When Barack Obama and John McCain want a break, Obama is more likely to hit the basketball court or cook up some chili, while McCain would prefer to eat barbecue and watch a boxing match.
The two are separated by their ethnic backgrounds, a generational gap, sports preferences and tastes in food. Neither is thought to have any particular talent, such as playing the saxophone, like former president Bill Clinton.
When it comes to outdoor activity, former president Ronald Reagan was known for horseback riding and George W. Bush likes hopping on his mountain bike, but Obama has had the basketball bug since he was young.
“I could play basketball with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent,” he wrote in his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
The gift of a basketball his father gave him when Obama was 10 years old may have had something to do with his fondness for the sport.
His father left for his native Kenya when Obama was two and saw him again only briefly at age eight, when the elder Obama came bearing a bright orange basketball for his son.
Today, playing a bit of basketball helps the 46-year-old Illinois senator unwind, and also feeds his superstitious streak.
The day of the first Democratic nominating caucus, January 3, he played basketball in the morning and won the day’s contest in the midwestern state of Iowa.
A few days later, he tossed only a few hurried baskets in the morning and he lost the primaries to Hillary Clinton in the northeastern state of New Hampshire and the western state of Nevada.
At the end of January, on the day of the South Carolina primary, he played, and he won the state’s vote.
After that Obama made it a rule to play a solid game of basketball the morning of any vote, he told the television newsmagazine “60 Minutes”.
McCain, 71, calls himself a boxing “fanatic.” He and his wife Cindy regularly attend matches in Las Vegas, and recently attended the duel there between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather.
The Arizona senator had some success as a boxer while at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland in the 1950s, and the sport fits his tenacious, combative temperament.
Asked once about the parallel between boxing and politics, McCain responded with a laugh: “There are probably more strict rules in boxing than in politics.”
When the adversaries are armed with forks, they tend toward classic American dishes and do not necessarily serve as nutritional examples for the rest of us.
Obama prefers typically Southern classics like French fries and fried chicken over fish and vegetables. He also likes to stew up a pot of chili with red peppers and beef. His recipe has made the rounds on the Internet.
McCain’s soft culinary spot is for marinated and barbecued pork chops, and recently invited journalists with him on the campaign trail to join him for a friendly chat around the grill.
In the throes of the campaign, McCain is known for sticking to a diet of doughnuts and soda, and his wife makes sure he can eat hot dogs every day if he wants to.
Diametrically opposed in most every way, the Vietnam war hero and the symbol of multicultural America could find common ground at a card table.
New Yorker magazine described McCain as an “avid player” in the past and Obama, asked about his hidden talents, had admitted: “I’m a good poker player”.
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