Former President Bill Clinton appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” Wednesday night and defended President Obama’s golf habits, calling such an “important” escape from the job something of which Americans should be “tolerant.”
“Look, I think it’s important,” explained Clinton of presidential golfing. “One of the reasons I think presidents like to golf is that it takes too much time and you cannot think about anything else. Literally, I can remember … sometimes I would be out there five holes before I hit a good shot just because I was thinking about all of this other stuff.”
He also insisted that the president can always be reached if necessary.
“You always have global communications,” Clinton said. “I had a lot of international phone calls on the golf course.”
However, the former president did emphasize the fact that one needs to be aware of the optics when occupying the Oval Office and leaving it for the golf course.
“You’ve got to be sensitive to the visuals,” Clinton stressed. “You don’t want to have a play picture at a sad time.”
Undoubtedly, he was referring to the type of insensitive message President Obama sent when he appeared on the golf course smiling shortly after delivering remarks on the beheading of American journalist James Foley at the hands of ISIS militants over the summer.
