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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE SPORT METAPHOR IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC:
MEANING IN CONTEXT

presented by

Stephan R. Walk

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THE SPORT METAPHOR IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC:
MEANING IN CONTEXT

By

Stephan R. Walk

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of Health Education, Counseling Psychology
and Human Performance

1990

ABSTRACT

THE SPORT METAPHOR IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC:
MEANING IN CONTEXT

By

Stephan R. Walk

The use of sport as a metaphor is a pervasive aspect of American political discourse,
yet has never been empirically studied. Public speeches of Presidents Kennedy through
Reagan are examined for their content of sport metaphors. Identified metaphors are
considered as contributing to the formation of political knowledge, and therefore
constitutive of political thought (Miller, 1979). Further, such metaphors are asserted as
establishing verbal political paradigms (Pocock, 1971) whose meanings are best
determined within the historical context in which they are used (Raynor, 1984), rather than
within a preestablished theoretical or normative perspective. Examining economic and
partisan speeches, the study concludes that Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan
used sport metaphors much more than Democrats Kennedy, Johnson and Carter.
However, Johnson's use of a substantial sport metaphor leads away from the conclusion
that sport is necessarily a politically conservative American institution, as the identified
metaphors of all three of the Republican presidents are shown to range from superficial, to
moderately substantive, to substantive usages. Johnson's metaphor of American life as a
"footrace," the fairness of which must be insured by government spending for the poor, is
shown to be rooted in liberal American politics and opposed by Reagan's conservative

references to individual initiative in the metaphor of "athletic character."

Copyright by
STEPHAN R. WALK
1990

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Sandra Johnson and William Walk, my
stepfather, Stanley Johnson, my brothers David, Michael, Brian and Matthew, and my
friends Jeffrey and Kimberly Klocke and Richard and Marilyn Peterson, whose care and

support have been my inspiration.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Dr. Bo Anderson for his willingness to act in the role of both Thesis
Director and advisor to me under trying circumstances, and for sharing his vast knowledge
and creative ideas in the writing of this thesis. I wish also to thank Dr. Deborah Feltz and
Dr. Folke Lindahl for their advice and suggestions as members of my committee. I would
like also to express my appreciation to Dr. Jayne Schuiteman and Dr. Annelies Knoppers
for their excellent advice and encouragement. I would also like to thank Dr. David Rohde,
Dr. Robert Hariman, Dr. Roderick Hart, and Dr. Charles Atkin for their guidance in the
early stages of this work. Charles Trevor is also to be thanked for his tolerance of both my
ideas and the certainty with which they are expressed. I would also like to convey my
sincere thanks to Dr. Vern Seefeldt for helping to make my continuing education possible

and for making available the resources of the Youth Sports Institute.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
CHAPTER ONE .......................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1
CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................... 12
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ......................................... 12
The Formation of Verbal Political Paradigms ................................. 12
Language .......................................................................... 17
Metaphor ........................................................................... 20
A Critique of Past Works on the Sport Metaphor ............................. 28
CHAPTER THREE ....................................................................... 41
METHODS AND PROCEDURES ................................................ 41
Definitions ......................................................................... 41
CHAPTER FOUR ......................................................................... 46
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................... 46
The Superficial Metaphors of U.S. Presidents ................................ 49

A Moderately Substantive Sport Metaphor--'Ihe Game Plan Metaphor
Reconsidered ................................................................... 56

Substantive Sport Metaphors in the Political Transformation from

Johonson to Reagan ........................................................... 63
CHAPTER FIVE ........................................................................... 79
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .............................................. 79
LIST OF REFERENCES ................................................................. 87
APPENDIX ................................................................................ 92
SPEECHES SELECTED FOR THE STUDY .................................... 92

CHAPTER I
Introduction

The notion that sport is a reflection of the society in which it takes place is widely
accepted in sport sociology (Lapchick, 1986). There is increasing recognition, however,
that to consider sport in this passive manner is to ignore many of the ways in which sport
structures widespread perceptions of social reath (Clarke & Clarke, 1982). In the United
States, for instance, sport has consistently been called upon as a metaphor for
understanding the nature of American life. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
public discourse of American politicians. President Woodrow Wilson was reported to have
said, "I have always, in my own mind, summed up individual liberty, business liberty, and
every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common to the sporting world, 'A free
field, and no favor"' (quoted in Safire, 1968). It is my purpose in this thesis to explore the
manner and implications of the use of the sport metaphor among modern United States
presidents in their public speaking. Of primary interest are the meanings which recent uses
of the sport metaphor have conveyed to the mass citizenry about American life and the
American political process.

A cursory examination of past and current political speech, political and business
journalism, as well as the ordinary conversations of people in general, reveals that sport
language is a pervasive aspect of American discourse. The apparent necessity of Sports
WWW (Palmatier & Ray, 1989) lends credence to this
conclusion. Given the prevalence of sport language in society, there has not been a
corresponding amount of attention paid to such language within sociology of sport
literature, let alone a consideration of how sport might be functioning metaphorically.
Within discussions of sport and the political realm, only two rather speculative attempts to
deal with the sport metaphor (Balbus, 1975, Lipsky, 1981) exist, and their age attest to the
fact that this subject has been, for whatever reasons, virtually ignored by sport

1

2
sociologists. As MacAloon (1987) stated, "...among no people known to us in history

have sport models, discourse, and ways of thinking so thoroughly colonized politics, a fact
often noticed but not yet investigated, much less understood" (p. 115). In the meantime,
sportive language and metaphor continue to be used by a diversity of individuals, including
United States presidents, indicating that it is performing at least a useful if not central role
within American politics.

A perusal of sociology of sport texts reveals that many include portions which
concern "sport and politics" and these seem largely to start from the premise that the
distinctions between the two are clear. From here, the efforts are directed at explaining
along four general dimensions how these distinctions are blurred. First, the use of sport by
governments in international affairs as a means of promoting the presumably evident
virtues of a nation's political ideology are noted (Strenk, 1978), especially with respect to
the Olympic Games (Lapchick, 1986). Second, the experience of direct sport participation
and the values and physical skills which individuals are encouraged to adopt are seen as
reflective of and/or useful to the supporters of the political system (e.g. Sage, 1978).
Thirdly, there are analyses of formal intervention on the part of national, state and local
governments in the formulation and implementation of sport-related policy (e.g. Johnson,
1978). Finally, there are rather nebulous lists of actions and/or associations of individual
politicians and athletes: athletes who become politicians, attend political events, promote
political candidates and/or parties, and make political statements at athletic events; and
conversely, politicians who are in some way personally "athletic" (Collins, 1983), attend
sporting events, publicly endorse particular teams or players, and make political statements
at athletic events (e. g. Michener, 1976). In this last area a few texts have mentioned works
on the uses of sport language by politicians. If the amount of space devoted to
summarizing works on the sport metaphor indicate its importance within the area of "sport
and politics," it is apparently seen as playing quite a minor role. It is enlightening to
examine how those authors who have however briefly mentioned sport language have

presented it within their texts.

3
Petrie (1975) noted the practice by those in the Nixon Administration of naming

Vietnam military operations with football terms, such as "Operation linebacker", the name
for the bombing of Hanoi in 1972. Briefly highlighting the uproar over the misapplication
of such terms, he concluded that "the superficiality of such sport metaphors as explicators
of political activity should not be provided more attention... than is deserved" (p. 197).
Insofar as these terms were simply used as labels, then, we are to take them as somewhat
innocuous. However, Petrie does not discuss the other uses of the sport metaphor during
the Nixon era, such as the economic "game plan," as noted by Balbus (1975). Hence, it is
not clear whether or not he regards these usages as worthy of serious attention. Figler
(1981) cites Petrie (1975) in his discussion of politicians' attempts to promote an image of
vitality and likability. He also summarizes Balbus (1975), stating that "many politicians are
prone to using sports terminology in their explanations of the machinations of government
and politics because, we presume, they feel such terms...will make the intricacies of
government more comprehensible to the populace and will reinforce their own sporting
image and attach a positive value to their policies" (p. 231). He then, in accord with
Balbus (1975), observes that issues and objectives in sport are clear, while those in politics
are not. These apparent dissimilarities between sport and politics, we are led to infer,
ought to cause us to view sport metaphors with some suspicion. Finally, Eitzen and Sage
(1989) refer to Balbus (1975), stating that "sport itself is so popular in American society
that politicians may use examples of sport or sport metaphors to communicate with the
public" (p.179).

My purpose in reviewing these summaries is not to criticize the above authors for not
extending the analysis of the sport metaphor in American politics, but rather to simply
show that such study has not progressed beyond the work of Balbus (1975). I should also
point out that the specific treatment in Lipsky (1981) was not cited in these texts. Further,
the lack of activity in this area has apparently also entailed a considerable "watering down"
of the actual theoretical points made by these authors, as they have been interpreted by
Figler (1981) and Eitzen and Sage (1989). A brief review of both Balbus (1975) and

4
Lipsky (1981) will show how many of the points made by these authors were not

considered by Figler (1981) and Eitzen and Sage (1989) in the above-cited texts, and that
there are a number of relevant and important reasons for not only the continued study of the
sport metaphor in American political rhetoric, but also the development of a theoretical
framework within which to conduct further study.

Balbus’ (1975) examination of the sport metaphor was a "tentative and unabashedly
speculative interpretation" (p.75), written from a neo-Marxist perspective. Because such a
perspective views American capitalism as a system inherently exploitative and alienating of
the mass citizenry and which must constantly be held out as legitimate by the ruling elite,
the sport metaphor is seen as an effective way for political leaders to legitimate capitalist
practices. Specifically, Balbus (1975) argued that those in the Nixon and Ford
Administrations used sport metaphors to characterize their policies in ways that would
exclude most people from considering their moral implications. That is, he noted that the
reference to an economic " game plan" may have led people to think of the Administration's
economic policy as a strictly technical set of instructions. This was said to promote the idea
that such policy is understandable only by experts, and is formulated not on moral but
rather "scientific" grounds. This "technocracy thesis" was quite supportable, he argued,
because of the corresponding commercialization and technical nature of American sport,
epitomized by football. Further, the fact that football had equaled or surpassed baseball in
popularity seemed to lend further credence to the notion that increasing numbers of
Americans were thinking about sport in technical and instrumental terms. Extending the
metaphor, then, citizens were encouraged through the sport metaphor to think of
themselves as political "spectators" who, rather than contribute to the formulation of
economic policy, must instead rest on the faint hope that the impossibly complex "game
plan" will be instrumental in advancing their interests. These considerations led Balbus
(1975) to consider the sport metaphor as a "corruption of the discourse of politics" (p.75),
because it was effective in deceiving unwitting citizens of the actual consequences of these

policies. As hope that the sport metaphor would be dropped from use, he noted an increase

5
in groups who considered the prevailing commercial and technical aspects of sport as

exploitative, and as a result began to explore more playful and spontaneous activities.
From these activities, he imagined, might arise metaphors from play which would
effectively oppose the instrumental metaphors from sport. 1

Clearly, this provocative analysis goes beyond the simple acknowledgement that
politicians use sport metaphors to communicate with the public (as noted by Eitzen and
Sage, 1989), and that the equations entailed in referring to political activity in sports terms
are suspect. Balbus (1975) considers the possibility that what he believes most people
consider fun and games may be contributing to their continuing alienation from an
inherently exploitative political system. Moreover, Balbus (1975) places sports language,
in addition to sports participation and spectating, as a key contributing factor in this
process.

Lipsky (1981) included his interpretation of the sport metaphor in his book entitled
WWW. While his discussion was
not placed within a clear theoretical framework, as was Balbus' (1975) "technocracy
thesis", nor was Balbus' (1975) work cited, there are many similarities in these analyses.
Lipsky (1981) began with a discussion of the interpenetration of sport and politics which
emerged as a result of activism in sport in the 1960's and the presence of "sportsrninded"
politicians, most notably President Nixon. He then argued that the increasing complexity
of American society functioned to hinder effective communications between highly
specialized sub-groups of people, each having its own unique language. This created a
vacuum for a collective and emotional language form which connected these otherwise
isolated groups with the rest of society. Sport language and metaphor, then, was said to
fill this linguistic gap, by virtue of its widespread familiarity and dramatic connotations,
presumably supplanting an otherwise uninteresting and uncompelling political discourse.
However, Lipsky (1981) noted, the political interest these metaphors generate is often
superficial and non-ideological, and merely transforms politics into another form of

entertainment. Lipsky (1981) also forwarded an interpretation much like Balbus' (1975)

technocracy thesis. He stated:

By using sports symbolism in political discourse the politician or
commentator tends to transpose sports' ideologically unproblematic
nature onto politics. This has the efiect of underscoring the
organizational (instrumental) imperatives at the expense of
articulating substantive goals. It promotes an interest in who is
'winning’ or 'losing' without looking at the reasons why one
should win and the other should lose. (p. 140)

Interestingly, Lipsky (1981) seems to equally adopt the view that the sport metaphor is
deceptive and the hope that its replacement will come from the world of play. Remarking
that sport symbolism in politics is "essentially a conservative device which prevents
thinking about new polices and directions" (p. 141), he calls upon us to recognize the
logical limits of sport as a "fenced-in playground" and instead "transform our society by
opening up the fences and allowing the beauty of the playground to spill over and
transform the world in the euphoria of play" (p.142).

For these authors, then, political use of the sport metaphor is much more than a
theoretically interesting feature of American experience which reflects perceived
commonalities between sport and politics. It is rather an active contributor to widespread
perceptions of American life and democracy. It is then natural to consider the possibility
that, beyond verbal deployments of the sport metaphor, the imagery of sport via whichever
source, also functions metaphorically. In other words, to attend, recall, read about
otherwise think about sport or a sporting event, as opposed to some other cultural activity,
may also contribute to the way people think about their lives, including their political lives.
In this way, sport symbolism in general functions metapbm'ically. As Lipsky (1978)
outlined in an earlier work, however, there is a tension between this idea and the notion
which prevails in sport sociology that sport is a reflection of American life. Specifically,
how can sport at once reflect and actively contribute to the way social and political life is
widely conceived? By noting instances where sport is claimed to reflect such diverse

ideologies as fascism and pluralistic democracy, Lipsky (1978) made the interesting

7

observation that sport "seems to encompass a rich symbolism that functions as a Rorschach
for radically different perspectives" (p. 349).

Interestingly, there is considerable foundation for this notion in works by sport
sociologists on sport and political. ideology. Hoberman (1978) seems to concur with
Lipsky's (1978) "Rorschach" characterization in considering sport a "universal aesthetic"
which is "differentiated into divergent ideological messages" (p.12). A series of works
(Hoberman, 1978, 1981, 1984) has provided in excruciating detail support for such a
notion. These contend that, within the purview of global politics, proponents of ideologies
on both the extreme right as well as extreme left have been able to exploit sport to advance
their goals. With respect to the former, Hoberman (1981) saw sport as effectively
reinforcing the aggressive nationalism of fascism and its "narcissistic" leaders through what
he called "political athleticism" (p. 51). In other words, state-sponsored sport can serve as
a symbol for the virility of the fascist nation by conveying the image of an athletic "body
politic", led by an aggressive "political athlete" (Hoberman, 1981). Regarding extreme
left-wing politics, however, the use of sport is considered more as an activity through
which ideological discipline is developed, and not as a metaphor for properly articulated
communist ideas (Hoberman, 1981, p.326). For this reason, Valentine (1977) and to
some extent Hargreaves (1982) are in accord with Hoberman (1981) in concluding that
ideologies of the right have been better able to utilize sport than those on the left, as the
latter have "refused to employ imagery in the service of leadership of the communist state"
(p.3 lO).

