Bush, Obama: sport, language

Our new president has literary and athletic skills. Not only can he write and speak eloquently and grammatically (his inauguration speech was meticulously crafted); he is also a fluent mover on the basketball court, with good coordination and ball sense. His predecessor was notoriously clumsy around language; he spoke as if language were a disease from which he was trying to recover (I’ve often wondered how bad his spelling and grammar are). His athletic activities seem confined to jogging and mountain-biking, neither of which require much in the way of skill or talent. His father can play tennis reasonably and the son must have been exposed to the game as a youngster–yet you never hear of George W. on the court. I suspect his athletic preferences reflect a simple lack of (a) talent and (b) dedication. There is thus a striking difference of skill in the two presidents–in language and in athletics. I suspect this tells us a lot about both men–about their natural abilities, their capacity for hardwork and focus, their level of confidence, their treatment of others. Obama, as a ball player, had to learn to work with others; Bush just churned away on his own. Obama grasped and exploited the power of language; Bush seems to hate language, or at least not to be on its good side. Above all, I see in Obama all the virtues of carefully acquired skill–intellectual and athletic. In Bush I saw clumsiness and indolence.