(From the Rocky Mountain News)
The new president has joked that he is going to replace the White House bowling alley with a basketball court, that being his game of preference. Figuring if Barack Obama does for basketball what his predecessor did for cycling, nothing much is going to change.
Anyone who did not have a bicycle before George W. Bush went racing with Lance Armstrong did not rush out to buy one any more than a new tennis racket had to be had upon viewing Bill Clinton in shorts.
All presidents have their favorites, though Dwight Eisenhower is probably the only one to have a real impact on his game, it being golf and his favorite place Augusta. The coincidence of Arnold Palmer did not hurt, either.
Still, it is assumed Obama will have no trouble getting up a game any time he has a free moment, having surrounded himself with similar sorts, not including his 6-foot-5 brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, currently coaching at Oregon State University.
Robinson famously played Obama in a pickup game to see if he was worthy of his sister, a noble gesture, but it is doubtful Obama’s ability to hit the open jumper really had anything to do with the resulting first family.
Not to worry, bowlers, there is not enough head room in the White House bowling alley to play basketball there, unless everyone were to shoot as Shaquille O’Neal does free throws. One does imagine, however, that if Obama wants a court, he’ll get a court.
Whatever the sport – George H.W. Bush liked horseshoes – it is important for a president to be active and to encourage activity among the electorate.
There are various examples on the Internet of Obama playing basketball, and he does not embarrass himself, but it is unlikely that when those teams were chosen, he would have been the first one picked.
His high school team won the Hawaii state championship, to which he contributed two points in the final game, but he was otherwise and consistently on the bench.
There is in that, of course, inspiration, that the future is not limited just to starters. The more you think about it, in fact, bench warmers tend to do much better in the real world.
Obama is well suited to carry on the grand tradition of presidential approval of sweat, and if, unlike Obama, most of our presidents have not pressed their obligation to actual perspiration, they have always wanted us to know they have been paying attention.
This has led to the presidential phone call, made to locker rooms and clubhouses at moments when the last thing on anyone’s mind is being courteous to intruding politicians.
With such a call, Richard Nixon once awarded the collegiate football championship to Texas, still considered by Penn State people as the greatest of all Nixon’s indiscretions.
Obama has offered an opinion, which now carries much more weight than before, that a national football playoff makes sense, though among the challenges facing him, us and the world, it was not vital enough to be included in his inaugural address.
Basketball is increasingly an international game, and if it has traveled abroad much better than baseball or football, so much the better. How handy it might be to have a Yao Ming in common, or a Manu Ginobili.
Obama certainly seems as fit and eager as any preceding U.S. president, at least as much so as the first Roosevelt, against whom these things have never before needed to be measured.
It was Teddy Roosevelt, we recall, who saved football for us, stepping in when it was about to be banned forever as the worst kind of uncivilized violence.
Roosevelt saw instead the sort of robust mayhem that a forward-looking nation needs in order to feel good about itself.
So while other cultures were producing weak-eyed wusses with paint brushes at the ends of their fingers or leaping ballet dancers pretending to be swans, we were building the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Basketball is an improvement over stock-car racing, which was the enthusiasm of Jimmy Carter, and it is certainly less noxious, depending on whether you are guarding shirts or skins.
No matter. It could be worse. Obama could be fond of rowing, which is the only game where the winner sits down and goes backward.
Or to be inclined as was Nixon, who confessed his greatest wish after being president was to be a sportswriter.
Some aims are too high for mere mortals.
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