Analyses of sport and political ideology as seen in the United States lend credence to
the idea of associations between sport and politics of the right. It seems rather simplistic,
however, to consider the right and left within American politics as simply lesser versions of
the extreme right and left distinctions discussed above. Yet it is intriguing to observe that
Balbus' (1975) critique of the sport metaphor was apparently prompted by its prolific use
within the Republican N ixon-Ford administrations, although an example from the

preceding Johnson Administration (Muir, 1988) could have been cited. Further, as

8
(Hoberman, 1984) pointed out, the staunchly conservative Spirow Agnew delivered a

strong rebuttal to a series of leftist critiques of sport which emerged in the early 1970's.
Equally, within sociology of sport literature, the most forceful criticism of American sport
has come from those employing a Marxian-based conflict perspective (e.g. Keil, 1984),
while works more conservative in orientation have come from functionalist or
structural-functionalist analysts. (e.g. Edwards, 1972) The reasons for these apparent
affinities in sociological theory are worth a brief exploration.

The assumptions of conflict theory are rooted in the ideas of Karl Marx, and were
summarized by Gruneau (1975). Generally Marxist doctrine holds that societies are
composed of a primary ruling class and one or more subordinate or "subject" classes. The
ruling class is defined by its ownership or control of the means of economic
production-that is, the production of the necessities of life and other goods-and this control
is maintained by the ruling class's simultaneous control of a society's military, and, most
relevant to the interpretation of sport as a metaphor, the dissemination of its major
governing ideas. The existence of these differentially powered classes results in ongoing
"conflict" between the ruling class and the subordinate class or classes, and such conflict is
most clearly seen in modern capitalistic societies. In order to eliminate class conflict, the
theory states, a society must eliminate the classes themselves, and in the service of this
ultimate goal, any other cultural forms which perpetuate capitalist ideas (Gruneau, 1975).
Sport in capitalist societies like the United States, according to conflict theorists (e.g.
Yiannakis, 1977, Keil, 1984), is, among other things, a mechanism controlled by the
ruling class for the dissemination of capitalist ideology. For this reason, conflict analyses
of sport are directed at discerning capitalist ideas and the resulting relations between
individuals which are their result. As Coakely (1986) pointed out, some conflict theorists
consider sport as an "opiate of the masses", in that sport simultaneously occupies people
while diverting their attention from their own domination by a society's ruling class.
Certainly, this brief summary neither does justice to nor covers the entire scope of conflict

theory analysis of sport, but it does show the basis upon which the theory is critical of

American sport.

Structural-functionalist or functionalist theory, on the other hand, sees societies as
integrated systems, whose interrelated parts perform necessary "functions" for the
continuing operation of the system (Moore, 1978). If a part should become useless or
"dysfunctional," it would be seen as such and dropped from use. Necessarily, then, parts
which remain in existence, particularly for long periods of time, are seen as necessary and
beneficial for the ongoing existence of the system. More concretely, parts of societies,
including institutions, values and ways of life, are seen as functionally necessary for a
society's continued existence. As Coakely (1986) summarized, functionalist analyses
approach American sport as an institution and hence in terms of: (a) its contributions to
maintaining patterns of acceptable behavior through the teaching of values; (b) its ability to
unite people on local and national levels; (c) its identification and teaching of a society's
goals; and (d) its preparation of individuals to adapt to change with as little overall change
to society as possible. The consistency between a functionalist analytical perspective and a
conservative political perspective is quite clear. Both will tend to see sport in terms of its
contributions to the good of society, rather than its negative consequences, and will fail to
see the necessity for major changes.

A critical issue for the study of the sport metaphor arises at the apparent normative
polarization of conflict and functionalist perspectives in the sociology of sport. Namely, to
simply adopt one of these perspectives and proceed to an analysis would produce very
predictable and likely uninteresting results. A conflict perspective would demonstrate the
continuing deception and alienation from politics that sport metaphors bring about, along
with the corresponding reinforcement of ruling class power. The functionalist perspective
would focus on how such metaphors make more understandable the often complex and
confusing world of American life and politics for the general benefit of all. What appears
to make both of these perspectives possible, however, is the multidimensional nature of
sport (i.e. Lipsky's "Rorschach" noted above) and its ability to contribute to both liberal

and conservative ideologies, not to any inherent ideological property of all of sport. This

1 0
indicates that study of the sport metaphor ought to begin with the consideration that a

number of ideological positions from both the left and right are discernible in sport.
Further, it suggests that, because these diverse ideologies can be metaphorically drawn out
of sport, the focus should be upon those which actually are. That is, as sport metaphors
are used in political rhetoric it is important to attempt to interpret specifically what they
convey, how they might be interpreted, and what they are designed to accomplish. Insofar
as this thesis is concerned, then, I consider that the ideas which sport metaphors invite the
public to hold of American life and democracy are to be derived from empirical
identification and interpretation of specific usages, not assumed from a preestablished
theoretical perspective.

Divergence from theoretical currents in the sociology of sport and from speculative
forays into political use of the sport metaphor represent the unique nature of the following
study. It is the first attempt to empirically examine the sport metaphor as it is actually used
by political actors and begin to document what may be a key contributor to the way in
which Americans construct political reality. Just as Hoberman's (1978, 1981, 1984)
analyses were based upon the actions, writing and speaking of intellectuals and political
leaders, so will this study of the sport metaphor be based upon observation. The question
as to the apparent affinity of sport and right-wing political ideology, then, is one which
exists alongside the more general problems that I will attempt to address. Specifically I will
conduct a systematic review and analysis of the sport metaphor as used by modern United
States presidents. This does not mean, however, that the interpretations of Balbus (1975)
and Lipsky (1981) are not helpful in discussing the sport metaphor. However, a review of
relevant literature from the sociology of knowledge, and theories of language and metaphor
will allow me to effectively critique these works, salvage those points that are useful, and
proceed with a more fully developed theoretical perspective with which to discuss the sport
metaphor.

In the following, I begin with a review of relevant literature in the sociology of

knowledge, out of which I will frame the discussions of language and metaphor to follow.

1 1
In accord with the ideas expressed above, I will argue that language is an important means

by which human beings construct their social world. As a part of language, then, metaphor
will be shown to be an important organizer and shaper of ideas about social and political
life. Although metaphor can take on a diversity of specific types, I will show that sport as
a metaphor among these has a distinct place worthy of consideration and study. From this
review, I will draw out important considerations for this study and show how they

influenced the methods and procedures used.

CHAPTERII

Review of Related Literature

Literature from the sociology of knowledge provides a most relevant point at which to
begin the following sections on language and metaphor. Berger and Luckrnann (1966)
referred to the sociology of knowledge as "the analysis of the social construction of
reality", the purpose of which is to "understand the process by which...human
'knowledge' is developed, transmitted and maintained" (p.3). Within the sociology of
knowledge are works which concern formation and change in widespread social beliefs.
Consistent with a sociology of knowledge approach, Pocock (1971) cited Kuhn's (1970)
seminal work, Writings, as a model with which to approach
the study of major orienting ideas in politics. I believe the approach taken by Pocock
(1971) to be particularly useful as a means of approaching the study of political language,
as it views the latter as most properly studied historically and empirically. I will first
attempt to summarize the relevant points from Kuhn's (1970) work, and reconstruct their
application by Pocock (1971). I will then introduce a theory of language quite consistent
with this view, and subsequently assemble a selective review of the study of metaphor.
This will allow for an effective critique of past studies of the sport metaphor, from which I
can articulate what I argue is a more constructive approach.

1] fl . E l l l' . l 1.

There is a tendency to view scientific research, particularly that of the so—called "hard
sciences", as cumulative and progressing however slowly toward truths about nature.
Kuhn's (1970) historical account of primarily Western scientific research provided a new
perspective on the processes through which major reorientations in science take place
andwhat these changes actually represent. Kuhn considered as scientific paradigms those

achievements in science which are not only "sufficiently unprecedented to attract an

12

1 3
enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of inquiry" but also "sufficiently

open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to
resolve" (p. 10). That is, there is a consistent pattern of activity, including laws, theories,
application and instrumentation such that coherent traditions in scientific activity emerge.
Further, Kuhn considered paradigms as "conceptual boxes " into which scientists attempt
to force their observations of nature (p. 4). Changes or "shifts" made by scientists from
one competing paradigm to another, then, are what constitute revolutions. A frequently
cited example of a paradigm switch in this work was the transition from a Ptolemaic to a
Coperinican view of the motions of planets-that is, from a geocentric to a heliocentric view
of the known universe. According to Kuhn, this process of paradigm shift displays
characteristic features and takes place for reasons other than those which are generally
acknowledged.

Paradigms were said to entail so complete a collection of expectations about the
subject matter that "normal research" in a certain discipline is such that it tends to direct
scientists away from novel findings. As a consequence, when such unanticipated results
confront paradigmatically ensconced researchers in a given field, they produce crises and
pose serious challenges to the old paradigm. Change is resisted for a number of reasons,
including the necessary "retooling" a switch would bring about and the strain on the
scientist brought about by "crisis". Challenges are only possible, in Kuhn's view, by a
new, competing paradigm which, in comparison with observations of nature and with the
old paradigm, presents sufficiently compelling reasons to switch. These reasons include
abilities to solve problems previously unsolvable, to predict new phenomena, and to
provide simpler and/or more orderly explanations. However, these reasons, in Kuhn's
view, provide only terms with which to describe what is actually change for very different
reasons. As DOppelt (1978) noted, neither compromise nor meaningful communication

between new and old paradigm are possible, for the reason that,

1 4
"they lack a sufficiently common definition of the discipline and its criteria
of explanatory adequacy to allow their discourses to terminate in rational
consensus... Thus, conflict between scientzfic theories becomes much more

like conflicts in ethical and political life than the absolute distinction between
scientific and normative discourse advanced by classical positivism allows"

(Doppelt, 1978, p. 120).

The creation and establishment of a scientifically neutral discourse which would
prevent this type of communicative problem was considered by Kuhn. However, it was
pointed out that the formulation of such a language could only be based upon apparent
natural facts of a particular point in time, and could not anticipate or neutrally name new
concepts or observations without recourse to this established language. This would, in
essence, be the formation of a paradigm, and hence a non-neutral classification system for
new phenomena. Accordingly, Kuhn concluded that "if there...cannot be a scientifically or
empirically neutral system of language or concepts, then the proposed construction of
alternative tests and theories must proceed from within one or another paradigm-based
tradition" (p. 146).

Seen in this way, the factors at work when shifts in paradigms occur go beyond a
mere acknowledgement of the explanatory superiority or cognitive appeal of the new view.
They are to be likened, although not completely, to the " gestalt switches" associated with
ambiguously drawn cubes or the duck/rabbit figure of perception experiments in
psychology. That is, although it cannot be done as freely as the psychological subject, the
switch by scientists from one paradigm to another, like a gestalt switch, occurs all at once
and completely, or not at all. Further, as neither the old or the new paradigm provides
complete explanations for all the problems it defines, the switch is as much a matter of
"faith" as of scientific prudence. That is to say, the foci and standards of achievement of
each paradigm are so completely "incommensurable" that the change from one to the other
is a redefinition of what problems are important to solve. This implies that paradigm
switches involve the consideration of questions outside of "normal science" and therefore
also involve questions of values, because the conception that each has for what is

"scientific" is equally incommensurable.

1 5
The parallels to the political realm entailed in this work are unmistakable. Kuhn

summarized two conditions he takes to be common between scientific and political
revolutions. First, there grows a sense that the existing paradigms/institutions can no
longer handle contemporary problems. Second, because the existing paradigms/institutions
themselves prohibit the types of changes needed to manage current problems, it becomes
necessary to abandon one set in favor of another. Of course, the transition to a new set of
political institutions in such a situation is seldom without considerable polarization and
conflict. In the case of science, "like the choice between competing political institutions,
that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of
community life" (p. 94). Resistance to change on the part of proponents of the old system
based on the assurance that it will eventually solve its problems, may persist for some time.
Eventually, however, a new framework is established within which normal science/normal
life can again take place.

I am now in a position to summarize and discuss Pocock's (1971) adaptation of
Kuhn's (1970) ideas in the consideration of political language. In this latter work, Pocock
(1971) found appealing the notion that the history of scientific thought is composed of both
linguistic and political processes. This led to him to the concept of "verbal" paradigms in
politics, which to some extent function in the same way as scientific paradigms. I begin,
however, with a summary of the distinctions made by Pocock (1971) between verbal and
scientific paradigms.

The distinctions drawn by Pocock (1971) began with the most fundamental differences
between the activities of scientific versus political communities. The former were said to be
concerned primarily with problem-solving, while the latter obviously are not limited only to
such endeavors. Specificity of purpose in science, including political science, also brings
with it an associated specificity in language, not characteristic of politics. Instead, the latter
is composed of political rhetoric, whose appeal must be constructed on the basis of the
shared experiences of a diversity of individuals. For this reason, Pocock (1971) saw the

verbal paradigm as multivalent, composed of a number of sub-paradigms from which

1 6
rhetoric is drawn. Additionally, shifts in verbal paradigms do not necessarily bring about

major political revolutions. This is the case as a result of the multivalence of political
speech, which ipso facto carries with it the potential for multiple interpretations. As a
result, these meanings generally do not bring about uniform reactions, and thus the
likelihood that they will lead to revolutionary behavior was seen as being low.

As a result of these distinctions, Pocock (1971) forwarded an approach to the study of
political speech which considers language as constitutive of political thought. This view
takes language as the basic means by which persons structure the social world in which
they act. The study of the history of political language, when viewed constitutively, may
be a means by which one can understand the history of the political society in which it is
found. Consequently, if one studies the basic paradigm structures out of which emerges
this language, one may more fully understand the course of a society's history. Further,
the sources of these basic paradigm structures and the language they produce can vary in
type and origin. As Pocock pointed out, paradigmatic language can come from various
social institutions, such as law, religion or economics, or can come from "sub-political"
activities which "migrate into political speech" (p. 22). Further, the manifestations of these
paradigms do not necessarily remain static and fully integrated within a political discourse.
Rather, they mix and interrningle as individuals and groups debate their meaning and
implications for social relationships and authority structures.

