Liberty & Union: Obamboozled

My fellow Republicans & those of the right-wing press like to pillory President Obama for spending too much time playing golf. I am reacting specifically to a recent posting to the Republican National Committee's FaceSpace page:

While in California last weekend highlighting the hardships caused by droughts in the region, President Obama spent a bulk of his time at water-thirsty desert golf courses.

Obama's Presidency in Two Words? Double Bogey.

Make no mistake, I'll all for pillorying Mr. Obama over the parade of horrors that has been & continues to be his misbegotten presidency. But I've never really understood this critique. Where is Mr. Obama more likely to affix his John Hancock to a wide-ranging executive order of dubious constitutionality, in the Oval Office or on the links? Where is Mr. Obama more likely to deliver a speech that is naught but a pack of lies, before a carefully screened audience of fanatical supporters at a staged photo opportunity or in a sand trap? The more time the president spends golfing, the less he can further tarnish America's standing amongst our allies, the less structural damage he can inflict on the still-fragile American economy, & the less he can undermine the vital checks & balances of our Constitution that secure our liberties & hold tyranny at bay. We should want President Obama to golf more! The more he golfs, the better off is the American body politic! So, my friends of the right, whether you call yourselves conservative, classically liberal, neoconservative, or reactionary (but not libertarian—those isolationist, gold-worshiping snakes in the grass can take a long walk off a short pier), I urge you not to mock B.H.O. for golfing. If anything, gently urge him to spend the remaining three years of his devastating presidency golfing as often as is humanly possible.

Meanwhile, the parade of horrors persists. Iran's enrichment of uranium has been enshrined as a "right" in an international agreement for the first time ever; the unconscionable slaughter continues in Syria; there is growing chaos in the Ukraine, the Central African Republic, & in a hundred other hotspots where our influence & leadership have waned; China continues aggressively to push fancifully expansionist territorial claims, increasingly back up those claims with the implicit threat of martial force; & our European allies seem to trust us less than they ever have before. That Nobel Peace Prize is looking more & more deserved, isn't it?