Barack Obama Sinks 3-Pointers as McCain Hits the Ballpark
Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate who frequents gyms along the campaign trail and seems able to sink basketball 3-pointers at will, is vacationing near his childhood home in Hawaii, where his skills once earned him the hoops nickname "Barry O'Bomber."
Perhaps he will take advantage of the leisure time to dazzle much more crowds with his basketball skills or other physical aspects.
"I am going to go bodysurfing at an undisclosed location," Obama said as he arrived in Honolulu Wednesday.
But while Obama's away, his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, may play, too. He can take in another baseball game, as he did recently at Yankee Stadium, or practice his professed passion for hiking around his Arizona home.
For as long as there have been presidential campaigns, candidates and presidents have sought to portray themselves as rugged, athletic men or women of action. Some jogged. Some played golf. Some parlayed earlier sports associations into political careers. And even some politics were at battlfield.
"As far as I could tell, Obama would be our 1th basketball playing president," told Richard Waterman, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, who wrote about presidential image-making in "The Image-Is-Everything Presidency: Dilemmas in American Leadership."
After news cameras caught Kerry windsurfing during an unguarded moment on vacation, his Republican foes used the images to argue in an ad that his positions changed with the wind.
Even as McCain hobnobs with sports figures like cyclist Lance Armstrong and New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi, his campaign has taken shots at Obama's athletic image. A recent ad showed Obama sinking a 3 point shot with soldiers in Kuwait, while noting, "He made time to go to the gym but canceled a visit with wounded troops."
Obama also caught flak after rolling gutter balls at a bowling alley this spring. Some analysts hepe it may have doomed him in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.
By the time, John Sayle Watterson, who teaches sports history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, and wrote "The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the American Presidency," said reporters who asked that he didn't hope Obama's bowling failure would amount to much.
"I told that everybody ... at some time in their careers has thrown a gutter ball," Watterson told ABCNews.com. "As it turned out, maybe I was wrong. He lost the election and, really, the electorate wasn't impressed that he had gone into a bowling alley and tried to be one of them. ... He was out of his environment."
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