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Abhishek Khajuria, Sports and the American presidency: from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 4, July 2024, Pages 1813–1814, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae154
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What happens when the president of the United States engages with sports in a way that it becomes a cornerstone of his tenure? What effects does it have on American citizens? What ramifications does it have on his politics? Sports and the American presidency seeks to answer these questions. This edited volume contains 13 chapters, which are divided into three parts: Presidents and their sports; Sports and their presidents; and Athletes and the presidency.
The four chapters in the first section explore four presidents who saw sport as a tool of nation-building and stressed the health benefits for individuals. Here, Theodore Roosevelt is presented as the president who brought sports into the public consciousness. Roosevelt's emphasis on preventing the emergence of a generation of ‘mollycoddles’ led to a framing of physical fitness and sports as an essential part of the nation's progress (p. 21). Six decades later, John F. Kennedy was particularly worried about the physical fitness and health of the Americans, which he saw as essential for American superiority in the Cold War. Kennedy's family prized athletic excellence and that helped him capture national audiences with his athletic image. The third chapter turns to Richard Nixon, who became the first president to engage with sports as a fan. According to Jesse Berrett, Nixon used football for political purposes remarkably, rallying behind what he called ‘real America’ (p. 63). The last chapter in this section examines the involvement of Bill Clinton in the Major League Baseball strike to save the ‘national pastime’ (pp. 93–4). Clinton's efforts, however, showcased the limit of presidential persuasion.
