Has golf become Barack Obama's "escape mechanism" from reality?

Salena Zito talks about golf, and economics. I talk about psychology. But let's start with golf:

Most golfers, according to Western Pennsylvania Golf Association spokesman Jeff Rivard, play 20 or so rounds a year. The president has played more than 70 rounds in two years -- amid a recession, three wars, a Mideast meltdown, and an economy not flourishing under his stimulus and bailout programs.

"That is well above average, especially for a man with a schedule like that," said Rivard. "Pretty much double the average.

Plus, he looks like a douche:

But why spend all that time away from the office? Maybe he doesn't like what he has listen to:

Several Democrat strategists candidly admit that the president has not been very effective at communicating in a manner that reaches voters. "They do not believe he shares their values and their concerns," conceded one.

Simple things, such as Obama not receiving economic briefings for more than a month, make voters scratch their heads -- especially when the jobs data are anything but optimistic...

But why would he go out golfing instead of doing what he was hired to do, what he assured us he could do - working tirelessly to improve the economic fortunes of America?

Maybe he doesn't want to get those economic briefings any longer because he knows what they are going to say - his prescriptions have failed, the economy is moribund, additional stimulus is unpopular and unaffordable, his ideology has proven invalid, and the best way out of this mess he exacerbated is to cut spending and taxes, and leave the private sector to work what magic it can.

But certain folks - say,intellectually inflexible ones - are either unwilling to or incapable of wrapping their mind around a new worldview, or experimenting with ideas they have spent a lifetime condemning. Egotistical people are the worst, seeing a change of mind as an admission of failure, a public humiliation, and are unable to bear the thought of suffering loss of face, so to speak, for abandoning a long-held and vigorously defended position.

So what to do, when the only way out of a life-threatening predicament is repudiation of all you have held dear?

Well, you can admit error and chart a new path, to save those whom you lead.

Or, of course, you can plug your ears, send away the messengers of doom, and run off to the golf course and shoot a quick 18, seemingly oblivious to the world collapsing around you.

Seems to me as if Barack Obama has already made his choice.