Accordingly, the user of political rhetoric has very little control over the definitions
these uses eventually assume. It is incumbent on the researcher, then, to endeavor to
determine with available historical information what meanings the political language of a
Specific period may have held. Consistent with my earlier observations, Pocock asserts

that such study must begin with observations of actual language use, and that

...it does not involve starting with the assumption that language 'reflects'
social reality, selecting in obedience to conventional wisdom some aspect of
social structure as predictably 'reflected, ' and endeavoring to demonstrate
parallels, correlations or connexions (sic) between the two...we are
interested in what elements of social experience are articulated in political
speech, in how the process of articulation goes on, in how the articulations
come to be organized in paradigmatic languages and elaborated..."(p. 36).

1 7
I attempt to be consistent with this statement as I delve into the speeches in this thesis.

Accordingly, I consider that sport has been a paradigmatic structure or "conceptual box" for
the understandings which persons have of American life and politics. I assume that a
sportive paradigm in the formation of beliefs is much like other verbal paradigms, in that it
is likely much more fluid and prone to change than those in science. I consider that out of a
sportive verbal paradigm has come a number of specific articulations in the political rhetoric
of American presidents. The meanings of the specific uses of sport language in presidential
speech are assumed to be worthy of exploration, for they contribute to the understanding of
the historical periods from which they come. They also provide insights into how sport
functions as a domain of ideas, alongside its more familiar status as a collection of physical
activities and cultural events. That is, I suggest that sport is used metaphorically in the
formation and maintenance of perspectives on the political world. Before beginning this
exploration, I feel it necessary to first be more explicit about the theory of language which I
will adopt and which has been implied in the above review of Pocock (1971), Lipsky
(1981), and even to some degree by Balbus (1975). This will facilitate a coherent review
of metaphor, from which I will proceed to critique the approach of these latter
interpretations of the sport metaphor.
language

The attention of the above authors and that this thesis devotes to the study of language
carries with it the presumption that everyday discourse is of considerable importance in the
understanding of society. To reiterate, however, this presumption appears not to be held
by others, including the authors in the sociology of sport, as Macan (1987) pointed
out. However, this is in no way limited to sport sociology. As Pocock (1971) stated, the
view that language is no more than epiphenomenal to thought is widespread, and is an
issue found in idealist/materialist debates which are detailed and complex; they are certainly
beyond the scope of this thesis. For this reason, I will not deal directly with this debate.
Instead, I will enter the discussion of language and metaphor, and my subsequent analysis

of the speeches in this study, with the same fundamental assumptions about language

1 8
implicit in the works cited above. This may be seen as an epistemological turn in this thesis

toward a linguistic relativism consistent with the relativistic ideas of Kuhn (1970). That is,
this view is entirely consistent with the approach taken thus far-namely, to consider that the
means by which individuals structure the realities in which they act is to some degree
determined by the language used to speak about those realities.

This linguistic relativism was most forcefully stated by Whorf (1956). This latter
author, by comparative studies of the basic grammar structures of various languages, found
vastly different conceptual systems attributable to the ways in which each language
permitted particular concepts to form. That is, the language of one culture did not provide
terms which would lead to the formation of similar conceptions of objects or phenomena as
that of another. For example, it was shown that the Hopi Indians did not have a subject-
predicate structure within their language such that the statement "the light flashed" could be
made. Rather, to simply refer to light in Hopi entailed flash within the concept "light".
From studies of this type, Whorf made certain generalizations about language and thought.
Most commonly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this view has been taken in both
"strong" and "weaker" forms (Sherzer, 1987 ) as derived from interpretations of the

following quotes:

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the
world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the
mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of
expression for their society....We see and hear and otherwise experience
very largely as we do because the language habits of our community
predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, in Whorf, 1956, p.
134).

The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each
language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather
is the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual 's mental
activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental
stock in trade....The categories and types that we isolate from the world of
phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the
face; on the contrary, the world is presented as a kaleidoscopic flux of
impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means
largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (Whorf, 1956, p. 213-215).

19

The weaker view of these passages would state that language is simply the means by
which persons think and perceive realities, while the stronger version would add to the role
of language that of conditioning or controlling thoughts, perceptions and ultimately views
of the world (Sherzer, 1987). While the wholesale adoption of one of these versions is
neither prudent nor crucial to my purposes in this thesis, there are considerations with
respect to the relativism they imply that should be brought forward.

As Mandelbaum (1979) noted in subjecting this hypothesis to a critical analysis,
Whorf's own means at arriving at this set of conclusions about language cannot entail that
those who speak different languages do not refer to the same objects or phenomena. That
is, there must be a sufficient area of overlap between concepts in different languages for a
comparison of how these concepts refer to objects to be possible. As Doppelt (1979)
noted, this consideration applies equally to scientific paradigms, in that, for paradigm
debates to occur, they must concern the same objects of analysis. Hence, to have made the
comparison between Hopi and European references to flashing light, there must have been
a notion of what constitutes light common between them, and this common notion must
have been knowable by Whorf himself. That this is true indicates that a linguistic
relativism does not entail a radical conceptual relativism, in which the entire world of
concepts and their referents are closed within their own language systems and therefore
"incommensurable" with others. Rather, it indicates that through language come the
means by which concepts of commonly encountered objects and phenomena are given
meaning within a particular culture.

Seen thusly, the study of the ways in which a particular culture conceptualizes certain
phenomena via language can be considered an effective means for explaining certain social
acts or failures to act. That is, within a culture there will exist certain verbal paradigms
which consist of certain ways of looking at and evaluating human experience. To reiterate
points made by Pocock (1971), these paradigms generate the ways in which phenomena
will be given meaning, and will take on various forms, depending upon the culture's most

salient activities, institutions, or ways of life. The acts of individuals or groups will be

2 0
understandable to the degree that these paradigms and their specific manifestations in

language are identified and observed in use.

It may be asked at this point how these full-fledged paradigmatic schemes are created
and sustained. What brings about a tendency to conceptualize experience in the terms of
one social institution versus another? I propose that metaphor in public discourse provides
these creative and sustaining connections between broad paradigmatic structures and the
everyday experience of individuals and groups. The study of metaphor, however, has not
been entirely consistent with this view. I feel it helpful for the subsequent criticism of
Balbus (1975), Lipsky (1981) and one other work on the sport metaphor, that two primary
currents in the general study of metaphor be discussed. In the following section, then, I
will summarize these currents and show the consistency of one approach with what I have
presented above. I will demonstrate that the other approach has problems which render it
neither internally sound, nor consistent with the above discussions of language and verbal
paradigms. Some of these problems will then be shown to exist within past studies of the
sport metaphor.

Metaphor

The publication of a bibliography by Noppen (1985) with over 4,000 titles on
metaphor gives a clear indication of the extent to which this topic has been studied. The
studies cited below are a selection largely from writings on metaphor in the political realm,
although those which concern social scientific debates, psychological studies and
organizational analyses are noted in support of the perspective on metaphor which I adopt.
Although fairly independent of each other, these appear to have implications not only for
each other, but for the tack taken in this thesis. I begin with studies of political metaphor.

As Raynor (1984) pointed out, there seem to be two main currents in the study of
metaphor, especially with respect to political metaphor. The first sees metaphor as the
positing of a model which is or is not an accurate representation of some reality. Miller
(1979) termed this the "verificationist" view. Generally, this view saw metaphor as a

provisional representation or heuristic tool by which one may understand some reality.

2 1
That is, a metaphor was considered a hypothetical model by which one may proceed to

understand some phenomenon or object in the world. For example, the concept of "body
politic" would in this view suggest that the body is a more or less accurate representation of
the state. It is incumbent on some observer, then, to perform operations by which to
verify the accuracy of the identity which the metaphor suggests.

As a view of metaphor, however, the accuracy model has several problems. First, is
the obvious question of the basis upon which a metaphor may be determined to be an
accurate representation of some reality. In other words, the view presupposes some
objective standard by which metaphorical accuracy can be judged. This hearkens back to
the problems which Kuhn (1970) pointed to in explanations given for paradigm shifts.
Just as paradigm changes are made on the basis of changing values, no set of standards f0r
metaphorical accuracy could be devised on neutral or scientific grounds, for such a set
would be based upon what is paradigmatically defined as indicative of political reality.
Hence, the standards will inevitably be rooted in the values seen as important for a model to
have, and which problems it ought to address.

Second, the accuracy view of metaphor implies that for each instance of a metaphorical
usage, a full-blown image of a model for politics undergoes a critical analysis by the
interpreter. This may be true in some cases of theoretical modeling in the social sciences,
but it is much more difficult to draw such a conclusion about the individual listener or
reader of political rhetoric. There does not seem to be sufficient time for such an analytical
process to take place, nor is it clear why such metaphors would be used if they involved
such a complex cognitive process. As Black (1962) points out, to assume that this occurs
would be to commit the "linguist's fallacy", wherein the critical insights of the linguist is
posited as the regular behavior of the non-linguist.

Third, if it is assumed that such a full-blown model of some reality is brought about by
a metaphor, the accuracy view also implies that the process of interpretation involves some
objective, empirical and non-linguistic testing. That is, the version of reality which the

metaphor suggests is said to be tested without the use of the terms and concepts that the

22

metaphor itself or any other metaphorical structure suggests. In fact, no language or
conceptual paradigm whatsoever is necessary for accuracy testing to occur, in this view. In
which independent terms will an individual conduct such testing?

Finally, the accuracy or verificationist view of metaphor also brings about another set
of problems, if who is judging the accuracy of the model is considered. An enterprise can
be envisioned which would be devoted specifically to criticizing and proclaiming as
inaccurate those metaphors which successfully confer meanings with which one disagrees.
The interpretive effort would "begin with the political character of political metaphors" and
"discern only vehicles for deceit and treachery, the substitution of symbolic gratification for
the real goods" (Raynor, 1984, p. 538). In other words, prior to any empirical
observation, the interpretation would construe any metaphorical utterance inconsistent with
a personal ideological position as deceptive and inaccurate. This would in essence render
the study of metaphor as equivalent to political debates themselves, with the exception that
the issues would be in metaphorical terms.

These considerations point to the conclusion that there is not much to be gained by
studying metaphor based upon an accuracy model. The conclusions which would be
reached about this or that metaphor would be likely known beforehand by simply noting
the political predispositions of the interpreter, and would in effect turn the inquiry into a
rather convoluted political debate. Again, this seems to point away from the adoption of
one or another of the norrnatively polarized conflict or structural functionalist perspectives
in this thesis. I will return to these points in the summary of works on the sport metaphor
to follow. Before doing so, however, I will outline the other current in the study of
metaphor.

The second general perspective on metaphor pointed to by Raynor (1984) viewed such
language with respect to its potential to create political knowledge. Miller (1979) called this
the "constitutivist" view of metaphor. As seen by Miller, this perspective takes metaphor to
be the basic means by which political realities are understood. That is, metaphor was said

to constitute political reality, rather than provisionally represent or provide an aesthetically

2 3
pleasing description of it. Miller attributed three characteristics to the constitutivist or

constitutive view.

First, he pointed to an essential arbitrariness in the organization of phenomena which
metaphors provide. The constitutivist was said to ignore both the apparent organization of
phenomena by nature and any inherent organizational tendencies in the human psyche. The
organization provided by strictly metaphorical systems were on this basis said to be entirely
arbitrary. Stemming from this conclusion, a second characteristic seen by Miller is that a
constitutive view considers metaphor as not based on discovery of likenesses between a
metaphor and its object, but rather on a creative process. He quotes Black (1962) as
saying, in effect, that in some cases this creative process is at work rather than the detection
of some preexisting similarities between the metaphor and its object. Finally, Miller states
that "constitutivists are likely to doubt that reality has an intelligible structure apart from the
organization that metaphorical language imposes upon it" (p. 161). Given this reading of
the constitutive view, it is not surprising that Miller offered an alternative "manifestationist"
perspective on metaphor.

What is surprising is that this "manifestationist" alternative simply combined the
verificationist view and a weaker version of the constitutive perspective. I find it difficult
to accept the manifestationist view which Miller offered as a replacement for two primary
reasons. First, Miller's introduction of the "manifestationist" view, with features of both
the constitutive and verificationist views did not resolve, but instead simply reintroduced
the problems associated with the latter. That is, the aspects of the verificationist view
which brought about problems in accuracy standards, full-blown models analysis
associated with metaphor, and interpretations based on political predispositions were fully
retained

Second, the reading of the constitutivist view was clearly one which drew out only its
most radically relativistic elements, and as Miller admitted, was not one with which all
proponents of this perspective would agree. To say that a constitutive view placed an

entirely arbitrary classification system upon objects and phenomena again brings up the

2 4
point made by Mandelbaum (1979). Specifically, such complete arbitrariness would make

impossible any debate over the "true" nature of a political phenomenon, as those with
different sets of metaphors for politics could never refer to the same phenomena-their
metaphorical worlds linguistically severed from one another. It is clear, however, that
debates rich in metaphor over common issues do take place. Hence, a strict radicalism
clearly needn't be assumed with a constitutive view. Further, it is possible to retain a
constitutive view without ascribing to it an exclusive role in determining an individual's
perspective on political reality, which Miller found necessary. Just as it is not necessary to
accept a radical conceptual relativism of language, neither is it necessary to do so with
respect to metaphor.

It should be clear by now that I favor a constitutive perspective on metaphor.
However, the rather sterile theoretical concerns noted above are not all that lead to my
acceptance of this view. There is growing body of evidence in psychological studies that
individuals use metaphor frequently and that such language plays a crucial role in cognitive
processes (Pollio, Barlow, Fine & Pollio, cited in Danesi, 1989). Among other things,
this research has shown that metaphorical language may actually dominate, and be more
salient and versatile than literal language (Winner, cited in Danesi, 1989); that
comprehension through metaphor is fundamental to learning in children (Bergin & Fisch,
cited in Danesi, 1989) ; is no more complex or time consuming than literal comprehension
(e.g. Hoffman & Kemper, cited in Danesi, 1989 ); and that metaphorical cognition is
closely related to brain processes involving imagery (Hoffman & Honeck, cited in Danesi,
1989 ) and vision (e.g. Paivio, cited in Danesi, 1989).

This would suggest that metaphor carries with it more than just a model by which
comparisons are temporarily made by way of getting to a literal understanding. Rather,
there are likely both emotive and normative connotations which accompany metaphors. It
is likely the case that, rather than think in terms of the literal and objective content of their
experiences, people instead act within these more salient metaphorical worlds. There

seems to be some degree of evidence for this notion. Zashin and Chapman (1974)

2 5
lamented the turn in political theory away from metaphor and analogy toward the models of

the natural sciences. They suggested that this turn may to some extent account for the lack
of political participation in the United States. What makes this replacement somewhat
absurd, they asserted, is that models are themselves metaphors and analogies. Were
models all that metaphor and analogy constitute, however, this would not explain any loss
of interest. The difference, then, is that metaphor adds to the simple models they suggest
an affective and normative association.

