WASHINGTON – Simone Manuel, Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles will not be eligible to run for president until 2032, although Michael Phelps hits 35 years old in 2020. After watching these Olympians display so many traits we admire – persistence, discipline, grace, goal orientation, resilience, and inner strength – perhaps we should consider drafting one of them some day.
It is both a blessing and a curse that the Summer Olympics happen during the election year. The blessings are obvious. Especially in this campaign, it is a relief to watch a display of American talent that truly brings the country together. It’s a nice change of pace to see participants judged by objective standards (with all the caveats that gymnastics scoring invites). It is good to see these men and women achieve because they absolutely earned it.
And during a campaign in which one of the issues is whether the United States has lost its “greatness,” a glance at the Olympic medal board suggests otherwise while a look at the members of Team USA suggests how our diversity is part of our strength.
There is, finally, a lesson for political commentators in watching our sports colleagues do their work. I’ll always treasure a 2004 NPR essay by the legendary sports writer Frank Deford pushing back against the idea that political writing is too much like sports writing in focusing on the “horse race.”
Beyond pointing out that our never-ending election seasons more resemble pennant chases than horse races (which “last about a minute and half”), Deford argued that sports journalists are typically more straightforward in assessing the good and the bad in their realm. There’s no pressure for false balance, and he sees sports journalists as better than we political scribes at “probing, questioning authority, not being afraid to criticize.”