Sports

Barack Obama: More to the left than you thought

by Kaitlin | June 1, 2007 at 12:15 pm

1267 views | 5 Recommendations | 2 comments

With a slew of potential candidates attempting to become the most interesting or personable man or woman for the job (since, at this point, politics matter little), profiles depicting the human sides of potential Presidents are running rampant. The latest is a NY Times piece about Barack Obama's love of pickup basketball (complete with edifying video) which he picked up while growing up in Hawaii. Barack gets in there, all elbows, and plays with the boys (sum up: good jump shot, plays to the hard left)...pretty good way to see a future President, no? Or does it mean anything at all?

Oh, and in case you need proof: Here's a teenaged Obama on the courts, courtesy ABC.

From John F. Kennedy’s sailing to Bill Clinton’s golf mulligans to John Kerry’s windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence, on cracked-asphalt playgrounds and at exclusive health clubs, developing a quick offensive style, a left-handed jump shot and relationships that have extended into the political arena.

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marwan190

at 23:48 on November 10th, 2008

Welcome our president!

Michael Jordan is next.

מעצבי וילונות מובילים באזור השרון

Rhonda J Mangus

at 01:51 on November 11th, 2008

Kaitlin, very interesting. I never gave thought to the favorite sport of a president before as a "personality decoder". The video interview of the president-elect's brother-in-law is interesting as well. It seems however that the ABC video is no longer available.