The Associated Press has released footage that will probably be coming to a Republican campaign ad near you.
The video captures a snippet of President Obama’s New Year’s Day golf round at the Mid Pacific Country Club in Kailua, Hawaii. Obama’s long putt narrowly missed, drawing a reaction from the crowd of onlookers as the ball trickled by the hole. He then appeared to take a gimme rather than play out the hole with a short, but still missable putt (executive privilege, presumably).
Republicans have long tried to score political points off Obama’s love of golf. Mitt Romney wondered during the 2012 campaign how the President could hit the links when the country’s economy was still so weak.
“I must say I scratch my head at the capacity of the president to take four hours off on such a regular basis to go golfing,” Romney said. “I would think you could kind of suck it up for four years, particularly when the American people are out of work.”
But George W. Bush said last year that the critics should let Obama golf in peace.