Edelrnan (1988) however, has argued that an overemphasis on metaphor and figurative
language in the social sciences can be a way of "reifying a set of dubious premises" (p.
1336). That is, he argued that a lack of consciousness about the language used by those
who write in the social sciences leads to an unwarranted presumption of objectivity.
Failure to enter analysis of political activity in particular with a skepticism of such
language, he suggested, renders the unwary scientist as a promoter of an ideology. This is
especially true, he stated, when the language is derived from popular art and culture, rather
than being labeled "political", because these areas tend to minimize attention to their
ideological content. While scientists may take advantage of these saliencies, then, it was
Edelman's suggestion that they go on to demonstrate why they believe a particular
metaphor or analogy is fruitful for their purposes. Here again it is clear that the emotive
and normative connotations of figurative language and metaphor must be taken into
account.

There also appears evidence that metaphor can modify the attitudes and actions of
individuals and groups. In research on human relations and organizations, Sackmann
(1989), for example, investigated the use of metaphor in efforts to transform behaviors by
targeted individuals and sub-divisions within corporate organizations. She found that the
use of the metaphors of "philosophizing" and " gardening" succeeded in changing
processes and results in directions desired by management. In another very interesting
application, Keidel (1985) used the characteristics of the sports of baseball, basketball and

football to suggest organizational strategies for certain corporations and businesses. Each

2 6
sport, he proposed, is composed of a unique set of structural arrangements and strategies

which fit companies with certain objectives. Certainly, these strategies could have been
stripped of their sportive connotations and simply applied to the structural considerations in
each case. That would, of course, only serve to undermine the affective and normative
appeal of sport that added to these structural similarities.

Overall, the constitutive view of metaphor is supported by much theoretical as well as
empirical support. Acknowledging these considerations, how is a constitutive perspective
of metaphor to be used in research on political speech? Raynor (1984) and Ivie (1987)
recommended similar approaches to the study of metaphor which are consistent with a
constitutive perspective. First, they advise close attention to the context in which a
particular metaphor is employed. This implies not only identification of a metaphor itself,
but also the historical events and circumstances which surround it. Consistent with
Pocock's (1971) notion of a verbal paradigm, Raynor (1984) brought forward Weinrich's
(in Raynor, 1984) notion of Bildfeld, which refers to the set of meanings created by the
combining of two semantic "fields", such as sport and the corporate structures noted in
Keidel's (1985) work. Certain elements of the Bildfeld are "literalized", or metaphorically
drawn out, by means of certain "vehicles" (Ivie, 1987). For example, Ivie (1986)
conducted an analysis of President Harry Truman's efforts to promote to the American
public an image of the Soviet Union as "savages". Within the Bildfeld, composed of the
combination of the idea of a state and the notion of savagery, vehicles such as

"dorrrination, unprovoked aggression" and "barbarism" were seen as applied to create
the savagery image.

This set of images and meanings may be seen as a verbal paradigm. That is to say, the
creation of a Bildfeld is not sufficient to establish specific political meanings. Certainly,
the creation of a particular Bildfeld may favor those with certain interests over others, but
this is dependent upon the way in which these ideas are articulated. It is entirely possible
then, that metaphorical debates can occur within a specific Bildfeld, as parties compete to

make salient their own versions or entailrnents. These must be brought out by specific uses

27

of metaphor. A common conceptual theme which emerges from these uses, such as the
Soviets as savages, becomes a verbal political paradigm in political speech.

A succinct statement of the view of metaphor to be used in this thesis is now possible.
An understanding of metaphor rests on the acknowledgement of the way in which the
language within a culture may structure the formation of concepts of reality. The
phenomena and their linguistically constructed meanings to individuals, are both real, to the
extent that those who speak different languages are able to refer to them in common. This
entails that language can promote certain conceptual orientations to political events and
phenomena over others. These orientations are established and maintained by the process
of bringing the less familiar into the realm of the more familiar by means of metaphor.
These metaphors rest upon the initial establishment of a Bildfeld. Paradigms are
specially-articulated versions of a Bildfeld designed to make certain cognitive processes
possible. This is most clearly seen and most complicated in the formation of scientific
paradigms. The activities of science are sufficiently concentrated toward problem solving
that few challenges to a current paradigm are made. Further, scientific paradigms have
self-contained value systems, which promote a strong attachment to the daily research
activities of the scientist. For this reason, resistance to change is particularly strong, and,
when it occurs, comes in the form of a revolution.

Verbal paradigms in politics, however, are less complicated, more numerous and
competing, as the activities of the political community are varied and changing. Hence,
they are based upon numerous Bildfelds and metaphorical elaborations. For this reason,
political rhetoric involves a multiple collection of meanings which are inherently unstable.
The speaking politician may not necessarily achieve a desired political or rhetorical
objective by simply extending what is perceived to be an established verbal paradigm. In
studying political rhetoric, then, this implies that in order to isolate and interpret the
meanings a metaphor may have had, it is insufficient to simply know the basic Bildfeld, a
particular verbal paradigmatic development of it, or even the assumed motives of the

speaker. A metaphor conceived and delivered is not necessarily a rhetorical, let alone a

2 8
political objective achieved. Rather, it is necessary to identify specific metaphors

themselves within the context of events and circumstances in which they are used. This
process should proceed with an awareness of not only the strict structural implications of a
metaphor, but its affective and normative associations, as well. This seems especially true
when a novel metaphor extends a verbal paradigm based on a Bildfeld involving a salient
social institution or activity.

It may now be considered that sport is one of these salient institutions in American
culture. The metaphorization of sport within politics, then, is a worthy topic of
investigation, both for the implications which the sport metaphor has held for the
conception of ideas about American life and political actions, as well as for endeavoring to
understand sport as a potential producer of a diversity of ideas. The sport metaphor
employed within the rhetoric of American presidents can be seen as developing certain
verbal paradigms out of a Bildfeld composed of phenomena of both politics and sport. I
will show, however, that the few past studies of the sport metaphor have not been
conducted in accord with these considerations. For this reason, I will now proceed to
specific critiques of works on the sport metaphor that have appeared within sociology of
sport literature, as well as one outside the literature.

WWW

My purposes in this section are to restate the interpretations of the sport metaphor by
Balbus (1975) and Lipsky (1981), as well as one other piece outside literature in the
sociology of sport. Within the discussion of each, I will where necessary bring up points
made in the above sections on language and metaphor which create problems for the
interpretative effort offered. This will involve criticism as well as the highlighting of ideas
which seem to be useful for the present study. As I stated in the introduction, the basic
orientations to the sport metaphor of Balbus (1975) and Lipsky 1981) were quite similar.
For this reason, this section will focus on the distinctions between these works, what their
associated conceptual problems are, and what they may offer the study undertaken in this

thesis. The same consideration will apply to a work from speech communication authored

2 9
by Hariman (1982). I begin, however, with a general summary of all three of these works.

First, it should be stated that these authors did not refer to one another in developing
their ideas. Hence, there should not be the perception that a history of work on the sport
metaphor has been built up. Second, none of these authors based their interpretations of
the sport metaphor based on an empirical, contextual approach, as Raynor (1984)
suggested ought to take place. With respect to any inferences they draw about the
influences of the sport metaphor in American politics, it should be kept in mind that they do
not quote a single speech or document from an office-holding politician. Third, although
their interpretive efforts are purely theoretical, they nevertheless attempt to make general
statements about what the sport metaphor means or can mean, what it does within
American politics, and how individuals and groups are influenced and react to them.
Fourth, and finally, all three of these works, although they indicate some acceptance of a
constitutive view, implicitly lean toward an accuracy perspective. Specifically, they focus
on dissimilarities they see existing between sport, the sport metaphor and political
phenomenon. Obviously, considering the points made earlier, these methods pose
problems for conducting research. Perhaps the weaknesses which I point out are the result
of reading too closely works not meant to be particularly rigorous. Accordingly, I do not
feel it is useful to on this basis criticize each and every point made by these authors. I do
believe, however, that bringing up the distinctive ways in which these authors approached
the topic will provide fruitful insights for this study.

Recall that the work by Balbus (1975) was a neo-marxist critique of the sport
metaphor as used during the N ixon-Ford administration, and was a "tentative and
unabashedly speculative interpretation" (p. 75). It focused on the metaphor's ability to
promote an image of the federal government as engaged in increasingly technical economic
decision making. The decisions made, the argument stated, are conveyed as being strictly
technical aspects of a predetermined plan, require knowledgeable experts, and therefore
exclude widespread participation by the nonexpert public. According to Balbus, football is
the epitome of sport, given its widespread popularity, and similarly involves highly

3 0
technical game plans dictated by experts, carried out by specialists, and witnessed by

spectators. From this, Balbus concluded that sport, when used as a metaphor for
government activity, brings to mind the technical meanings associated with football,
removes the mass citizenry, now mere "spectators", from participation in economic
decisions, now seen as "plays" from a "game plan", and renders the issues involved in
these decisions morally inert because of their strictly "rational" nature. What the sport
metaphor accomplishes, according to this interpretation, is the legitimation of the existing
order of American society, made up of a small ruling elite and an alienated work force
effectively removed from the technical decisions which control their lives. For this reason,
Balbus considered the sport metaphor a "corruption of the discourse of politics" (p.75) and
argued that politics had become "cloaked" in sports language and was beginning to "take on
the appearance of sports" (p.76). As hope for changing this state of affairs, Balbus
offered the emergence of cooperative play activities and their acquainted metaphors which
would presumably replace metaphors from sport.

This interpretation, although provocative, contains a number of the problems which
were discussed above as stemming from an accuracy view of metaphor. A critique will
expose why the major weaknesses in Balbus' essay will help to refocus the discussion of
the "game plan" metaphor in the following analysis. First, Balbus based his discussion of
the sport metaphor on what might be termed a "metaphor as deception" or "doublespeak"
(Hardaway, 1976) framework, and seemed to imbue language with an almost magical
power to manipulate. In other words, an accuracy perspective on metaphor was implied.
Balbus asserted that "state activity is being cloaked in the rhetoric of the sports world"; that
the sport metaphor is a "corruption of the discourse of politics"; and that such rhetoric is a
"legitimating mechanism of the American state" (p. 75, italics added). This implied the
notion that sport language successfully distorts some "true" picture of political reality. This
merely begs the question at hand. As I noted above, to view metaphor from an accuracy
framework can lead to labeling as inaccurate any language inconsistent with one's

ideological dispositions. This is the clear operating perspective throughout Balbus' essay.

31

Again, such a view transforms the analysis into a political debate over what American life
and politics ought to be, not an attempt to determine what a particular metaphor meant
within a specific context of events and circumstances. Further, terms such as "cloak ",
"corruption" and "mechanism" are themselves metaphors in the above passage, as are many
of the terms used in this essay. This ought to alert readers to the fact that Balbus'
consciousness about language in politics has not been applied to the language of his own
theoretical discourse. Indeed, how is it that Balbus' "cloaking" and "corruption"
metaphors are somehow accurate descriptions of political discourse, that "mechanisms"
accurately describe their operation within American politics, yet sport metaphors are
inaccurate descriptions of politics? An accuracy perspective could very well lead one on an
infinite regress, as an analyst's metaphors could be described (again through metaphor) as
themselves inaccurate representations of political discourse. As Danesi (1989) succinctly
stated, the analysis of metaphor may entail "a version of Heisenberg's Principle-it is
impossible to talk about metaphor without recourse to metaphor" (p. 528).

The second criticism concerns a contradiction, or at least inconsistency in the
interpretation. Balbus' objection to the sport metaphor rested on his observation of "a
remarkable structural homology between a contemporary sports contest and the model of
politics advanced in the technocracy thesis" (p. 76-77). In other words, the sport metaphor
of which Balbus is critical works quite well! For, in the accuracy view, what is an
"accurate" metaphor other than a comparison of things between which there is a
"remarkable structural homology"? On this reading, there should be a greater awareness of
technocracy, because it shares much with football. The question arises as to how a
metaphor can at once be both a deceptive and accurate version of a political reality. In any
event, the apparent deception which the sport metaphor was said to have brought about
apparently escaped Balbus himself. What is it that made possible his ability to see through
such deception that others were presumed to lack? Mandelbaum (1979) termed this the
"self-excepting fallacy", wherein the analyst "states a generalization that purports to hold of

all but which, inconsistently, is not then applied to oneself' (p. 36).

3 2
Balbus' interpretation thus rests on a certain presumption of ignorance on the part of

the American public. However, no evidence for this ignorance was offered, other than the
circuitous claiming of the deception of the metaphor. In this way, Balbus adopts a position
which hinges entirely upon a presumption (expressed in metaphor) for which he presents
no evidence. The use of the terms "cloaking" and "corruption" could conceivably be seen
as an instance of what Edelman (1988) considered reification presented as scientific
analysis. In other words, it was insufficient to establish that deception had occurred by
simply labeling the sport metaphor as a "cloaking" device. This was the very phenomena
that needed to be substantiated.

Of course, the fundamental issue is whether American political leaders are indeed
"corrupters" and "cloakers" of the reality of life in the American capitalist system; what
indeed the nature of capitalism is; and whether Americans indeed know the implications of
such a system and nevertheless choose it over another. To be sure, the invitation to see
politics in terms of certain aspects of sport and not others is rooted in ideology, and the
study of metaphor in political discourse should closely follow what ideas these ideologies
constitute. But it cannot be presumed that from every instance of a sport nretaphor follows
the clear accomplishment of the rhetorical objective of the speaker, be it enlightenment or
deception. Political events and circumstances may make these objectives impossible. The
very question at hand is whether the motives imputed to a political speaker are realized, and
little is added to the task of discovering an answer by the knowledge that a sport metaphor
was employed. To criticize a presumed outcome of a metaphor is an "indictment" of the
ideology it may or may not extend, not the metaphor itself. Given this, it is not the sport
metaphor per se which should be the target of Balbus' criticism. Balbus could have
conceivably used the sport/politics Bildfeld to construct a verbal paradigm of his own
which would have opposed the game plan metaphor to which he objected. Hence, perhaps
Balbus' effort should have been directed at discovering the reasons for the apparent lack of
an equally salient, competing metaphor, from sport or otherwise, which would effectively

oppose a technocratic capitalist ideology.

33

My final criticism of Balbus concerns a lack of clarity in the essay as to what
constitutes "sport", and therefore what constitutes a sport metaphor. At one point Balbus
describes sport as "increasingly technical activities which require participation by experts
whose activities are subordinated to the dictate of a predetermined plan " (p. 77). This is
not inconsistent with pOpular conceptions of certain modern sports, such as professional
football. However, Balbus later characterizes sport as "what was formerly known as play"
(p. 77), and even offers the emergence of new types of "spontaneous" play activities as
hope that the technocratic meanings associated with the use of the sport metaphor will
change to meanings associated with play. As Calhoun (1981) summarized, sport and play
are distinctly different, and according to some authors, almost antithetical. Again, this
was simply an argument by Balbus that sport ought to be playlike, and should have been
followed by a plea for more play metaphors in American politics. I will return to this point
in the analysis to follow. Suffice it to say that the hope that sport will become playlike
should not interfere with the analysis of sport as it is and how its metaphorization leads to
some conception of politics. A coherent analysis of a metaphor cannot take place unless the
Bildfeld upon which it was established is clear. Accordingly, studies of a specific Bildfeld
which includes sport, must begin with and retain a clear definition of sport and what it
entails.

