Sporting preferences and aptitude for the Presidency

You’d think that there was no connection between one’s sporting preferences and whether you’d make a good President or not.  But Miami philosopher Colin McGinn reckons otherwise.   He claims that because George W. Bush liked jogging and mountain biking “loner sports” whereas Obama likes basketball, we can infer all sorts of things about Bush’s “capacity for hardwork … confidence” and we can apparently see that he lacks “dedication”.

When I first read McGinn’s post yesterday, I thought he was taking the mick.  I mean … Obama’s a better President because he likes basketball?  It’s just seems crazy – like saying that Obama’s a better President because he likes apple crumble.  It just seems an irrelevent factor.  I mean … take the best Prime Minister’s of the last century.  From an ideologically neutral perspective (success would be measured by re-electability, success in implenting a fairly broad agenda etc), I think that’d be Asquith, Lloyd George, Attlee, Thatcher and maybe Blair.  Did they like team sports like football or rugby?  No idea.  Nor does anyone seriously interested in political analysis care.  In fact, the only PM whose sporting preferences I know is Major (who loved cricket), and he was a terrible PM!  Of course, that an idea seems crazy doesn’t mean it’s false.  But McGinn’s argument isn’t helped by manifestly ridiculous claims such that mountain biking requires no skill (if this is true, but McGinn on a mountain bike and see if he can do it anywhere near as safely or quickly as someone who’s been doing this for years).

Most interesting to me is McGinn’s claim that we can infer from his sporting preferences that Bush lacks dedication.  The basis for this seems to be that he doesn’t like team sports.  But so what?  This doesn’t mean he lacks dedication.  Bush likes jogging apparently, and it’s perfectly possible to show lots of dedication to jogging.  Becoming a half decent distance runner (I don’t know whether Bush is a decent distant runner or not) takes time and training.  People who take jogging seriously would just find McGinn’s assertion silly, and perhaps a bit offensive.

I’m not involved in any team sports (and never really have been – I used to play doubles badminton but I always preferred singles), but it’s still possible to show dedication in sports/fitness activities that aren’t team based.  In running, you can improve one’s fitness in measurable ways – being able to run a greater distance, or being able to run a distance over a shorter time – that sort of thing.  If a person enjoys working towards those sorts of goals who the hell is McGinn to say that they lack dedication.  Or take the sports I most like to watch, powerlifting (for an idea of what powerlifting involves, see these videos 1, 2, 3 and strongman).  They’re not team sports.  But they involve measurable goals and certainly take dedication and hard work to compete in.  But I don’t think they’re any more worthy sports than those Bush likes – they’re just that, my preferences.  Nothing normative follows from that.  It’s odd that McGinn can’t see that, and it’s sad that he’d knock sports like distance running, mountain biking (and presumably powerlifting).