George W. Bush was a baseball president. Understanding baseball was the key to understanding his methods. In baseball you have to maintain consistency over hundreds of innings, racking up statistical victories. Steady relentlessness is everything, and the view is long. Barack Obama is a basketball president. In basketball you set up the play in a fast-moving situation, looking a few steps ahead.
Applying this to the wrangling about the stimulus package, what we have today is a Democratic president who is politically armed to the teeth, with the country behind him, the party heavyweights gathered close, and a legislative majority, and he's the one making nicey-nice and heading up to the Hill. And we've got the Republicans, dangerously exposed and vulnerable, and they're the ones complaining and being obstreperous. That sure looks like a set-up to me.
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Baseball is patience. It's all about the character of the man at bat and the lonely pitcher facing him off the mound. The rest of the team has to deal with the tension between active viligance and boredom, a real test of spirit. I like where you're going in this piece, but I'd call GW a football president - the same things apply that you mentioned, but played out by thick-skinned gladiators. Football is for meat-headed, ham-fisted warriors; baseball is elegant.
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