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It’s easy to dismiss the importance of how sports and politics commingle in American life. But it’s also a mistake.
There’s an excellent new book by our former CNN colleague Chris Cillizza to bring you up to speed. “Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency” is about more than just the sporting lives of US presidents, although those details and backstories are quite interesting. I had no idea that Ronald Reagan was deep into weight lifting or that Donald Trump played college squash. (Cillizza also has a newsletter.)
In a larger sense the book is about how politicians try to manipulate their images, what voters expect from their elected leaders, and how the country has evolved since the 1950s. Dwight Eisenhower’s ties to golfing and the suburban sprawl created by the interstate system that bears his name is no coincidence.
Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, and now, Cilizza argues, pickleball voters.
I talked to him about the book, presidents and sports. Our conversation, conducted by email is below.
WOLF: Two things I know about you, Chris Cillizza: You know a lot about presidents and a lot about sports. So this book is a natural fit. But what’s the thing that inspired you to write it?
CILLIZZA: You nailed it! Sports and politics are my two passions and I have long been looking for a way to write about both of them in a book format.
The idea actually came from a series of conversations between my editor, Sean Desmond, and I about what we could do in the space. Credit where credit is due, it was his seed of an idea that led to the book.
What so intrigued both of us was that with one notable exception — LBJ — every president from Eisenhower through Biden had formative…
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