This piece first appeared during the 1980 presidential campaign, but since its recommendations were not widely seized upon, and since there is always the chance that someone might forget and take John Anderson seriously again, it is repeated—as you can see—here.
YOU ALWAYS HEAR THAT the CIA has secret psychological profiles of people. If the CIA really wants to know what makes world leaders tick, it ought to commission sports profiles of them.
If, years ago, we had sent a good scout down to watch Fidel Castro play ball and to chat with his coaches and the local barber, we might have anticipated Castro’s affinity for Russia. (I’ll bet he liked distant, unsubtle head coaches.)
It’s not just foreigners who ought to be checked out this way but also presidential candidates. I’m not saying a person should be disqualified from running for President because he or she likes the New England Patriots or says “Then again …” when someone is about to putt, but the people should know these things.
After all, every recent President can be definitively summed up in light of his sports involvement.
I ask you. Do we really need to say anything more about any of these men? Are any of them characterized so well by their interests in, say, movies? (Nixon and Patton, that’s about it.) Clothes? (When the chips are down, they all wear the same suit.)
No, sports is the key indicator. If you have a sense of what it would be like to get stuck watching “Monday Night Football” with someone, or pitching horseshoes with him for money, you have a sense of what it would be like to get stuck with him as your President.
Network television should jump on this. Call it trashsport if you like, but instead of debating each other the candidates could play a little televised racquetball. Not to see who wins, but so we could observe their style, which is the point of the debates.
Then, too, maybe each candidate could do a half-hour or so of color commentary on the sport of his choice. Reagan would presumably have the advantage there, but I don’t know: When he was announcing University of Iowa football on the radio, back in the thirties, he would say, if there was a running play, “It’s a hippety-hop to the left,” or “It’s a hippety-hop to the right.” And people complain about Howard Cosell.
The Freedom of Information Act does not require a candidate to reveal whether he could ever dribble with either hand, or hit to the opposite field, or how he felt when somebody ran a sweep at him for the first time, or whether he knows who Arky Vaughan and Charlie Trippi are, or how he stands on the designated hitter.
I have been able, however, to acquire a certain amount of conceivably revealing intelligence on Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and John Anderson.
Of course, notes Clark, cross-country “attracts loners. It’s a very mental, individualistic sport. You’re struggling against yourself.” Hmmm.
Clark always told his teams, “It’s nice to be a gentleman, but it’s nicer to win.” In a Softball game in Plains before the 1976 presidential election, Carter’s press secretary Jody Powell hit a comebacker to his boss, who was pitching. Carter threw to first, but Powell was called safe. The future President descended upon the umpire with all the prestige of a presidential candidate and also with all the certitude and heat of Earl Weaver. The umpire would not budge. Carter stalked back to his position. Powell turned to a reporter and said, “You know, he really is an arrogant little son of a bitch.”
Unanswered question: Carter writes in Why Not the Best? that when he was growing up he played baseball ten to the side. The extra player backed up the catcher. Can we really believe that anybody formed by ten-man baseball will fulfill his pledge to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy?
Reagan played guard at Eureka College in Illinois. “No star, just an average player,” says Ralph McKinzie, who was Reagan’s coach. “He was a good loser, too. Of course, he got plenty of practice at that because we lost so often.”
As a radio announcer, Reagan did simulated broadcasts of Cubs games—off a ticker that brought him play-by-play in rather the way that diverse newspapers have brought him canned facts for his speeches. His shows were more popular than other announcers’ on-the-scene reports.
Eureka has a new sports center called the Reagan Complex. Yet the man’s critics accuse him of being simplistic.
Unanswered question: In 1931 the Eureka Pegasus listed Reagan as one of the men in the line up front who “afford the beef.” Will anyone Farther back in line be able to afford beef if Reagan gets elected?
Rick Manning of Newsweek’s Chicago bureau once tried to josh Anderson in a sports-related way. Manning noted that there was an opening for manager of the Chicago Cubs, and he wondered whether Anderson might be interested in the job. “Why, no,” Anderson replied, with no hint of amusement. “I don’t think I’d be interested at all.”
Unanswered question: What if, say, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe visits Washington and Anderson is President, and the two are sitting around getting to know each other, and Mugabe—he’s a Pat Boone fan, so he may well follow pro football, and he may have relatives in Detroit—says, “Hey, how about those Lions?”
And there is an awkward pause, and then Anderson says, “This administration punctiliously supports Zimbabwean self-determination and stands squarely in favor of cultural exchange between our two nations. But … I don’t recall any lions. When did you send them?”