These criticisms of Balbus neither exhaust those that could be made, nor do they
diminish the importance of those insights which may be useful in an empirical study of the
"game plan" metaphor within a constitutive framework. The upcoming analysis of the
speeches and the contextual factors in which they took place will proceed with an openness
to extending Balbus' ideas where they seem applicable. However, it is also possible that a
counterexample may be found. The distinction to be made between this and Balbus'
interpretation, then, is an. openness to explore what sport may be taken to mean in the
attempt to promote an ideology or political purpose, not presume it beforehand.

In turning to Lipsky's (1981) discussion of the sport metaphor in American politics, I

should at the outset admit that many of his stated ideas with respect to sport, language and

3 4
the sport metaphor are entirely consistent with those I have presented above. I say stated,

however, because these ideas do not appear to be carried through in his interpretation.
Recall, that in a previous work Lipsky (1978) considered sport as a "Rorschach" from
which ideas consistent with a number of diverse ideologies can be derived. Consistent
with a constitutive view of metaphor, Lipsky (1981) stated that "the kinds of metaphors
and vocabularies we use will inevitably structure the kind of reality we perceive and act on"
(p. 134). This is entirely consistent with a constitutive view. In terms of American
politics, then, recall that Lipsky (1981) asserted that an increasingly atomized work force
lacked a common language which would link them to larger social and political society.
Political language had apparently been devoid of compelling content, until the mixing of
sport and politics, said to have peaked in the 1960's. Sport language, then, began to
infuse politics in order to provide a communal language and to reinvigorate interest in
politics. However, the increased interest was considered as quite shallow, as citizens were
said to be concerned not with the issues in political debates, but rather with their outcome.
As with Balbus, Lipsky's interpretation has conceptual problems and inconsistencies
deriving from an implicit adoption of an accuracy perspective on metaphor. That is, Lipsky
does not retain the constitutive perspective he seemed to indicate in the above quote by
exploring the ideas which the sport metaphor develops. Instead, he concentrates on the
differences he perceives between the metaphors he assumes are in operation and the reality
of American politics.

The first instance of this occurred when Lipsky considered the issue of technocratic
government. Unlike Balbus, Lipsky did not assume that sport metaphors within politics
reflected and thus conveyed technical meanings. Instead, he believed that the rather
sentimental values often associated with sport were brought to mind in modern uses of
sport metaphor. These values were for this reason said to be "anachronistic", and the
metaphor itself was considered to render an "oversimplified conceptual and syntactical
framework" (p. 140). The sport metaphor was therefore seen as inappropriate to apply to

complex govemment, as it provided a "false clarification" (p. 140) of the complex with the

35

simple. Clearly, the oxymoronic concept of "false clarification" is evidence of the
difficulties of an accuracy perspective. Again, this interpretation is based on an established
perception of political reality and ways in which the metaphor fails to reflect that
perception. Were their no perceived identifies, however, the metaphor could not exist.
What Lipsky intimates is that the sport metaphor and its apparent entailments ought not
exist, because he presumes that inappropriate affective responses accompany them.
Obviously, he feels that modern government does not deserve these "warm and vital" (p.
140) associations. Like in Balbus' critique, Lipsky has to assume that these affective
processes occur in everyone but himself, as he must have been able to escape them in order
to conduct his analysis. Further, the "anxious" population at large is presumed to be
incapable of detecting these psychological "end runs", which he ironically calls them, as
they go on to "prevent thinking about new policies and directions" (p. 141). This does not
square with the view that sport is a "Rorschach" capable of promoting diverse ideas, as the
sport metaphor (again, no examples were given) was in this case limited to only simple,
sentimental ideas.

In developing this explanation, it is interesting to note the chronology of events in
which Lipsky places the emergence of the sport metaphor in American politics. He first
must declare a lack of political participation in the contemporary United States, although he
does not define what constitutes participation. This was said to have been brought about
by the inability of traditional politics to generate interest, due to an uninspiring political
discourse. In other words, the old political discourse, which brought about the widespread
participation he assumed had once been the case, was no longer working. Sport language
was said to have been necessary to prevent this from continuing, as sport was a way to
make the complex machinations of government more "comprehensible" (p. 134, italics
added). This is in accord with a constitutive view. But, Lipsky concluded, sports
language in political discourse "prevents thinking", and the application of its "genuine
apolitical and ahistorical appeals to our political and historical world will... make the
political present more dtfi‘icult to comprehend " (p. 141, italics added)! This obvious

3 6
contradiction may be resolved by saying that appeal to sport may work, but it does not

force people to deal with contemporary problems. How is it that the meaning of sport can
be at once so static and removed from the forces of history and still be applicable to
contemporary society through metaphor? Lipsky's explanation rests on the notion that the
sport metaphor is incapable of creating knowledge with an appropriate affective dimension
that was once created by another set of metaphors. What were these metaphors which
apparently had at one time resulted in a more politically sophisticated citizenry, and why
were they not equally anachronistic? In order to substantiate the political alienation Lipsky
sees as prevailing, he must limit sports language to the associations of simplicity and
sentimentality. In this way the other meanings of sport, such as the thoroughly
unsentimental technocratic images which Balbus pointed out, are ignored as a potential
means of explanation. Of course, such a consideration would have been contrary to
Lipsky's posited chronology.

Whether the alienation and lack of political information and involvement in American
society has substantially changed over the last half-century is a matter to be demonstrated.
If it has occurred, it is still another issue as to what place the sport metaphor may have
meant in bringing about such change. Whatever the case, this place cannot be known by
considering sport in abstraction from actual use as a metaphor, and attempting to fit to it
meanings which will exclusively extend an historical evolution the endpoint of which is
apparently known beforehand. In other words, Lipsky presumed that a political "malaise"
existed in the United States, and then attempted to explain how political use of the sport
metaphor contributed to that malaise. How can the influence of language be seen if its use
can only lead in one direction (i.e. toward political "malaise")?

The accuracy perspective on metaphor is also evident in paper presented by Hariman
(1982). This work concentrated on baseball metaphors, but also asserted that all sport
metaphors have four common properties. These were popularity, ambiguity, piety and
ugliness. Sport metaphors were seen as popular because all games are presumably

popular, and for this reason such expressions are familiar to all. Popularity was said to

3 7
make sport metaphors essentially interchangeable, and none of their appeals were said to

be made on the basis of a unique structure of a particular sport. The second property,
ambiguity, was described in much the same way as Lipsky's "Rorschach", in that the same
metaphors were said to have produced very different interpretations. However, Hariman
drew this conclusion not from a metaphor, but rather from an essay on football. On the
basis of these diverse potentials for meaning, Hariman concluded that the sport metaphor
"is used because it can not (sic) carry precise meanings". Next, sport metaphors were seen
as pious and thus used to express civic pride and affirm established institutions. With this,
Hariman, like Lipsky, concluded that sports language brings forth images of nostalgic and
presumably preferable days gone by. Finally, the sport metaphors were seen as ugly, and
their uses "common constructions requiring little ability and having little effect" (p. 5).
Hariman supports this by noting that sports language is often "poorly" used, is therefore
never found in poetry other than "doggerel" (p. 6), and had never moved the author himself
into the realm of the sublime. This latter property is true, he asserted, despite the fact that
sport itself is aesthetically pleasing. In metaphor, however, sport as played or watched he
saw as unable to be "imitated". All four of these properties were said to mean that sports
metaphors are used for "talking in code" (p. 1). That is, Hariman began the essay by
labeling the baseball metaphor as a "cipher" or "a system of signs ultimately meaningless
for an act of judgment" (p. 2). They instead were argued as being part of a "means of
persuasion similar to civil religion, public sculpture, and patriotic music" (p. 2).

What is most obviously evident in this work, as Hariman admitted (1987, personal
communication), is that few examples from actual discourse are used to substantiate the
points made. Without belaboring this point, as I have with in the two critiqued works
discussed above, I must nevertheless discuss Hariman's (1982) distinctive, although
equivalent adoption of an accuracy perspective. The general tenor of the paper is that sport
has not, and therefore cannot become a part of any discourse beyond the aesthetically crude
and mundane, because its language is "poorly used" public property, its experiences

"escapist" (p. 10) and "unreal" (p. 13), and its content ultimately "meaningless" (p. 17).

38

The explanation for the inability (of whom is not mentioned) to transform sport into
"precise" discourse, and it is here where the accuracy view is implied, was based on a
number of highly dubious statements about how traditional interpretations of sport fail to
reflect the actual experience of sport. For example, college students who had lost financial
aid through budget cuts and had threatened to "play hardball" with the Reagan
Administration were considered as not making any substantive statement about "ideology,
strategy, schedule, persona, or traditions" (p. 14). On this basis, Hariman presumed that
they could not make such statements by use of baseball metaphors. That is, he entirely
forgoes any possibilities of constructing or creating extensions of such metaphor because
he presumes their is nothing in the sport of baseball which could do so. Perhaps if the
students had mentioned the possibility of using the "bean ball" as a solution to the problem,
this interpretation might be altered.

I see this work as a rather elaborate way of preempting sport, and the trivial
connotations Hariman seems to associate with it, from being considered a part of more
aesthetically valued discourse by asserting that it lacks the capacity to do so. In other
words, by keeping it within the realm of physical activity and practical engagement,
Hariman is able to insure that sport's obvious route into the realm of significant social ideas
through metaphor cannot take place. Accordingly, any future analyses of sport in public
discourse can be seen as not worthy of any serious attention, as they would connote a
passage into the mundane, the ambiguous, the pious and the ugly. These four properties
could well be characteristic of some uses of the sport metaphor. Certainly, they ignore the
technocratic and anachronistic conceptions noted above. In any case, by initially labeling
the baseball metaphor as a "cipher" and as equivalent to any other sport metaphor, Hariman
insures that they must be the properties of all sport metaphors. In this way, to see them as
specific, esoteric, legitimate and sublime would instantly be considered an inaccurate
interpretation of the sport metaphor.

A cogent way to summarize the three works critiqued above, and to demonstrate the

distinct interest of this study is to state the questions each analyst appeared to ask in their

3 9
respective interpretations of the sport metaphor. In Balbus' (1975) case, the question

concentrated on how the sport metaphor led to continuing alienation and technocracy. In
Lipsky's (1981) analysis, the question was focused on how the sport metaphor led to the
"structural malaise" presumed to exist in the United States. In Harimans' (1982) paper, the
effort was directed at showing how the sport metaphor could be seen as an aesthetically
crude and ultimately meaningless cipher. In this thesis, the issue is what the sport
metaphor has likely meant within the events and circumstances in which it can be observed
in use. What might the combination of a sport metaphor and its context constitute as a
version of political reality? How might these considerations contribute to the explanation of
political events and the actions of individuals and groups of a particular period of time?
What do they say about the status of sport in American society? Such an interest does not
necessarily preclude the extension of the interpretations offered by the above authors, but I
believe it cannot assume such an extension before examining the sport metaphor in actual
use.

Such extensions can again be considered a verbal paradigm based upon an established
Bildfeld between phenomena typically associated with sport and American politics.
Instances where such a Bildfeld has been drawn upon in the rhetoric of modern United
States presidents is thus considered the employment of a sport metaphor. While this is not
in keeping with a strict definition of metaphor in a linguistic sense, the exploratory nature
of this thesis makes this a prudent operative definition. Hence, related linguistic
phenomena, such as analogy, simile, anecdote, and others are combined under the rubric of
metaphor. Most important are instances where a particular president seems to imply that
certain dimensions or events in sport are applicable to areas not literally associated with
sport. Within sport as a "Rorschach," the dimensions and events drawn upon will be seen
as suggestive of particular affirrities between these elements of sport and the political ideas
which they express. Further, these uses will be viewed as providing insight into the
historical events with which they are temporally associated, and as potentially constitutive

of the political worlds in which individuals and groups acted. Finally, sport as a metaphor

4 0
will be considered as a dimension of sport which needs further study along the lines

suggested by this thesis.

CHAPTER III
Methods and Procedures

The methods and procedures I used are based upon three primary considerations
which emerged from the literature reviewed above. A brief summary of these points will
make clear what is to follow. First, I noted that neither Balbus (1975), Lipsky (1981) nor
Hariman (1982) based their interpretations on actual uses of the sport metaphor in
American politics. In accord with the constitutive view of metaphor and the empirical
emphasis suggested by Pocock (1971), I conducted an empirical study. That is, the sport
metaphor was examined as it was actually used in political speech. Second, in order to
discover the specific meaning of a political metaphor it was necessary to trace the historical
context in which it was used (Raynor, 1984). For this reason, historical information from
the time period in which a metaphor is located is also included Further, a quantitative
analysis of the sport metaphor will provide very little information on what a particular
usage may have meant within an historical context, and hence a qualitative interpretation
was suggested for this thesis. I will now provide a brief rationale for the selection of the
speeches of modern United States Presidents as the focus of this study.

The President of the United States is likely the most influential and visible political
figure in the Nation (Hart, 1987), if not the world. The pervasive mass communications
media have increasingly focused on increasingly discrete activities of presidents, including
their public speaking. Tulis (1987) has argued that presidential rhetoric has gained
increasing prominence within the institution of the presidency. Hart (1987) discovered that
within a forty year period, modern presidents spoke on on nearly 10,000 different
occasions, that each president tended to speak more frequently than his immediate
predecessor, and that the topics of these speeches ranged widely. Given these factors, it is
reasonable to assume that the content of presidential messages are influential in the way
people view divergent aspects of American life and politics. Accordingly, it may also be
considered that the verbal paradigms which are constructed and are extended by the uses of

41

42

metaphor in presidential rhetoric might have considerable influence on the metaphors
widely used by persons in general. Although this thesis cannot address whether the latter
point is the case, it may be considered that presidential speech is an important place to begin
an empirical study of the sport metaphor. Additionally, the public speeches of modern
presidents have been recorded verbatim in W volumes.
Hence, they are an easily accessible source of data on an influential public figure. It should
be kept in mind, however, that this thesis was not directed at making general statements
about the speeches of these presidents or even their use of sport language, but rather what
the sport metaphors they employed appeared to mean within the context in which they were
located. The methods and procedures below, then, will take into account these
considerations.

I selected speeches from W volumes from 1961 through
1984, covering Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and the first term of
Ronald Reagan. The decision to begin with the speeches of John F. Kennedy is based on
both practical and historical grounds. Regarding the former, the tremendous number of
speeches delivered by presidents during the modern presidency noted above and limited
personal time and resources required that I limit the speeches to a manageable collection.
With respect to the latter, President Kennedy's term in office marked a significant increase
in both the number (more than twice the number proportionally than Eisenhower) and
diversity in subjects of presidential speeches, setting the standard for modern presidential
discourse (Hart 1984).

