 2011 budget. Round one ended minutes before the government shutdown in April. Saturday’s game serves as the unofficial start of the final round of negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that it’s only now, two-and-a-half years into Obama’s presidency and six months into Boehner’s speakership, that they are finally hitting the links. And the Speaker has hardly been anxious to be seen by the Tea Party – and his freshmen – buddying up with the guy they consider the enemy.
The President savors his golf– one of the few ways he can walk freely outside without a battalion of Secret Service – and usually limits his foursome to close aides and friends: no business allowed. In the six months since former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs first proposed a golf outing for the two politicians, neither man had made it a priority to find the time.
#Time to golf 18 holes free#
Follow Obama’s Chief of Staff William Daley called his counterpart in House Speaker John Boehner’s office last month to ask if the Speaker and a partner might be free for a round of golf on Saturday, June 18.
0 kommentar(er)
