January 2, 2009--Mulligan Nation

To tell you the truth I didn’t much like the look of Barack Obama tooling around the golf course during his Hawaiian vacation. It reminded me more than I am comfortable with of George Bush and Bill Clinton who, during their presidencies, were frequently spotted kicking back while racing about in motorized golf carts with fat stogies stuffed in their mouths. Good-ol’-boy style.

I have been really liking the idea that pick-up basketball is Obama’s sport. It fits him better and is more in tune with both the times and the culture that I am hoping he will both reflect and contribute to changing.

Now here he is revealed as just another duffer president. This will make him the 15th of the last 18 presidents to hack their way around the links.

But at least it doesn’t appear that he is into Commander-in-Chief mulligans.

For the uninitiated these are do-overs. If you flub your tee shot, for example, hooking the ball into the pond, if you are granted a mulligan you get to take another shot without any penalty. In real golf, if you whack your ball into the water and hit a second tee shot, if you’re keeping score legitimately, when you hit that second drive it will count as your third shot—the first was the ball that plopped into the drink, the second is a penalty stroke assessed against you, and thus the second drive counts as your third shot.

Bill Clinton, what a surprise, was as famous for granting himself mulligans (it’s supposed to be your opponent, as a good sport, who does so) as he was for granting pardons.

As the quintessential baby boomer he wanted everything both ways—to have what he self-indulgently wanted without taking responsibility for his behavior if it was transgressive. Mulligans on the golf course; Monica Lewinsky in the oval office.

So there is some mitigation regarding Barack Obama’s golfing when, we learn, as the New York Times reports, that he isn’t into do-overs. (See brief article linked below.)

His national trip director, with whom he plays golf, says that he deals calmly with golf’s inevitable frustrations and has never seen him either throw his clubs in the water or curse when hooking a ball off a tree—excellent qualities for a president when that red phone rings at 3:00 AM; and that when it comes to keeping score, he turns in an honest scorecard.

“When he’d shoot an 11 on a hole, I’d say, ‘Boss, what did you shoot?’ And he’d say, ‘I had an 11,’ and that’s what he’d write on his scorecard.” Admirable.

Not so admirable, on the other hand, is another report in the Times—about how the College Board this March will begin to allow high school students who take the SATs to decide which scores to have sent to the colleges to which they are applying, “hiding those they do not want admissions officials to see.”

Admissions folks from selective colleges are not so happy about this new so-called Score Choice option. The want to see as much of the unvarnished truth as SAT kinds of numbers can reveal about a candidate. They accuse the College Board of doing this for marketing reasons—if students can select which results to send they will be encouraged to take the SATs as often as possible in that hope that from a large bushel of scores they will be able to pick and choose enough good ones to get admitted to the Ivy League.

Kids from affluent families already take the test many times and, some claim, that this option will only further advantage them over poorer kids who can’t afford to do this.

In addition, this do-over, mulligan-like option only further panders to a youth and parenting culture of manipulation and over-protection that is ultimately disabling of young people. Mommy and daddy will take care of everything. And so now will the College Board.

If the College Board wants to make some useful changes in their test-taking practices maybe they should allow college applicants to take the SATs just once. No PSATs, no multiple attempts. Allow kids to take the test only one time. And take responsibility for how they do.