By now, I am sure everyone has seen the photographs of President Obama shirtless on the beach, sporting an abdominal six pack. It is my understanding that achieving this particular feat of human anatomy requires two things: being unusually thin and doing a lot of crunches.
Should the president be doing crunches? I can see a case for it. If nothing else, it must confer a certain level of humility for the most powerful man in the world to have to spend the time moulding the largely useless muscles in front of his intestines. At the same time, I cannot help but feel like he should be using his time more productively, working on pressing issues of domestic or foreign policy.
Perhaps he finds crunches to be similar to how I find cycling – a good bodily distraction that aids with thinking. If so, perhaps he is getting his attractive photo shoots without a productivity cost.
One other thing that occurred to me recently is that Democrats in the United States must find young voters a bit maddening. If their turnout rate wasn’t so abysmal, Democrats would win more elections. At the same time, U.S. laws and policies overall would be more aligned to the needs and preferences of young people. When young voters stay home on election day – at least in most areas – they are probably sabotaging both the Democrats and themselves.
Being POTUS is an incredibly stressful job. I’m not going to begrudge the guy an hour or two a day to burn off stress and maintain physical fitness, even if he’s not thinking hard about policy while hitting the gym. Also, those pictures are from two years ago, before he took office so it’s entirely possible he’s not spending the same amount of time working out as he did while campaigning.
If he finds it stress-relieving, more power to him. I think most people find crunches to be a combination of tedious and mildly humiliating.
You must be the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. Complaining because the president is in shape or takes care of himself? really? while the majority of the US population are fat and lazy, he leads by example in this case. You are probably one of the fatasses that is contributing to our ridiculous health costs…
I find having a POTUS who is in good shape inspiring, especially in North America where the consequences of us generally not being in good shape is monumental. It contributes to one of our greatest concerns – spiralling health care costs arising in part because people are not in good shape.
I do not recall when I last did abdominal excercises (probably weeks) . . .
5 minute pause
I just did three minutes of abdominal excercises and two sets of 25 push-ups that I would not have done except for this blog discussion and the POTUS being in shape. After all it is New Year’s Day.
(PS Thanks Jessica for introducing me to POTUS as a convenient acronym for the President of the United States. I do not recall hearing it before)