My objective to study the sport metaphor as it is used to characterize the nature of
American life and politics suggested that I put a further delimitation on the speeches
selected for analysis. Specifically, I selected only those speeches defined as Economic and
Partisan, as defined below. I assumed that economic and partisan speeches are most likely
to include statements of a president's views on the fundamental nature of American life
within a capitalist economy, and the relative place of the individual, the president and
governmental institutions within national politics. An informal examination of

commencement speeches also revealed the presence of sport metaphor, and hence a

43

selection of corrrrnencement speeches are also included in the study. I selected these
speeches by examining the titles given them in W volumes for
indications that they concern economic or partisan matters, or were commencement
addresses. Once selected, each speech was either "skimm ", as defined below, or read in
its entirety in order to establish its general content and possible inclusion of sport
metaphors. I considered a sport metaphor not only metaphors in a strictly linguistic sense,
but also instances where the president used sportive language, analogy or anecdote or some
other figure of speech in reference to some political or ideological issue. That is, I
concluded after a preliminary review of several speeches that in a number of instances the
presidents implied that certain sportive ideas applied to certain political issues, but
expressed this by means of a non-metaphorical linguistic device. In other words, the sport
metaphor in this study refers to the use of sport within a Bildfeld from which verbal
political paradigms can be created.

Once the speeches were selected, I turned to three sources for information on the
historical context of the speech. First, I examined We: issues on the both the
day of and the day after the specific speech in question. The W was selected
for three primary reasons. First, it was the most accessible source of national news
available. Second, it held one of the the largest nationwide circulations of any published
newspaper during the period of the study. Third, it often published the entire texts of
presidential speeches, with accompanying analysis, and hence could provide additional
contextual information not otherwise available. Within these issues, I looked for articles
whose subject was the speech itself, the president's activities, and/or the prevailing issues
involving the president on that particular day. Of course, such articles also included
historically-relevant information beyond the immediate event being reported, and this
information was also considered. I defined this information as the Immediate Political
Context.

Second, I traced what I called Sport-Related Presidential Activity (defined below) as
recorded in the WWW, considering the possibility that

attendance at some sport-related function may have increased the personal salience of sport

4 4
for the president and perhaps elicited the use of a sport metaphor in a subsequent speech.

Finally, I used selected historical accounts of the administrations of each president,
primarily from political science literature on the presidency (e.g. Greenstein, 1988) in order
to establish a General Historical Context. The choice of these sources was not based upon
any consideration or knowledge of the particular perspectives of the authors. My objective
was to become acquainted with the personalities of the presidents themselves and the events
which took place while they held office. With this information, I attempted to gain further
insight into what a particular use of the sport metaphor may have meant in terms of the
particular president who used an identified metaphor.

It should be noted that not all of the sources of contextual information proved
necessarily effective in the task of interpreting each speech, nor were they particularly
exhaustive or even representative of the vast historical information that could have been
used. Again, however, a more thorough historical review was subject to personal time
constraints. In each case I attempted to draw upon my personal knowledge of what
appeared to be related historical events. In no case did I hesitate to use other contextual
sources beyond those listed above. Nevertheless, an incomplete historical account should
be considered as a limitation of this study.

The ensuing effort is an attempt to weave the contextual information together with the
text of each selected speech in order to explicate the meanings of each located sport
metaphor . Although I attempt to base my analysis on as much factual information as
possible, I acknowledge that this was a very subjective interpretive process. I entered this
process, however, with the intent of evaluating the utility of past interpretive efforts, using
insights from Balbus (1975), Lipsky (1981) and Hariman (1982), and where possible, I
extend these interpretations by drawing on a diversity of literature. Further, I offer an
expanded interpretation of the sport metaphor into areas not considered by these authors.
Finally, I summarize and attempt to explain the implications of this thesis for the study of

the relationship of sport to politics in American society.

45

fini ' n
W - speeches with titles including the words "banking", "budget",
"business", "economy", "employment", "industry", "labor", "unemployment" or variations
of these words and/or those which appear to deal with federal economic matters. I
anticipated that economic speeches could be titled with words not listed above, and thus I
examined speech titles to attempt to locate such speeches.
12W - speeches with titles including the words "democratic", "convention",
"party", "rally", "republican" or variations of these words and/or those which appear to
deal specifically with the president's political party affiliation. I expected that partisan
speeches can be titled with other than these words, and therefore I examined the speech
titles and attempted to locate and include these speeches.
WEN-W contain an exhaustive
listing of speech transcripts; issued statements to the public, Congress, and other bodies;
transcripts from press conferences and interviews with the president; presidential
correspondence with individuals and groups; and a number of other items documenting
official and unofficial activities of the president. These items are individually listed,
numbered and titled in each volume. Those items which contain the words "sport",
"games", "physical education", "physical activity" or other indications of a relatedness to
sport are considered as a potential source for the emergence of a sport metaphor.
skimming - time-saving procedure for examining the content of speeches, composed of
reading in-full only the fnst and last paragraphs, and the first and last sentences in second
through penultimate paragraphs in specific speeches selected for examination.
W - the use of non-literal language which is derived from sport, such as
metaphor, analogy, anecdote, or simile, to refer to non-sport social processes, values,

attitudes or human acts.

CHAPTERIV

Results and Discussion

The fact that this thesis is the first empirical and historical study of the sport metaphor
makes necessary the presentation of some general impressionistic results in addition to the
strict review of the sport metaphor in the selected speeches. A number of apparent patterns
in the " ta" appeared which were not anticipated as being relevant to the original question
of the political meanings conveyed by the sport metaphor. These patterns nevertheless
aided to some extent in the interpretation and presentation of the results, and provided some
additional insights which may lead to a better understanding of the sport metaphor in
American politics. These unanticipated findings concern the issues of frequency, party
affiliation, and presidential personality, and will be discussed below.

For reasons to be explained below, only 17 presidential speeches which contained
sport metaphors were included in this study. These speeches are listed in the Appendix.
Accordingly, the sport metaphor does not appear to have been a consistent or particularly
frequent feature of the speeches of any modern United States president. Although this
cannot be stated conclusively, as this study was neither quantitative nor based upon an
exhaustive review, it is quite clear that the sport metaphor exists within a wide array of
rhetorical tools. Moreover, the presidents in the study employed a number of figures of
speech and other rhetorical strategies, and drew from a diversity of metaphorical Bildfelds
(Raynor, 1984). Other metaphors used included those from war (e.g. political "battles"),
agriculture (e.g. a "seeds of prosperity"), and natural events (e.g. "winds of change"). It
will be noted later, however, that in no case were each of these metaphorical fields used
exclusively within a particular speech. Quite the contrary, the mixing of metaphors was
ubiquitous not only within speeches, but also within paragraphs and single sentences.
These included the mixing of metaphors from sport with those of other Bildfelds. Further,

46

47

these presidents in sonre instances used essentially the same sport metaphors across a series
of speaking engagements. This tends to support the notion that very little was to be gained
from a quantitative approach. Overall, it should not be assumed that the sport metaphor is a
regularly-used, distinct and integrated aspect of the political speech of U.S. Presidents with
an extensive history of use.

My second general impression relates to the issue of frequency as well, but applies to
the number of instances of the sport metaphor in the speeches of Democratic versus
Republican presidents. Specifically, in my reviews of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and
Carter I did not find a single instance of a clear and substantive sport metaphor in the
economic and partisan speeches reviewed. I did, however, locate a sport metaphor in a
commencement speech delivered by Johnson by way of a reference in Muir (1988). This is
the only instance of a sport metaphor used by a Democratic president which will be
included in the following analysis. Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, however, used
sport language and metaphor much more frequently and more explicitly than their
democratic counterparts. This would seem to at least initially support the notion of
Hoberman (1978, 1981, 1984), Hargreaves (1985) and Valentine (1977) mentioned earlier
of an affinity between conservative politics and sport. To reiterate, however, this is a
question to be addressed by the interpretation of the speeches to follow.

Finally, it might be argued that the apparent Republican propensity to use the sport
metaphor has little to do with conservative politics and everything to do with the personal
histories and personalities of the Presidents themselves. It might be suggested, that is, that
Nixon's frequent referrals to his "bench warmer‘ ' role on the Whittier College football team
(Collins, 1983), his expressed desire to become a sports writer had he not become
president W, 1969), and his unprecedented and enthusiastic
attendance at sporting events (Collins, 1983) might have led to his proclivity to think in
terms of "game plans". President Ford's lauded career as a center on the University of
Michigan football team, his position as a former coach at Yale University, and his directive

that the University of Michigan "fight song" replace "Hail to the Chief' at presidential

48
ceremonies (Porter, 198 8) may have brought forth experiences from this history. Finally,

it might be noted that Ronald Reagan began his career in the entertainment industry as a
sports broadcaster, which may have made sports language personally salient and
meaningful to him. While the relevance of these personal histories are undeniable, they do
not necessarily provide a full explanation of what the applications of the sport language
may have meant within the context of a speech, let alone what these expressions may have
meant in terms widespread understandings of American life and politics. If we are to
consider language as a means by which political realities are constructed, we must go
beyond explanations rooted in the individual psychologies of presidents and consider the
broader social and ideological implications of the political language of which the sport
metaphor is a part.

The issues which arise from these initial findings of low overall frequency, partisan
differences in frequency, and the apparent impact of presidential personalities, again,
cannot be addressed completely without an interpretation of the actual uses of the sport
metaphor by these presidents. Specifically, I will show that the sport metaphor can be used
in ways that range from quite superficial and relatively insignificant, to those which are
more moderately substantive in meaning, to those which are at the center of an ideological
statement. Within the presentation of results to follow, I will begin by discussing what I
will argue are rather superficial uses of the sport metaphor. These superficial metaphors
refer only to specific and rather isolated political events, not to broad conceptions of
American political life. Further, these fail to present structural, normative and affective
aspects of sport to the extent found in examples located elsewhere. Next, I will argue that
Balbus' (1975) interpretation of the "game plan" metaphor is reduced in severity upon
examining the circumstances in which it could be observed in use. For this reason, it
seems to lie between those which are superficial and those which are at the core of an
ideological appeal. Finally, I attempt to show the centrality of the sport metaphor in the
transformation of the prevailing American political ideology of the Johnson Administration
to that of President Ronald Reagan.

49

Before beginning that discussion, however, a clarification needs to be made. To
operate with the premise that language is a means by which human beings structure their
realities and subsequently begin a discussion of certain language use as superficial seems
somewhat contradictory. It seems to presume a set standard by which to judge a particular
discourse as superficial, moderate or substantive. Obviously, I feel that such a tack is
warranted in my organization of the results of this study, and I should preface the
discussion by explaining precisely why. Recall that the works by Balbus (1975), Lipsky
(1981) and Hariman (1982) did not examine and hence did not differentiate among various
uses of the sport metaphor. That is, these theoretical treatments did not allow for the
distinct differences in use which make such an organizational scheme necessary. Further,
it would be naive to presuppose that every presidential utterance is fraught with profound
political significance. Politicians are no more immune to "smalltalk" than persons in
general. Equally, however, we should not lose sensitivity to the potential for an office
holder to exploit seemingly informal situations to make substantive statements. Rather,
moderation between these extremes seems indicated in that it will allow for an awareness of
the potentials of the sport metaphor to take on a range of significance. These can be seen as
relating to the structural, normative and affective components at which the usage seems to
strike, as it can be comprehended from the particular circumstances of a speech. The
process of "unpacking" these sport metaphors will therefore proceed with a sense of
realism for the ideas they can develop within their surrounding context, not within an
adopted sociological perspective. Again, the set of meanings of a particular sport metaphor
will be assumed to follow from its observation, not be preceded by it.

I] t] . l I [II S E . 1

I begin the formal analysis with excerpts of speeches by Presidents Richard Nixon,
Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan which contain what I argue are quite superficial uses of
the sport metaphor. I do so both to demonstrate what appears to be unfounded concern by
Balbus (1975) and Hardaway (1976) that sports language in American politics is inherently

lethal and manipulative, and to make obvious the fact that a theoretical perspective on the

50

sport metaphor need start from observation. The examples below deserve only brief
attention as political "rhetoric." However, for the sake of comparison I will discuss their
lack of depth in terms of the structural, normative and affective significance, as well.
Further, I find particular support for the ideas presented by Hariman (1982) and Lipsky
(1981), as both argued that the sport metaphor is often used to superficially express civic
pieties and communicate rather ambiguous sentiments on public issues.

The first speech featuring a superficial sport metaphor took place on May 28, 1970 at
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. President Nixon spoke at "Dr. Billy Graham's
East Tennessee Crusade", held on the University of Tennessee football field. The event
was attended by an estimated 88,000 persons, primarily students (Semple, 1970). The
overwhelming majority of these students were apparent supporters of the President, amidst
increasing dissatisfaction with the United States involvement in Vietnam. Additionally,
members of the Nixon administration had advised the President to end his isolation from
college campuses, where much of the opposition to the War had for a number of years been
expressed (Semple, 1970). There was, however, a small group of students who shouted
demands for peace, but they were soon to be outnumbered on a prompt by the President.
Having first stated his pleasure at the fact that "there seems to be a rather solid majority on
one side rather than the other tonight" (p. 467), Nixon stated

If I may add a personal note as one who warmed the bench for 4 years, it is
finally good to get out on the football f eld here at Volunteer Stadium. And
even if we are on the 20 yard line, we are going to be over that goal line

before we are through. WW 1970, p. 467)

The crowd apparently took this as a call to overwhelm the protesters in the audience, as this
passage was followed by the college cheer "Push 'em back. Shove 'em back, way back"
(Semple, 1970). Although no actual physical shoving took place, the football terms and
the stadium in which they were uttered seemed to provide the crowd with a useful means of
solidifying themselves and of creating new ways to oppose the protesters. It was clearly
the football field setting that made Nixon's metaphor possible. Obviously, in such a setting

there was no practical way of discussing the issue of American involvement in Vietnam,

5 1
and hence it cannot be claimed that the metaphor of football was particularly enlightening of

issues or accomplished any lasting political transformation. Clearly, the students who
supported the President, and who might ironically be seen as a rather vocal segment of
Nixon's "silent majority" (Schell, 1975), arrived at the stadium with these political
dispositions. The efficiency and contextual effectiveness of the metaphor for rather
superficially uniting persons in collective action is what is most evident in this example.
Hariman's (1982) observations seem to apply here, in that the football yardage and cheer
reveal little about issues or strategy, and essentially leaves the commitments of the students
rather ambiguously lost in the enthusiasm of the moment.

The second series of superficial metaphors begin with one of two speeches which
were drawn from outside the collection of economic, partisan and commencement
speeches. President Ford spoke at a dinner for inductees into the Golf Hall of Fame in
Pinehurst, North Carolina, on September 11, 1974. The speech took place just two days
after the controversial pardoning of President Nixon for his participation in the Watergate
affair, and amid talk of a "blanket pardon" for others involved (Herbers, 1974). Ford used
his speech to the group in an obvious attempt to promote compassion for what was clearly
a preponderance of negative reaction to the pardon (Herbers, 1974). Protesters of the
pardon were present during Ford's day-long visit, which included a game of golf, and
carried placards with messages such as "Is Nixon above the law?" (Herbers, 1974). While
much of the speech was devoted to describing the virtues of the game of golf, Ford began

to coopt themes more applicable to his current political predicament:

Golf rs one the few games where honor ts more important than the rules.

