Last night’s debate inspired total panic on the left.  For a campaign whose motto is “Forward”, there was enough political side-stepping in the post-debate review on the left to make viewers wonder if they had accidentally tuned into the Discovery special on Christmas Island’s crab mating migration.  Probably the best sour grapes line of the evening was that the president didn’t have as much time to prepare, on account of being president and all…

When the tears of sympathy stopped flowing, I got to thinking about what Obama might have done to get ready for the debate.  Where in Obama’s 24/7 schedule of managing the free world and turning around the Great Recession could he have possibly found time to prepare for the most important debate of his presidency?  Then it hit me… a crazy idea that would involve some serious soul-searching sacrifice for Obama.  What if, bear with me now, Obama had spent 33% of his golf time playing with congressional Republicans?

Historic Golf Course Multitaskers

President Obama has played 104 rounds of golf since he took office by the last count.  The president is a notoriously slow golfer and takes around 4.5 hours per round of golf.  That means that he has golfed for approximately 468 hours since taking office.  Given that a normal work week is 40 hours, that means that Obama has spent about 11.5 weeks of his presidency chasing around the dimpled ball.  That averages out to just over three weeks a year spent on the golf course (in addition to one month of vacation).  With the one notable exception of the “golf summit” round with House Speaker Boehner, most of Obama’s three golf weeks per year are spent with celebrities and advisors who spend the day trying to shank drives and tell the President how great he is.  “Sacrificing” just one of those weeks to discussing the economy with House and Senate Republicans while playing golf might have helped the President prepare for someone actually disagreeing with him off teleprompter.  It could have provided 27 days of prep time for the debate in addition to the 3 days he spent in Vegas prepping against debate legend John Kerry.

There would have been other benefits to taking a multitasking businessman approach to golf and conducting a little business 33% of the time he was on the golf course.  It might have been possible to convince at least one of your new golfing buddies to have voted for any of his major legislation like Obamacare or Dodd-Frank.  That would have provided some shred of evidence for the public that President Obama isn’t the most divisive partisan president in our nation’s history.  It might have also been possible that one of those golf buddies could have convinced Obama to support Simpson-Bowles, which would have provided a great bit of evidence that the president isn’t the most divisive partisan president in our nation’s history.  Finally, the golf outings would have provided photo evidence and talking points that Obama was constantly trying to work out deals with the congressional Republicans… and not the most decisive partisan president in our nation’s history.