Folks.
This newspaper, which I write for, keeps something called the Presidential Golf Tracker. It is maintained by the Center for Measured Outcomes, which I have never trusted, because nobody needs to measure an outcome. You know an outcome when you see it. It’s the thing at the end.
But I looked at the tracker, and I want to thank the Center, because for once it has measured the right thing. When I checked it last week, it said the president’s golf travel has cost about $276 million across his two terms, and that he has played 140 rounds in this term alone, counting from January of last year. The Center thinks this is a scandal. The Center has never worked a day in its life.
In 2016, he said, “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf.” The fact-checkers love to bring this up. Folks, read it again. He said he would not have time. He did not say he would not golf. And he doesn’t have time. He has to make time. Do you know how hard it is to make time? I have been trying to make time to clean out the garage since 2011. He has made time 140 times. That’s not a man on vacation. That’s a man with a system.
Here is the part the Center buried in its own methodology. A government audit found that one trip to his club in Florida costs about $3.4 million. Every round costs $3.4 million. Folks, nobody spends $3.4 million on a hobby. You spend that on a job. My hobby is whittling, and the most I have ever spent on it is a Band-Aid.
The tracker also shows that he is golfing at about twice the pace of his predecessor from Chicago, who played 333 rounds in eight years. People present this like it’s bad. Twice the pace. When I worked at the tire shop, if a man did twice the work of the guy before him, we gave him a plaque. We didn’t make a chart.
The Center also lists a president named Eisenhower at 800 to 900 rounds. I’m not going to get into Eisenhower. He was a general. Generals are outside all the time. It doesn’t count.
Now, I have written to the Center to request my own bar on the chart. Lifetime, I have played golf twice. Once was a real round, in 1994, at a course near Abilene, where I shot what I believe was a 140, which, now that I think about it, is the same as his round count, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. The other was miniature golf, in Branson, where a windmill cost me four strokes and, I’d argue, my faith in windmills. The Center replied that it would review my request “as the schedule allows.” I’ll be waiting. I have time. I am not the president.
Tammy asked why I wanted to be on a chart of presidents. I told her it was about accountability. She said, “Yours or theirs?” I said both, and went outside to think, where Reagan, my eagle, had found a golf ball in the yard and was standing on it. Tammy says Reagan is a pigeon and the golf ball is an egg. Tammy has never seen an eagle work.
THE LIST (things that are dead to me this week)
- The word “vacation,” when used about golf.
- Eisenhower’s numbers, which were a long time ago and in black and white.
- Windmills, at any scale.
- The Center for Measured Outcomes, except for this one chart, which I am framing.
- Golf carts with a speed limit.
- The pelican, who I’m told has been seen near the Branson windmill. I knew it.
I’ll be back on the course, figuratively, next week. Literally, I’ll be in the garage, making time.
And that’s the gut truth.