For generations, through foreign war and domestic tumult, the presidential attitude toward athletes had this consistent air: Proud, preoccupied, and not a little bit patronizing. Didn’t he have more important matters to tend to? Big Daddy in the White House didn’t bother much with sports.
Yes, President Jimmy Carter wrapped himself in the 1980 U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey team, fresh off its gold medal upset in Lake Placid, and used that photo-op to condemn the Soviet Union. But overall fun-and games were left to the kiddies, even when they tried to get serious. President Lyndon Johnson never said a public word when, some 50 years ago, Muhammad Ali refused induction amid into the U.