President Bush Is No Mulligan Man

The public glimpses of President Bush on his summer vacation here are rare and generally orchestrated. He picks up a hammer at a Habitat for Humanity building site. He goes to church. He stops at a roadside coffee shop for a burger. Each projects an image: the compassionate conservative. Piety. Down-home guy.

In his political appearances--he made two last week, bringing in nearly $2 million for three Republican candidates--he speaks about his passion for America.

And he demonstrates passion--for golf.

We’re not talking speed golf, the game that drove his father, the nation’s 41st president, to complete 18 holes at a blistering pace of just under seven minutes per hole. Nor is the son’s game the outdoor schmooze-fest that Bill Clinton could drag out for hour after hour (slowed by his penchant for mulligans).

Rather, the 43rd president brings passion to his game and to competitive sports in general, say his golf partners here.

He neither dawdles nor races. Indeed, his game is something of a metaphor for his decision-making style. Anguish and delay do not come into play.

“He plays very quickly; he doesn’t waste time,” said Kent Starr, a local dentist whose name is so close to that of a Clinton nemesis that it gives one pause.

Starr had only nice things to say about Bush’s game: “He’s very, very athletic. I can’t believe he doesn’t play more than he does. He doesn’t cheat. He takes golf very seriously.”

Bush has remained fairly secretive about his game here, owning up to what he called a tie in his second outing. Further research turns up this description: Bush and his partner, Ned Snyder, a local gastroenterologist, won one round; Starr and his partner, state Sen. David Sibley, won the other.

Sibley was circumspect in his golf report. There was one thing he wanted to make clear: The president took no mulligans--the practice of redoing a shot that displeases the golfer.

“He plays the ball where it lies and he counts every stroke.”

Not like other presidents?

“No comment,” Sibley said.

The score? Bush was reported, in purposely vague language, to have “probably shot 83.”

Crawford is the town closest to the 1,600-acre ranch Bush bought near the end of his term as Texas’ governor. The town is no more than an intersection, a flashing stoplight, a block of stores and a community of houses, churches and an elementary school.

Waco is the nearest city, and it has seized on the president’s presence to help it erase the stain of its proximity to the Branch Davidian compound, where David Koresh and about 80 followers of his religious cult died in a siege with law enforcement officers on April 19, 1993.

A very active Chamber of Commerce provides updates of Waco happenings each month, just what Bush might seek in his “Home to the Heartland” vacation--perhaps the first presidential vacation given a theme title that sounds like a rock band’s summer tour.

There’s a workshop on calligraphy, a duck festival, a game warden’s banquet and a one-day course on preserving family heirlooms.

The business group directs visitors to any number of barbecue stops: Uncle Dan’s offers Texas Taters (in which more than a dollop of sour cream and butter land inside a split baked potato to provide a bed for chopped beef, shredded cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce). Vitek’s provides the Gut Pak for $5.50. That would be your chopped brisket, sliced sausage, sauce and pinto beans, surrounded by sliced pickles, jalapeno peppers and raw onions. All on a bed of Fritos corn chips.

Both meals give one an appreciation for chicken soup.

This is cricket season in Waco--as in insects, not the sport. The critters make parking lots come alive. They are spotted in the beverage aisle of the H.E.B. supermarket near Baylor. The Hilton Hotel is home to so many that its management sent a note to guests making light of the wildlife, pointing out that the local hot spot is a bar named “Crickets,” which is infested by the other summer residents accompanying Bush.

It is also the season of dramatic summer storms. Much has been written about the heat--yes, it settles in the upper 90s day after day, but this is Texas, so stop complaining--but little attention is devoted to what the heat brings: a lightning show that dances across the sky, sometimes in three directions at once. It’s such commonly accepted entertainment that evening softball games and marching band practice continue uninterrupted.

At the Branch Davidian compound, the wind blows a line on a flagpole; the snapping rope, the patter of grasshoppers and a faint whisper of wind are the only sounds at midafternoon. A thermometer reads 107 degrees. It is not necessarily accurate, but it is believable.

A visitors’ center is closed; two spiders--their yellowish backs nearly 2 inches long--sit idle in their webs, seemingly on guard duty.

Stones bear the names of Koresh and each of his followers who died. Another stone memorializes the four agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who died.

Yet another remembers the 168 people killed in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, an acknowledgment of the link between Timothy J. McVeigh’s anger over the government’s treatment of the Branch Davidians and his bombing two years later.

They remain ever-present reminders that link Waco with tragedy--notwithstanding the Chamber of Commerce T-shirts proclaiming Waco “43’s neighbor.”