I wonder how Obama's miserable turn at a Pennsylvania bowling alley Sunday will play with white working class voters.
Will it turn out like President Bush in a flight suit, John Kerry sporting camouflage and a shotgun and later "reporting for duty" at the convention, and a behelmeted Michael Dukakis riding a tank?
Like Obama's trip to the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center in heavily Republican central Pennsylvania, those were stage-crafted images intended to counter a prevailing conception of the candidate.
In this case that is the notion that Obama's oratorical prowess and charisma don't earn him favour among white working class voters concerned more with economic proposals, say, than lofty ideas about political unity and a post-racial America.
So, in an effort to warm to the beer and chicken wings crowd, Obama donned a pair of bowling shoes, grabbed a ball and hit the lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania with senator Bob Casey, the conservative Pennsylvania Democrat who endorsed him Friday.
Obama rolled several gutter balls, nearly hit a strike in one frame, and picked up a spare. Final score: 37 to Casey's 71. On average, he knocked over fewer than two pins per ball.
"My economic plan is better than my bowling," Obama said. "It has to be," a man called out, according to AP.
Obama also noted he hadn't bowled since he was a teenager. It's unclear if Obama's gambit worked. By bowling poorly, he may have revealed himself as a stiff who hasn't deigned to learn a sport played by an estimated 78 million Americans every year. That Denny's, a low- to middle-brow family restaurant chain, sponsors the Professional Bowlers Association tour, speaks volumes about the demographic that dominates the sport at the amateur level.
But Joseph DiSarro, a political scientist at Washington and Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, said the low score "humanizes him." He told me:
Bowling is still a rather popular activity in western Pennsylvania and central Pennsylvania. I don't know whether 37 is going to hurt him, but I would say that his appearance at a bowling alley helped him.
The score itself, it probably humanizes him. Some people think he's a bit too much of a preppy or an elitist.
They're going after the blue-collar vote. They're trying to diminish this notion that this guy only gets the college types. He's in a bowling alley. Some people even might think he probably had a beer and a hot dog. I think it's a master stroke.
An unlike Dukakis, Kerry and Bush at the above-mentioned events, Obama didn't look awkward or uncomfortable.
"His form wasn't bad, but a lesson wouldn't hurt him at all," said Myron Mitchell, president of the Amateur Bowlers Tour told me. "We could spend an hour with him and I could have him in the 140s without any trouble."
