Obama matches Bush's golf rounds

What a president does for recreation, of course, is his own business, but it is a casualty of life in the White House that presidential recreation also becomes the public's business.

The question arises as conservative Internet channels today are abuzz with President Barack Obama's golfing — his 24th game as president logged on Sunday. It took Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, nearly three years to log that many golf games.

CBS News' Mark Knoller, who keeps a faithful count of presidential travels, delivered a report by Twitter on Sunday, as the president put in a day of golf at Fort Belvoir: "Today - Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months."

(The documentarian of presidential travel previously has advised us that Bush spent more than a year of days at his ranch in Texas during two terms, and more than a year at the family compound at Kennebunkport. Christmas vacations and summer holidays racked up serious time, as did many weekend jaunts.)

But then, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, Bush gave up golf. ""I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in- chief playing golf,'' he explained. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as, you know, to be in solidarity as best I can with them, and I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal...

There had been that unfortunate moment when, club in hand, Bush had said: "We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killings... Thank you, now watch this drive.''

When Bush's knees dictated that he give up jogging, he turned to mountain-biking with a passion — tearing up the paths of nature preserves and military bases with a fervor that left partners in the dust. (The former president is pictured biking with Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong in a White House photo here.)

When Bush went biking in the privacy of his remote ranch, there was no way of knowing how often he rode the trails. But Knoller graciously shares with our Washington Bureau today a count of those times when the president, press pool in tow, left the White House with a mountain bike: Bush mostly rode around the Beltsville, Md., Secret Service Training Facility, but also biked at Fort Belvoir and a few times at Marine base Quantico.

By Knoller's count: 140 days of bike outings from the White House.

When a president goes golfing, the public sees little of it — only the ritual comings and goings of the president from the White House, such as the long afternoon spent Sunday at Fort Belvoir, out of the White House shortly after noon, back by about 6:30 pm.

Obama had his good friend Dr. Eric Whitaker with him on Sunday — the two are pictured above warming up at a course in Hawaii before Obama's inauguration (photo by AFP / Getty Images). He also had his domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes, along for the day — the first time that a woman had joined the president's golfing party this year.

Obama plays basketball too (see White House photo above), and has turned the tennis court at the White House over to hoops. His wife, Michelle Obama, laments that he usually beats her at tennis.

So he golfs, he jumps, he serves — all in the name of recreation.

But then, who's counting?