Obama and Bowling: When the Media Promoted 'Gutter Politics'

By: Greg Mitchell Now that Barack Obama seems to have his party's nomination for president locked up, he may no longer feel so bad about the media's recent obsession about his bowling skills. It's revealing, however, that ever since he famously rolled a couple of gutter balls in Pennsylvania (or was it Indiana?) he has been shooting hoops -- with reporters and camera people on hand -- every chance he gets.

Obama may be over it, but the whole "Bowling-gate" episode still bothers me.

Remember that Op-Ed by Elizabeth Edwards for The New York Times on April 27? It carried the title, ?Bowling 1, Health Care 0.? I had to look at it twice, thinking I was on the sports page. Surely it was a baseball score and should have read, ?Bowling Green 1, Holy Cross 0?? But no, her piece probed a different sort of sport ? a new brand of ?gutter politics.?

Edwards, the outspoken wife of Sen. John Edwards, criticized the media obsession with Obama?s bowling form, and low score, during the previous two weeks. Even the supposedly lofty Times was not exempt. While cable news gasbags were the worst offenders, the Times had carried dozens of references to Bowling-gate in its news pages and blog entries. On the very Sunday the Edwards piece ran, there was Maureen Dowd, right alongside, referring to the ?bowling debacle.? She didn?t mean the coverage, but Obama?s performance.

A few days earlier, Dowd had to run an embarrassing correction after she alleged that Obama had improperly accepted the donation of bowling shoes from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), when it was the other way around. Now that?s a ?debacle.?

Exploring the bowling crisis, Joe Scarborough at MSNBC had opined that Americans want a real macho man in the White House, perhaps
forgetting his unceasing attacks on Bill Clinton?s rather too-mannish behavior in office. Chris Matthews, also on MSNBC, suggested that Obama was ?prissy.?

In reply, all you need to ask is: Which president was the most avid bowler? And, of course, the answer is: Richard Nixon. He even paid $400 out of his own pocket to lease automatic pinsetters, and during Watergate went down to the basement to roll off some tension.

Actually, a search of the historical record finds that the White House bowling alley ? sometimes two alleys ? dates back to the Truman administration. But Truman (now known as a suitably tough guy) had no use for the sport. I?ve found only one photo of him bowling, which was published on the cover of Kegler magazine. Sure enough, he was wearing a tie, the button-downed look for which Obama earned much mocking.

Truman even wore a vest!

You won?t find many references to bowling when examining the lives of other allegedly ?manly? presidents, including JFK, LBJ (who couldn?t even golf), Reagan, Poppy Bush. Who was the biggest bowling advocate near the top? Dan Quayle.

Nixon and Quayle. That is really something to aspire to.

In fact, the pair who might have done more bowling at the White House than anyone weren?t even males. They were Lady Bird Johnson and Muriel Humphrey, who tried to bowl a few frames every week.

Of course, many presidents have golfed, but are you really going to tell me that this ?sport? is more macho than driving the lane in basketball ? which Obama happens to be good at? The Obama/Tiger Woods analogies only go so far, thank God. And as for bowling: Its popularity in the U.S. has been in a steep decline since the 1980s.

To get back to what?s important, here?s what Elizabeth Edwards wrote for the Times: ?The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country?s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream
media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.

?But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot
really see the whole picture.?

Edwards closed this way: ?If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie Network, but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can ? as voters ? do ours.?
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Greg Mitchell is editor of E&P and author of the new book "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits ? and the President ? Failed on Iraq."