Who’s that girl? Melody makes up Obama foursome

Tongues were wagging in Washington last night when it turned out that President Barack Obama had spent Sunday afternoon golfing in a foursome that included an attractive young woman called Melody Barnes. The intrigue was not of the Clinton era variety - it was more to do with the fact that Obama's golfing days are normally boys-only occasions, so how did Melody get a look-in?

The answer could be that Obama, always conscious of popular opinion, was reacting to the media buzz that he is too chummy with the men on his staff to the exclusion of the women. Indeed the New York Times had run an article only the previous day asking: "Does the White House feel like a frat house?"

What better way to knock that on the head than rope in his senior domestic policy advisor for five hours of golf at the Army-run Fort Belvoir club outside Washington.

The foursome was made up of Obama, Marvin Nicholson, a former golf caddy who organises all the president's trips, Dr Eric Whitaker, a personal friend of the president's who is executive vice-president at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and Melody Barnes (above, with Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt). They started at lunchtime and played through until 6.0 pm when, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the sun was setting over the Fort Belvoir clubhouse.

Barnes, 45, is a former lawyer who was made director of the Domestic Policy Council in one of Obama's earliest appointments. She was a link to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, having served as chief counsel to Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995 until her new job was announced in November 2008.

Quizzed by intrigued reporters yesterday, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Barnes was not the first woman to play golf with Obama. But he later had to correct that: Barnes was, in fact, the first woman Obama had golfed with as president. "He golfed with women on the campaign trail," said Burton.

Whether one round of golf with Melody will be enough to placate those who would like to see a little less testosterone in the Oval Office is another matter. The New York Times article called Obama "an unabashed First Guy's guy" and said there was growing concern that not only impromptu sport sessions, whether on the basketball court or at the golf club, were men only, but that the decision-making process was excluding women too.

"There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn't have with the women," Tracy Sefl told the Times. Sefl is a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, who is in regular touch with women working in the Obama White House.

Dee Dee Myers, a former Clinton press secretary, was quoted as saying: "Women are Obama's base, and they don't seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle."