LEISURE

President Obama nurses a sore hand after punching a wall when he lost the checkers game to his daughter.

Obama Board Game Loss Casts Doubt On Presidency

WASHINGTON (CAP) - While the GOP was cruising to dominating victories in two gubernatorial match-ups Tuesday night, the White House was quietly releasing a story that many political insiders see as a more pivotal assessment and referendum on his fledgling presidency. The scant two-paragraph story admitted that President Obama on Tuesday played his 8-year-old daughter Sasha in checkers.

And lost.

"OMGZ, loosing to a lil black girl like that LOLZ-presidency ovah!" Newt Gingrich tweeted on Wednesday. It was a sentiment readily shared by many politicians and media analysts.

"Look, this isn't checkers in the age of Nixon, this is something entirely different," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said Wednesday on MSNBC's Hardball show. "If he can't even beat a child at checkers, how is he going to compete on the world stage with someone like [China's] Premier Jiabao or [Cuba's] Raul Castro?"

"Can you imagine if Abraham Lincoln lost at Go Fish to Robert Todd Lincoln, or Martin Van Buren let his son John kick his ass at Parcheesi?" Hardball host Chris Matthews asked. "What kind of political chaos, political upheaval, political je ne sais quoi, would that have unleashed, Andrea? Oh my God, can you imagine??"

It's not all bad news for the president, however. Presidential scholar Julius Sanchez told CAP News that president/offspring contests rarely get to the point where they can seriously damage a presidency.

"Bush II of course never lost to the girls, so that was never an issue for his administration," Sanchez noted. "He even went so far as to put Jenna in the hospital once with overzealous endzone celebrations, as I like to call it. I believe that was over a game of Pick-Up Sticks.

"Bill Clinton was never allowed to play anything with Chelsea after she reached puberty, and Ronald Reason didn't do 'faggy' games, as he once told his son Ron. Based on recent history, I just don't see it being a huge issue," Sanchez said.

Still, Sanchez admitted that were the president to continue to lose to his daughter, he could see his polling numbers start to falter and his party's prospects in the 2010 mid-term elections start to dim. And it's not like he can avoid the issue. Teabagging groups across the country have already begun demanding a checker's rematch, with a November 21st Washington protest - tentatively called the Rematch March - already planned.

Your move, Mr. President.

CAP Gaming Reporter Louie Smuckers helped contribute to this article.