The Scariest Number Isn’t Hours Spent Golfing

In Alaska, the summers are short. If you want to get anything done during those few months you need to work long hours. When I was a younger man, in Alaska sometimes on a job we’d work what’s called “six-tens”. This meant six ten-hour days per week, for a total of sixty hours. It was long, sometimes exhausting labor, but heck, I was a young man suffering from chronic testosterone poisoning. That meant I either didn’t mind the long hours … or I damn well wasn’t going to let my workmates know the times when I did mind the long hours. It was just part of the life we led—suck it up, buttercup.

I was reminded of this when I saw the Washington Post article full of what they seem to think are some scary numbers. Here’s their graphic.

The WaPo article pointed out, for example, that in his first month President Trump spent twenty-five hours golfing. But they didn’t mention the scariest number, maybe they didn’t notice it.

Many media articles thought it was frightening that he spent more time playing golf than on his intelligence briefings. There was much angst expressed by the talking heads on this accord. But none of those articles said one word about the scariest number.

Elle magazine, bizarrely, thought the scariest number was the fact that they highlighted in their sub-headline, “He’s spent over half his presidency with non-work time” … huh? I fear innumeracy is on the rise. I guess they think he should be working more than twelve hours each and every day … But no, “non-work time” is not the scariest number.

Even Hillary Clinton got into the game. She thought the scariest number was how many hours he spent golfing versus the time he spent on “Foreign relations”. What is it about Trump and golf? Likely it’s because Citizen Trump gave President Obama so much grief about playing golf, and what goes around comes around … but no, that’s not the number that should have Hillary and the Democrats worried. That’s not what they should focus on.

The scariest number, the number that should be setting the Democrats hair on fire but isn’t, is the following:

Over the first month of his Presidency, Donald Trump worked an average of 64 hours per week … I thought we were electing a carrot-topped President Geezer, and instead we got freakin’ President T. Energizer Bunny! He’s my age, seventy, and that joker is working six tens plus an extra half day each week on putting his agenda into practice, and he still fits in six hours a week of golf?

Dang, dawg, go for it!

Kinda puts Hillary’s whining about golf in a different light, huh?

Gotta say, folks … if a man is working sixty-four hours a week on getting the job done, on my planet he can golf as much as he damn well pleases. This is doubly true considering that part of the six hours per week was when he was golfing with the Prime Minister of Japan. Although I didn’t count it in his work hours, that is assuredly a part of his job, and a very important one. Discussions on a golf course are often very productive for reasons of framing that I detailed here under the heading “Never discuss your relationship with someone unless you’re walking with them.”

If I were a Democrat, 64 is the number that would be causing me to lose sleep. When most Democrats are just arriving at work, the President has already put in an hour or two implementing his agenda and undermining the Democratic agenda.

And long after most Democrats have gone home, he’s still beavering away, getting his plans done and their plans undone … like I said, the scariest number for Democrats in all of the Washington Post data should be sixty-four, the number of hours per week the President is working. It is a measure of just how hard the Democrats will have to work to get back into power.

Here, I’ve done the wash and hung it out to dry. So of course the sun has gone behind the clouds … but heck, I have a washing machine, and I’m not working sixty-four hours per week, so I’m ahead of most of the world, life is good.

w.

PS—How much time should a daily intelligence briefing take? He spends about ten minutes per day seven days a week on that.

Should he spend more time on it? I have no clue, I’ve never been President. However, I assume that it’s called a “briefing” because … well … it’s brief.

I’m also sure that he has people who spend all day every day on security and will brief him at a moment’s notice if it is required.

Finally, I voted for him and the US elected him to make those kinds of decisions about how to allocate his time most productively. Deciding how much to work on which projects is his job, not Hillary’s job or the media’s job. I do not think he will take chances with the security of the US.

PPS—as usual, I ask politely that you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING, so that we can all understand your precise subject.