Honestly, I haven't written a lot about President Obama's golfing. It's not that I don't think it's excessive - I do - but of all the things you can find objectionable about this presidency, the golfing for me usually doesn't rise far above the level of an Internet meme. It's a symptom of leadership by a guy who is more interested in being a celebrity and enjoying the trappings of office than in actually leading. But it's not the big problem in and of itself.
But it really bothered me when I read about how he spent the past weekend, not just because of what he was doing and who he was with - although that's bad enough - but because of what he didn't do just days before:
President Barack Obama is teeing off in Florida with a trio of oil and private equity moguls.
The president is spending the weekend in Palm City in eastern Florida, at the private Floridian National Golf Club.
Obama was joined for his round of golf Sunday by Jim Crane, who owns the Floridian. Crane is a major Democratic donor who also owns the Houston Astros and golfed with Obama and Tiger Woods in 2013. He's also a major player in the Texas energy industry.
Also in Obama's foursome is Milton Carroll. He's on the board of directors of Halliburton, the oil company closely associated with former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.
Private equity investor Glenn Hutchins rounds out the president's group. He's a partial owner of the Boston Celtics.
Now you'll remember that last week, the new secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, was in Washington and wanted to meet with Obama. His outreach to the White House garnered no reply at all, and Stoltenberg finally had to settle at the last minute for a hurried meeting with Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The fact that the White House didn't even bother to reply to Stoltenberg tells you what they take seriously and what they don't. If you think your role as a leader in an alliance like NATO is important, you at least respond to the inquiry and engage in some sort of dialogue, even if for whatever reason you can't make the one-on-one meeting happen. When you blow it off entirely, the message you send is: We can't be bothered with this.
This is where the golf weekend becomes a real problem in my eyes. I don't care if he golfs, as long as he does his job and takes important things seriously. If he can find a way to do that and still hit the links, that's fine with me. But he doesn't do that. Obama has never understood that being president of the United States requires you to work constructively with all kinds of people around the world who are crucial the protecting the interests of the United States, and what's more that even includes opposition leaders in Congress and the leaders of allied nations who may not be of the same ideological thinking as Obama.
And you have to work with the people who run crucial international organizations like NATO. That comes before playing golf. It doesn't mean you can't play golf. It means you do your job first. Obama thinks being president means being a celebrity, going on talk shows and getting any tee time he wants. To the extent he views it with any seriousness at all, it concerns leading a left-wing ideological agenda, not leading a nation.
Oh, by the way, the presence of the Halliburton board member is priceless. Not that there's anything wrong with Halliburton at all. It's a great company. But it's been turned into the source of all wretched evil by the left, and if that was George W. Bush golfing with a Halliburton board member - well, you know. Because it's Obama, they won't say a word, nor will they say a word about the fact that he's once again goofing off while blowing off his actual job.
