calling on them to join Bush for jogging in 15 minutes; usually the reporters watch Bush from the
sidelines, but this time he was magnanimously inviting them to come running with him. There wereno volunteers. Bush then bullied Rita Beamish of Associated Press into running with him, 13 laps
around a football field for a total of 25 minutes. But even after that exertion, Bush was still full of
fury. He proceeded to launch a diatribe at the press corps:
The rest of you lstrong America. A fit America should include photo dogs [Bushspeak for photazy guys, get out there and run. A fit America is a fine America. A fit America is aographers] as well as (^)
print reporters who slovenly sit back in the grandstands while some of us are out running.
Bush then attacked the "boom men," who hold microphones on long poles to pick up Bush's
remarks. Not long before, a boom man had accidentally droppeOval Office, and Bush had apoplectically complained of ruined antiques; had it been the Theodored a microphone on a table in the (^)
Roosevelt desk? Bush railed that if the boom men exercised more, they would have more "strength
in the forearms to keep these microphones up in the air." One reporter responded to the tirade: "I do
not get paid to play with the president when he feels like playing." [fn 21]
When on vacation, Bush has always maintained a frenetic, hyperkinetic pace. After winning the
1988 election, Bush repaired to Delray Beach, Florida, to cavort with his plutocrat friend William
Stamps Farrish III. Despite the exhausting rigors of the campaign, Bush "spent the bulk of his day
exercising and resting: a quarter-mile swim, a 20-minute run, and a nap." He came back from a two-
mile run in an "upbeat, almost giddy mood." [fn 22]
Bush's hyperkinetic antics at Kennebunkport during September, 1989 were described as follows by
a first-hand observer:
It was just an average day on President Bush's vacation.
Hungering to catch a bluefish, he packed up his speedboat Fidelity and headed out to sea. But when
he remembered that he had forgotten First Lady Barbara Bush, he turned the boat around and
accidentally ran over a board, which broke a propeller.
Undeterred by his disabled boat, the president took his party to the horseshoe pit, where they tossed
several games for about 45 minutes as Mr. Bush exclaimed, "Mr. Smooth does it again" with each
ringer. But soon that got old, and it was time to head to the golf course for 18 holes.
This is President Bush, a man of nearly manic movement. All during his vacation, the last thing hedid was relax. He's up at the crack of dawn for jogging, out on the tennis courts, teeing off for golf, (^)
pitching horseshoes, fishing, swimming, entertaining friends.
Bush, in sum, "can't sit still"; he even accepted a dare from his grandchildren and dove off a stone
pier into the Atlantic Ocean, which is kept cold along the Maine coast by the frigid Labradorcurrent. [fn 23]
George Herbert Walker had reformed the rules of golf, eliminating the stymie; George Bush
transformed the game into a manic exercise called "speed golf," whose object is to complete 18
holes in the briefest possible interval of time. According to one journalist who attempted to matchBush's record of 1 hour 37 minutes for a threesome, as compared with almost four hours for
leisurely golfers. Speed golf may not be for everyone,
but it is President Bush's game, however. He calls it cart polo. Bush has taken a leisurely game and
turned it into what one reporter called a forced march-- on wheels. "He barely gets out of the cart,