NEW YORK George W. Bush may be the fittest American president in awhile, and he once co-owned a major league baseball team, but as public unease about his country's Iraq adventure grows, is he even losing the sports pages?
Ian O'Connor, in his USA Today column today, blisters the president for his bicycle riding escapades, and other alleged missteps, while Americans are dying in Iraq in greater numbers. He recalls a better Bush moment at the 2001 World Series, after 9/11, contrasting it with the past weeks.
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001020042Here's the column...
Bush on vacation, out of touch during tough times By Ian O'Connor USA TODAY
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The president couldn't have looked weaker, more distant, more out of touch with a nation tiring of a war its leader can't adequately define.
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But nobody wants to hear about his impressive pulse rate and body-fat percentages when American boys and girls are dying overseas, and when lawmakers start throwing around the dreaded V-word - Vietnam - in the daily dialogue on Iraq.
Sometimes sports and war are necessary companions under the same dateline - Franklin Roosevelt told Kenesaw Mountain Landis to keep baseball running during World War II - and sometimes they are not - Dwight Eisenhower interrupted one of his countless golf outings at Augusta National to announce that the United States would resume testing nuclear bombs
Bush didn't need to keep his Tour-de-Farce date with Armstrong even if Cindy Sheehan had left "Camp Casey," named for her fallen son, to be with her ailing mother. No president refusing to spend an hour with the parent of a dead soldier should spend a day basking in the glow of a cycling champ.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050823/sp_usatoday/bushonvacationoutoftouchduringtoughtimes