Posted on 06/28/2005 1:23:03 PM PDT by jeepgal
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - Former Presidents Bush and Clinton teed off Tuesday for a round of golf on the second day of a get-together by the former political foes at Bush's summer home along the Maine coast.
Chatting briefly with reporters near the first tee at Cape Arundel Golf Club, Bush and Clinton said their friendly relationship should demonstrate to people at home and abroad that political rivalries need not stand in the way of personal friendship.
The two former presidents cemented their friendship earlier this year when the current President Bush appointed them to head up fund-raising to assist victims of the Asian tsunami.
"We found that when we traveled abroad, people said this couldn't have happened in their country. The equivalent of a Republican and a Democrat — this never would happen. Well, it doesn't have to be that way," the elder Bush said.
"You can feel strongly about your principles, and we do, and we differ on a lot of issues, but that's not what tsunami relief was about and it's not what life ought to be about," he added.
Clinton, who just returned from a tour of Latin America, recalled a skeptic there asking him, "Is this deal between you and Bush real?"
When the questioner found it hard to believe that the two really liked each other, Clinton said, the man's personal dislike of his political opponents was "completely dysfunctional."
"If people are mad at each other they never hear other, and therefore they can't figure out who's right and who's wrong and where the compromise comes because they have so much personally at stake. I hope this is good for America and the rest of the world," Clinton said.
But then, moments before they headed out to the first tee, Clinton joked, "If he beats me too bad, I'm back to partisanship the next day."
Bush and Clinton each drove two balls onto the fairway, with Bush shooting from the front tees. The pair then hopped back into their cart, with Bush at the wheel, to continue the game.
Rounding out their foursome were CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, a frequent golfing partner of Bush, and Ken Raynor, the Cape Arundel pro.
Clinton arrived at Kennebunkport on Monday after an appearance in South Portland at a book signing in conjunction with the release of the paperback edition of his memoir, "My Life." Bush extended the invitation after learning that Clinton was planning to be in Maine.
The two, who faced off during the 1992 presidential race, went for a boat ride later in the day on the Atlantic in Bush's three-engine boat, Fidelity III, and then went out to a restaurant for dinner.
The visit to Walker's Point wasn't the first for Clinton, who recalled being there with other governors in 1983 while Bush was serving as vice president. Clinton said the two also developed a friendship when he visited Washington during the 1980s to represent Democratic governors at the White House.
I have no doubt that the rapist cheated.
If Lincoln had lived, would he have taken Jefferson Davis golfing?
I'll bet Bush Sr. lets him have all the mulligans x-42 wants.
They are coming out of the closet. There really isn't two parties after all. They all think alike or cover for each other.
Even in the inconsequential golf games, he would cheat with ball placements and extra shots. The way he played golf, I would come to understand, was not just a peccadillo but symptomatic of the way he approached life. During the presidential vacation to Martha’s Vineyard in August 1997, the White House doctor and I decided to document, just for fun, the president’s scoring transgressions. …At the end of the course, we were able to sneak his scorecard from his golf cart and compare it with the scores we had kept. Sure enough, when the press interviewed him following his round, he claimed he shot a 79. Actually, it was a 92.
Because they GOLF together??? I've played golf with die-hard libs...doesn't make me one.
Clinton is pandering to the swing vote for Hillary.
It's just not right that Bush sr doesn't hate him as much as we do....
How ironic! The Fidelity III?????????
Not mulligans - Billigans!
The irony of Clinton 'fessing up is that he chose to do so while playing a round of golf with New York Times writer Don Van Natta jnr, the man who four years earlier accused the world's most powerful man of being a shameless golf cheat. Writing in the latest edition of London's Observer Sports Monthly, Van Natta explained that not a lot had changed with the former president's golf habits, particularly with his tendency to take mulligans, an American duffer's tradition whereby players agree that bad shots can be retaken. "As I would soon learn, I was wrong about Bill Clinton and golf," reported Van Natta. "He does not take mulligans. He takes a type of do-over shot that is less obvious, more devious and entirely his own invention. He takes Billigans."
Did you ever play with one who engineered the transfer of critical missile technology to the Chinese, thus giving them the ability for the first time to deliver nuclear missiles onto American soil, purely in exchange for campaign contributions?
new New Republic, The
Columbia Journalism Review, Mar/Apr 1997 by Hoyt, Mike
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Meet Michael Kelly, Some Kind of Liberal
Michael Kelly became editor of The New Republic on November 11 and his first issue of the magazine, dated December 2, featured a drawing of President Clinton looking partied out, nose glowing like Rudolph's, under a headline "The Hangover" - meant to suggest postelection malaise. In the same issue Kelly wrote his inaugural TRB column (nobody is sure what the letters ever meant, but it's the first piece in the magazine, syndicated to some fifty newspapers). In its third and fourth sentences he said of Clinton: "He is of course a shocking liar. He will say absolutely anything at all."
His sixth, tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth sentences continued the theme: "He is breathtakingly cynical . . . He is an opportunist of such proportions that the only thing that exceeds his reach is his grasp. . . . he is an occasional demagogue .... He is the fairest of fair-weather friends." The fourteenth sentence added, for good measure: "He is perhaps the greatest golf cheat in the history of the game."
The problem with Slick Willie goes way beyond his politics, he is an amoral sociopath, I wouldn't allow him in my house no matter what his politics are.
Add to that golfing with a man whose wife constantly criticizes your son the president, his politics, and his party.
Ever since he played golf with Teddy back in D.C., GHWB always drives the cart.
If one former president were to thwack another former president with a 5 iron, what would the Secret Service agents do? Seems like quite a dilemma.
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