Without good sportsmanship, golf could not exist. Without trust, another
name for good sportsmanship, governments cannot exist.

But there is still one more lesson to be learned from golf...the victor
extending his hand to the vanquished.

I have enjoyed sitting there watching on television the pat on the back, the
arm around the shoulder, the praise for what was done right, and the
sympathetic nod for what wasn't. These are as much a part of golf as life
itself, and I would hope that understanding and reconciliation are not
limited to the 19th hole.

52

...This afternoon for a few hours I tried to make a hole in one. Tomorrow
morning, I 'll be back in Washington trying to get out of one. Wm

W1, 1974, pp. 121-122, 124)

This was a case in which the immediate context of the President's speech was a clear
determinant of the language used. It is highly unlikely that language from golf would have
been used had the pardon issue not emerged within the week of this visit. While the game
of golf is replete with gestures of courtesy and indeed an official etiquette, it was likely not
the best source of symbolism for the theme of reconciliation. Such etiquette was likely
unfamiliar if not suspect to most people, given the status of golf as a "country club" sport.
Further, if the references to trust and honesty were to apply to the "vanquished" former
president, it would likely be pointed out that it was precisely trust and honesty that were
missing and consequently the very reason the Nixon government was no longer in
existence. For this reason, it is difficult to see how American citizens could be prepared to
give an "outstretched hand" let alone a "sympathetic nod" to a president who was perceived
to be neither honorable nor thought to respect the "rules."

It would be difficult to contend that the allusions to courtesy in golf in any way
provided a lasting framework through which the American public viewed the discredited
former president, particularly as revelations continued to emerge from probes into the
Watergate break-in. Nor could one make such an argument for the following quote from a
speech made by Ford earlier in the day of the Golf Hall of Fame visit. Referring to
Astronaut Alan Sheper 's "chip shot" taken on the moon during the Apollo mission as a
"great chip shot for all mankind" (p. 119), Ford said:

...We made it to the moon because of the shared experiences of the human
race. And that chip shot symbolized all that in one of the most natural

languages shared by all-the language of golf. (W
President, 1974,13- 120)

Again, President Ford conveniently overestimates the extent of golfs influence, here for
the unmistakable purpose of ingratiating himself to an audience of those with lifetime

commitments to the sport. This represents a pattern likely to hold for nearly all holders of

53

public office as invited speakers to sport organizations. It is a curious phenomenon that
sport seems to be one among a select set of social institutions that are near universally
treated as sacred topics in American politics. A comparative study of rhetorical tactics used
by politicians when speaking to, for example, sport versus religious groups, may shed
light on what the specifics of this practice may be. However, while these winsome uses
should not be ignored, they should also be recognized for what their unambiguous
purposes are. In this study, they provide further rationale for looking for more substantial
uses of the sport metaphor in other speaking formats-namely, economic, partisan and
commencement addresses.

As the upcoming passages will demonstrate, however, such careful selection of
speaking topics does not insure a path to the sublime in political rhetoric. The following
excerpt from a speech by Ford to guests at a fundraising dinner for the Republican Party in
Newport, Rhode Island provides further evidence that the sport metaphor can be quite
superficially used:

...We are about to kick of our Bicentennial in America. The other day I
was looking at the progress we have made as a nation over the last 200
years. And if I were to analyze it, I would say that in the first hundred
years...we developed a kind of government that gave us strength,
consistency, a solid base from which we could operate. In the second
century...we went through what I think most historians would call the
industrial revolution. We built the mills and the plants, and we developed
means of transportation, communication, and the like. We moved from

the 1 yard line a long, long ways down the field to become the most
eflective and constructive nation in the history of mankind in an industrial

competition W193 p 1270)

It should first be noted that this speech was given on August 30, 1975, at the
beginning of the college football season, and hence the prospect of "kickoffs" were likely
on the minds of at least some of the members of the audience. Moreover, it seems as if
Ford would rather talk about football in this passage, if his condensed version of
two-hundred years of American history is any indication. As for the metaphor, it invites
the audience to gauge American industrial "progress" in terms of football yardage. The fact
that Ford does not specify precisely where on the field America stood in this football game

54
with its industrial competitors appears to make this an instance of what Hariman (1982)

referred to as "keeping our expression of comrrritrnent to ...beliefs ambiguous" (p. 11).
That is, because the President did not really wish to make a definitive statement on this
issue, which would have committed him either to a gloomy or overly rosy picture of the
Nation's industrial health, he "hedged" with a moderately positive and certainly
uncontroversial message. Indeed, one might facetiously ask if America was in "field goal
range" at this moment in history, as Ford only goes so far as to say the nation had moved
"a long, long ways." This example may suggest the limits for the type of sport metaphor
which could be classified under Harrirnan's (1982) scheme. That is, those political
expressions which convey "civic pieties" are certainly an indispensable part of the
repertoire of presidential rhetoric. The token nationalism involved in speaking of
America's global industrial prowess in this way seems to fit in with the themes of Figler
(1981) and Petrie (1975), wherein presidents must maintain an image of vitality,
masculinity and patriotism (Curtis, 1989).

Finally, within the category of superficial sport metaphors is a selection of
post-nomination speeches from Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign. As the
Soviet boycotted Sunrrner Olympics came to a close and anrid the beginnings of the college
football season in the early fall, Reagan began to employ rather undeveloped sport
references in his September and October campaign speeches. Referring to Democratic

nominee Walter Mondale's intentions for economic policy, Reagan stated:

...Our work isn't done. The future is waiting to be seized; great frontiers in
science, in technology, in space-waiting to be discovered and pushed back.
And we can do it. We can do it because, as we say with our Olympic
athletes, when America goes for the gold, nothing is going to hold her back.
...You know, we all watched the Olympics this summer, and we cheered to
see American athletes go for the gold. Well, making our economy bear the
burden of their tax hike would be like having a coach tell an Olympic
swimmer to do the laps carrying an anvil or a runner to sprint with a ball
and chain. Come November, the American people are going to get to vote
on their coaches. And come November, the American people are going to
tell Coach Tax Hike to find another team someplace else. '

thePremdems, 1984, p.1320)

55

...You know, with this being football season and Michigan being a
powerhouse football State, maybe you've noticed in our Nation's Capital
the same thing I have: When all the last team ever did was punt, isn't it

great to see America scoring touchdowns again? W
Presidents, 1984,13. 1340)

This is likely the epitome of the type of civic piety to which Hariman (1982) referred.
Again, the context of each of these speeches should be kept in mind. They were all
delivered at various Reagan-Bush campaign rally sites, dominated by supporters not in
need of persuasion. One might argue that the reference to the "ball and chain" developed
the structural image that tax increases tended to slow the economy, and that the imagery of
an Olympic athlete attempting to perform under such conditions might carry with it some
affective connotations. But within the context of a political rally, special considerations
arise. Reagan was not only speaking to groups who overwhelmingly supported his
candidacy, he had been leading by substantial margins in public opinion polls for some
weeks and was limiting his attacks on his opponent (Clines, 1984) . Perhaps in more dire
political circumstances, such an image might have been further developed and used to
generate support. In this case, however, it would have been difficult for Reagan to have
more support than he held in this period. For this reason, these metaphors stay strictly
within the realm of rather simple affective and structural appeals. What was more evident
and salient in this campaign was Reagan's ubiquitously-noted "John Wayne" image, his
"rally around the flag" appeals and the overall resurgence of the presidency in American
politics (Curtis, 1989). I will return to these images in the discussion of Reagan in the
section on substantive sport metaphor.

It will indeed become evident in the analysis of moderately substantive sport
metaphors, that the above uses of the sport metaphor have been properly categorized and
appropriately explored in brief. As I will show, uses of the sport metaphor by President
Nixon not noted above extended beyond Ford's and his own opportunistic exploitation of a
specific sport event or context, a homogeneous and captive audience, and rather unique and

isolated circumstances. Further, I will suggest that the deploynrents of the sport metaphor

56
by Nixon had much greater and lasting impact in terms of their cognitive, affective and

normative implications than did the superficial uses above.
a u u; r-. z _. .-.-r -'- mi 112-. 0101- I17 .n".-_1u ‘1: no {'v. on Life.

Possibly no modern United States president, other than perhaps Ronald Reagan, has
invited more attempts at analysis from such a diversity of perspectives (Collins, 1983) as
has Richard Nixon. Given this, the origins of Balbus' (1975) article on the sport metaphor
as used during the Nixon years gives even more impetus to a careful analysis of its actual
use during this time period. It would simply be beyond the scope of this thesis, however,
to attempt to explore what personal meanings sport may have had for this former president.
Recall also that this thesis is aimed at deriving meanings of the sport metaphor on a societal
rather than psychological level, and how such language has contributed to ideas about
politics and life in the United States.

As Balbus (1975) noted, the notion of an econonric "game plan" was frequently
referred to during the Nixon Adrrrinistration. My earlier critique of this work left open the
question of whether Balbus's (1975) "technocracy thesis" applied to Nixon's actual use of
the sport metaphor, subject to the empirical and contextual analysis of this study. My
discussion of this particular metaphor will again mitigate the exploitative characterization
which Balbus' (1975) work attached to the sport metaphor in American politics. Within
the following analysis, I argue that, although this use of the sport metaphor is more
substantive than the superficial uses above, it stayed within the realm of expected
presidential behavior and did not move beyond this arena to any fundamental
transformations in the understandings which people held of American life and politics.
While evoking greater and more obvious cognitive, affective and normative effects than the
previous superficial examples, a reexamination casts doubt on the significance which
Balbus' (1975) work seemed to attribute to these effects.

The only use of the "game plan" metaphor by President Nixon in the speeches selecwd
for analysis was found in a nationally aired radio address on October 17, 1969. The

speech was prompted by mounting concern over inflation, which had been increasing and

57

had been calculated at a five percent annual rate ("President asks", 1969). In his
presidential election campaign Nixon had been critical of his predecessors, Kennedy and
Johnson, for reacting to inflation by issuing guidelines to control wages and prices
("President asks", 1969). As an alternative, Nixon indicated that, in addition to Federal
spending cuts, a delay of tax reduction, and new restrictions on money and credit from the
Federal Reserve, he would indicate to business and labor leaders that they ought base their
wage and price decisions on a slowed economy. This latter strategy he expressed in the
following:

Now that we have begun to detect signs of success in slowing down, what

can you expect your government to do next? Well, first let me tell you what

we are not going to do. We are not going to change our game plan at the

end of the first quarter of a game, particularly at a time that we feel we are

ahead. We're not going to turn away from basic causes to start treating
symptoms. In other words, we are not considering wage and price

controls. Wake-aim 1969,13. 809)

The "game plan" had seemed to be working, that is, as evidenced by reports preceding
the speech that industrial production had slowed (Shanahan, 1969). Concern over the
enactment of this plan centered primarily on the prospects that a slowed economy would
mean increases in unemployment, a consequence Nixon referred to later in the speech as
"bitter medicine," but he said he "believed the American people are mature enough to
understand the need for it" WW 1969, p. 809). This "hands
off' approach to intervention in economic affairs is, of course, deeply rooted in the
conservative politics of Nixon's Republican Party. This holds that in a capitalistic system,
problems such as high prices are more appropriately addressed by simply allowing them to
be subject to as many inherently-corrective market forces as possible, rather than through
government seizure and control. As Balbus (1975) pointed out, economic "game plans"
usually entail a specific set of actions to be performed with a high degree of precision, in
anticipation or reaction to a given configuration of events or circumstances. For Nixon,
this particular situation, to some degree, ironically called for a certain amount of inactivity

and restraint, in keeping with conservative economic strategy. The rigidity indicated in his

58

pronouncement of what he was "not going to do", adds further to this notion of
maintaining ideological discipline. But this statement of a plan was not suddenly foisted on
the public based upon some completely novel image of the role of the president and the
Executive Branch in handling econonric affairs. Balbus was critical of such planning and
his exclusive focus on the sport metaphor could not acknowledge that both the game plan
and the overlooked "medicine" metaphors similarly treat the issue of economic decision
making as instrumental strategies versus moral decisions. That is, Nixon's use of a
disease metaphor, in his talk of "treating symptonrs" and the need for "bitter medicine"
presents the image of an ailing patient in need of some cure. But, the use of the medicine
metaphor seems very much an admission of the moral implications of the President's plan.
There does seem to be some acknowledgement, although admittedly not very forthcoming
or compassionate, of certain pains which follow from the plan. It is just that a sport
metaphor was not used to address this problem. If it is agreed that this is the case, this
would tend to reduce Balbus' charge that the game plan metaphor was used without regard
for its moral consequences.

Balbus also concluded that the game plan metaphor contributed to the image of the
president as having an arsenal of plans to be mechanically performed by a rationally
coordinated group of subordinates. This was said to "mask the continued dominance of the
specifically capitalist imperatives to which this 'planning' is in actuality no more than a
response" (Balbus, 1975 , p.79). In the specific instance above, Nixon's avowed
opposition to wage and price controls could theoretically be seen in this way. On this
account, we would predict that, once stated, this plan would be steadfastly applied in order
to keep the market as the prevailing force in controlling inflation. However, this did not
turn out to be the case. As Hoff-Wilson (1988) reported, Nixon's "New Economic
Policy" announced on August 15, 1971 called for the very wage and price controls he had
vigorously opposed in the above speech. Of course, the new policy was itself another set
of plans with which to deal with the economy, but I believe the fact the plan changed under

apparent political pressure further removes its probable impact on transforming the

59
understandings of government and politics. Moreover, it likely reduces the perception that

such planning is immune to the desires of voters.

Another consideration provides sonre provisional support for Balbus' (1975) critique
of technocratic governance. Authors in political science, despite their writing from a clearly
positivist orientation, have noted the use of such tools as cost-benefit analysis "presented
and legitimated as objective analytical considerations" (West & Cooper, 1985, p. 204) to
advance the president's policy objectives of reduced regulation by Federal agencies.
Rourke (1976) noted, with respect to the use of expertise within Federal bureaucracies,
that "it is very much in the American grain to attempt to diffuse political controversy by
transforming political issues into technical problems" (p. 74). In both cases, however, it
should be kept in mind that the president, the legislature, the courts and the bureaucracies
are countervailing forces in the scope of American politics. In other words, the use of
expertise and technical information to avert controversy may not only be directed at citizens
in general, it may be used by these bodies to promote their own competing interests in
maintaining power and funding within Federal government. Further, as Rourke (1976)
pointed out, the use of technical information that most people cannot understand must be
complemented by tangible results that they can understand. That is, Balbus did not
acknowledge the electoral accountability of the President, and the need for the plans made
to produce some outcome for voters. It is likely the latter of which Nixon was conscious
when deciding to reverse the economic game plan, as he faced running for reelection in the
following year. In other words, political decisions, even expressed as game plans, have
moral implications to which the President in this case had to respond.

