{"id":3621,"date":"2019-12-20T15:56:25","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T14:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=3621"},"modified":"2019-12-28T18:51:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T17:51:31","slug":"the-case-for-president-trump-as-a-sportsman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/the-case-for-president-trump-as-a-sportsman\/","title":{"rendered":"The case for president Trump (as a sportsman)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas is just around the corner, but president Donald Trump will be excused for not being in a celebratory mood. This week the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of impeachment charges, and while Trump will probably never be forced to resign, the stigma of \u2019high crimes\u2019 will forever be associated with his name.<\/p>\n

Let me therefore offer a more positive assessment of the 45th U.S. president, an assessment based on his demeanor as a (wannabe) sportsman.<\/p>\n

Recently I\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0against \u2019autocrats\u2019 participating in sporting activities. While presidents rarely qualify as autocrats, the present musings can nevertheless be read as complimentary remarks to my previous contribution in the curious field of statesman studies.<\/p>\n

On top of that, I take the opportunity to provide a belated counterargument to Rick Reilly\u2019s best-selling book published earlier this year. Titled Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, Reilly\u2019s expos\u00e9 trashes the main character\u2019s extravagant claims, some of which incidentally predate his presidency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump being a \u2019nonstop\u2019 liar, Reilly rallies to defend the so-called integrity of the club-and-ball sport by dissecting the president\u2019s tall stories in more than 200 pages \u2013 that\u2019s right, the reader is faced with more than two hundred mostly entertaining pages of golf gossip.<\/p>\n

For golf players, \u2019the stain of cheating is so much graver than winning or losing that we live in mortal fear of being called a cheater,\u2019 Reilly exclaims.<\/p>\n

My oh my\u2026 Here we go again! I wonder if golfers also strive to \u2019do their best\u2019 in order to benefit from the proverbial \u2019joy of effort\u2019? If so, they surely let \u2019fair play\u2019 rule supreme and always remember that \u2019participating is more important than winning.\u2019<\/p>\n

Did I forget something? Oh yes, the mythology of \u2019good loser\u2019 according to which the wretched runner-up puts a smile on his\/her face, shakes hands with the lucky bas\u2026 I mean winner and saunters away.<\/p>\n

Coming back to America, if and when Trump actually claims to have won \u201918 club championships\u2019 and keeps on bragging in the same vein, where\u2019s the harm? Why should anyone take umbrage at innocuous babbling?<\/p>\n

As the veteran journalist Rick Reilly himself can attest, inflated claims coupled with a whiff of arrogance make good copy. Besides, Trump\u2019s golf stories appear simply amateurish when compared to the trash talk of Muhammad Ali, arguably the most venerated sports personality of the past century.<\/p>\n

In short, Trump the golfer doesn\u2019t \u2019explain\u2019 Trump the president. Motormouths are part and parcel of every sport. Trump\u2019s golf talk merely makes one wonder, especially this week, whether he should have chosen to channel his formidable energies into sport instead of politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas is just around the corner, but president Donald Trump will be excused for not being in a celebratory mood. This week the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of impeachment charges, and while Trump will probably never be forced to resign, the stigma of \u2019high crimes\u2019 will forever be associated with his name. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-okategoriserade"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t