Moreover, Marxist epistemology produces sorrre unreasonable expectations by Balbus
in launching a critique of the language of an American president. In no case would it be
reasonable to expect an incumbent U.S. president to espouse anything but some variant of
a capitalist ideology, unless, of course he or she was a non-capitalist. While one may
resent the capitalist system and its manifestations, to criticize the president of a capitalist

nation for failing to promote some other system is misplaced. I believe it equally

60
unreasonable to expect the leader of any nation, of any political persuasion, to fail to have

some variant of a centrally-directed economic plan or policy. As Hayek (1945) pointed
out, a crucial problem in economic planning concerns the allocation of resources, and the
use of dispersed knowledge to design the most efficient system. To the degree that the
statement of economic policy is misleading, then, it is certainly to be deplored. But does
this mean that planned econonries or their articulation to citizens should be eliminated?
Balbus did not offer an alternative to such planning, nor did he acknowledge that American
voters have a lengthy history of electing a president at least partially on the basis of a stated
plan for the economy. That is, it would be surprising if a president did not have a stated
plan for dealing with economic matters. Hence, the notion of a presidential plan for fiscal
matters is an expected part of presidential rhetoric, and the fact that it is expressed in terms
of sport likely did not appear as any great change, in terms of such expectations.

Finally, the clear implication of Balbus' critique of the sport metaphor, in his own
deployment of metaphor, was that it successfully masked or "cloak " what would, were it
"uncovered," be an unacceptable state of affairs in the American economic order. Further,
he saw sport itself as being part of that unacceptable state of affairs. Balbus (1973) had
previously argued and restated in his later work that sport was "the capitalization or
reification of what was formerly known as play" (1973, p. 600, 1975, p. 77). This leads
naturally to his presumption that to bring back play and its metaphors as a replacement for
sport would eliminate the sport metaphor and bring about the "evaluation and
condemnation" of the "technocratic state structure" (Balbus, 1975, p. 79). However this
entailed two highly dubious assumptions about sport, play and what their metaphorization
might or might not do to transform American life.

To begin with, it presumed that play somehow had ceased to exist, or at least was
sufficiently subdued, as to be ineffectual in the formation of widespread social beliefs. It is
puzzling how this could be the case under any circumstances. It is precisely play which
makes sport possible in the lives of individuals. Children learn to compete in sport and

develop a certain degree of sophistication and physical development through play (see

61
Calhoun, 1981). Further, adults can engage in play, as Balbus himself pointed out. This

should provide indication that sport and play are distinctly different types of activity in
which people, for a variety of reasons, choose to participate and which provide very
different types of experiences. It is therefore not clear how one could completely replace
the other.

Second, Balbus assumes that those who do play will somehow become enlightened
about the exploitative technocracy to which they are subject, and, conversely, that those
who participate in or are otherwise exposed to sport cannot become so enlightened. How
this process might take place is tenuous at best. It implies an inconceivable dichotomy
between the enlightened and the duped in American society, which, even within Marxist
analyses of sport, is highly troublesome. As Hargreaves (1982) summarized:

"Consciousness is assumed to be an 'all or nothing' phenomenon: it is
either completely false and all is alienation, with people totally incorporated
into an inhuman Social order; or it is absolutely true, a state of total
illumination which enables people completely to see through and reject the
social order" (p. 43)

This is, of course, not limited just to sport participation, but to awareness of exploitation in
general. People are seen as passive and unable to know what is in their best interests,
including how to recognize the implications of the political language to which they are
exposed.

While other criticisms could be made of Balbus' (1975) speculative interpretation of
the sport metaphor, I believe it would be gratuitous to do so. His insightful article, with its
many incompletely developed ideas and inconsistencies, should nevertheless be seen as
pivotal in beginning the study of the sport metaphor. Moreover, there seem to be merits in
the further study of the technocracy thesis, insofar as empirically observed instances of
sport metaphors appear to convey technical ideas of governance. This seems particularly
important with respect to the relationships between various agencies of government.
Further, analyses of sport metaphors which serve as images for sub-groups and individuals

within particular agencies and organizations, as Keidel (1985) pointed out, may lend

62

insight into the meanings which sport may hold as versions of organizational structure,
strategy and information dissemination.

In summary, I feel that Nixon's particular use of the game plan metaphor can be
appropriately classified as moderate in significance, given the considerations which rrritigate
Balbus' interpretation. First, Nixon did seem to both acknowledge and subsequently
respond to the moral implications his economic ganre plan entailed, effectively reducing its
insensitivity to the results of his policy. A stronger affective association would likely have
followed had he not both acknowledged these implications and reversed his plan. Second,
and accordingly, this tends to reduce the perception on the part of voters that the plan is
immutable, and this turned out to be in evidence when Nixon reversed his comnritrnent to
resisting wage and price controls. In terms of normative considerations, then, game plans
seem to be changeable aspects of presidential policy, as they are subject to anticipated voter
responses. Third, the formulation of a plan with respect to the economy was hardly
unexpected as a role of the president, and indeed is to be expected from the leader of any
nation. Therefore, it cannot be reasonably claimed that the introduction of the game plan
metaphor created a substantial shift in the understanding of the role of the president with
respect to the Nation's economy. Finally, sport and play are coexisting and compatible,
not mutually exclusive, aspects of American culture whose metaphorization in political
rhetoric may ironically be expected to compete, but not completely replace each other.

As I show in the following analysis of the political transformation that occurred
between the administrations of Johnson and Reagan, the sport metaphor can take on greater
significance than the revised perspective on the game plan metaphor seemed to hold.
Although the intentions Johnson and Reagan had for the role of the Federal Government in
addressing difficult social problems were vastly different, the sport metaphor as used by
these presidents was central in presenting their divergent ideas, and carried with it much
more in terms of the cognitive, affective and normative considerations than did the game
plan metaphor. Further, so persuasive were the ideas in Johnson's metaphor that Reagan

waged a significant rhetorical effort to supply an alternative. Specifically, this involved the

63

shift in policy from Johnson's "Great Society" social programs to Reagan's dramatic
reduction in the role of the Federal Government.
I .ell’ I.” 11' ...IrIs 'I .I‘ 'I 'I' I. r4 IIII.«.IIIuIII 010.01.0{12'4

My earlier corrrrnents on the "unreasonableness" in some of Balbus' (1975) criticism
of the sport metaphor suggested that there are limits on the ideological parameters within
which a president may be permitted to operate in acting and stating intentions for the course
of the Nation. Again, these have not and cannot be expected to concern "extreme"
questions, such as whether American capitalism should be replaced by socialism, but have
instead operated within accepted ideas about the proper role and activities of the president
and the Federal Government. Perhaps the introduction of the notion of sport into the
economic planning and other actions of the Nixon Administration were new ways to think
about that planning. But the expectation of planning was itself not new. However,
particular social conditions and problems which seem to call for a great deal of intervention
on the part of government may serve to loosen these parameters somewhat, both in terms
of presidential acts and the rhetoric associated with them. In other words, drastic events
call for drastic measures, and more substantive metaphors. Such appears to have been the
case in the historical contexts in which Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan
were situated. As Smith (1988) observed, these presidents have been part of only two
strong, presidential-led coalitions of the past 30 years. Out of the contexts of these
coalitions arose divergent uses of the sport metaphor which struck at the core of what are
among the most extreme ideological positions in modern American politics; namely, liberal
and conservative versions of the role of government in insuring social welfare. Further,
the ideas expressed by President Johnson were evidently so salient and meaningful for the
generation of support for Johnson's policies that, 17 years later, President Reagan had to
counter and offer alternatives to them. The following is an account of this debate and its
expression at least partially through the use of the sport metaphor.

In the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the first steps

President Johnson took by way of establishing political legitimacy was the completion of

(,4

Kennedy's mandate for civil rights. Johnson had used his influence as a former Senator,
as well as the obvious appeal to the wishes of the martyred president, to obtain pivotal
votes on the controversial 1964 Civil Rights Bill (Berman, 1988). There was a tremendous
amount of resistance to the advances in civil rights for blacks, particularly in the South, and
such resistance was very much in evidence prior to a pivotal speech given by Johnson to
graduates of Howard University on June 6, 1965. Among the largest black universities,
Howard University's location in Washington DC. made it a key platform from which to
launch what Johnson referred to as the "next step" in civil rights.

In the few days preceding the speech were several events and activities which made
obvious the continuing contradictions and disparities between whites and blacks in the
United States in the mid-Sixties. On June 3, a black pilot received national news coverage
for having filed a complaint against the Air Force for his treatment in comparison to white
officers, and his elimination from the space program (Hill, 1965). On the following day
were headlines reporting Major Ed White's walk in space during the mission of the Gemini
spacecraft (Sullivan, 1965). Amid reports that unemployment had reached an eight year
low of 4.6 percent (Pomfret, 1965), black plantation workers in Mississippi, who had
conducted a strike in response to low wages, were being evicted from their homes (Janson,
1965). Efforts by Federal officials to continue negotiations with officials of 14 Alabama
colleges over qualifications for Federal funds, in light of civil rights violations, were
delayed by Alabama's observance of a Jefferson Davis holiday ("Jefferson Davis halts",
1965).

It was in the midst of such events that President Johnson delivered his speech at
Howard University. To an audience of approximately 5,000, including graduating seniors
(Wicker, 1965), Johnson delivered a speech entitled "To Fulfill These Rights" (Public
PW 1965, p. 635). The following is an excerpt from the speech.

Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally , in American
society-to vote, to hold a job, to go to a school. It is the right to be treated
in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to
all others.

65

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of
centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as
you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person, who, for years, has been hobbled by chains
and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, "you
are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have
been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All citizens
must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights.
We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right
and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every
other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop
their abilities, physical , mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual
happiness.

To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough.
Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But
ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the
family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in--by the school
you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the
product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child,
andfinally the man WW 1965. p. 636).

 

In this passage, the idea of the fundamental nature of American life as a race was
central. Certainly, there is great cognitive appeal in the notion that the role of the individual
in a capitalist economy is, much like a footrace, to compete with others, and by merit,
receive the rewards of initiative. However, one also imagines a very stark picture of
American life as a competition among atomized individuals with little regard for their fellow
competitors. Hence, this image goes well beyond notions of competition and individual
initiative. It strikes at the very basis upon which a race can be considered a fair and
legitimate test of the participants, and asserts that in the absence of equal conditions there
can be no race. Further, the establishment of fairness was asserted as going beyond the
mere removal of barriers and the acknowledgement of historical injustices. The actual
reparations for those injustices were also seen as necessary, and to involve the contribution
of those who throughout American history had benefited from a race stilted in their favor.
As Johnson (1971) later stated "the problems at this stage could not be solved by goodwill
and compassion; they required large expenditures of public funds" (p. 167). As he stated
in his speech:

66

We are trying to attack these evils through our poverty program, through
our education program, through our medical care and our other health
programs, and a dozen more of the Great Society programs that are aimed at
the root causes ofthis poverty WW 1965. p.
637)

As Wicker (1965) wrote in the New York Times , which printed Johnson's speech in
its entirety, these were unprecedented words and deeds for a president in dealing with the
rights of black Americans. Entitling his front-page column "Johnson Pledges to Help
Negroes to Full Equality", Wicker (1965) stated, "going far beyond the subject of the
Negro's legal rights, Mr. Johnson addressed himself-more frankly than a president has
ever done-to the ultimate place of the Negro in American society, and to the legitimate
expectations of the Negro as a full-fledged American citizen" (p. 1). Additionally, Wicker
addressed the history of civil rights efforts within the executive branch, noting that, under
President Truman, a civil rights comrrrission report entitled "To Secure These Rights" had
been written, and that it was Johnson's intention to then "fulfill" them through social and
economic programs. Indeed, in that same year, Johnson obtained Congressional approval
for 80 of his administration's 83 major Great Society proposals, including Medicare,
Medicaid, the War on Poverty, Head Start, and the Educational Opportunity Act. Further,
just two months after the speech, Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

Wills (1970) suggested that the notion that "each runner must have an equal place at
the starting line....has been an agreed-upon undebated prenrise of our politics" (p. 236).
This premise had been driven by what he termed the "emulative ethic" (p. 237), around
which there have been points of disagreement between those on the political left and the
political right. It must be asked at this point what specific ideological distinctions are to be
made within the metaphor of a footrace, if it is the case that nearly all presidents would be
bound to agree that the basis of the American capitalist system is competition. In Will's
(1970) words, "the Left has stressed equality of opportunity", while "the Right has
stressed opportunity to achieve" (p. 237). For this reason, he suggests, those on the

political left will tend to identify with the notion of the starting line, based on an appeal to a

67

sense of compassion for those who effectively have not been allowed to enter the race
(Wills, 1970). Accordingly, Johnson's expenditures for Great Society programs were not
to be seen as "hand outs" to life's "losers," but as a means of fulfilling the promise of
American fairness to all by insuring equal competitive conditions, at least at the start.
Hence, the metaphor of the footrace operated on the cognitive appeal of capitalistic
competition as a race; the moral appeal of the injustice of sponsoring races which are run
unfairly; and the nornrative consideration that, to insure that fair races are always run, the
policy of government should be direct fiscal outlays to those most disadvantaged in
American society.

Muir (1988) has suggested that the metaphor of the footrace persisted as the single
most dominant metaphor within the American public when President Reagan took office in
1981. Stating that "it would be hard to overstate how rich in implication it was" (p. 267),
Muir (1988) also asserted that it was up to Reagan to "defuse Johnson's metaphor" (p.
268). For those on the political right, what was important in the matter of government
involvement in insuring fairness was making sure that "handicapping" was minimal, in
order that the individual initiative which makes for abundance in the American economy is
not undermined (Wills, 1970). Strategically, this involved the development of an
alternative metaphor which would simultaneously encourage competition while reducing
the severity of its connotations. For Muir (1988), this alternative seemed to be the notion of
"partnership," as it "implied a basis for cooperation, contrived initially on self-interest but
fortified by gratitude and mutual respect" (p. 238). However, as the following series of
excerpts from Ronald Reagan will demonstrate, this involved neither the abandonment of
the sport metaphor, nor the avoidance of footrace imagery as an aspect of Reagan's political
rhetoric. Indeed, President Reagan turns out to be the most prolific user of sports language
of the four presidents in this thesis, and took full advantage of the cognitive, affective and
normative properties of the sport metaphor. Further, Reagan's rhetorical efforts did not
appear to reflect a desire to distance himself and his policies ficm the notion of competition,

but rather showed him attempting to use the sportive ideals of individual initiative and

68
self-sacrifice to prepare the Nation for his severe domestic spending cuts.

As I mentioned earlier in my discussions of Reagan's use of superficial sport
metaphors, his election to office was accompanied by his general popularity,
anti-communist "John Wayne image" and a mandate to reestablish the strength of the
presidency (Curtis, 1989). Any discussion of the rhetorical history of Reagan must
therefore be cognizant of his efforts to exploit the images of toughness and moral
leadership. In looking at the events of his first few months as president, it is difficult to
imagine beginning circumstances which could have done greater service to this image. The
graphically televised attempt on his life after only two months in office served to place a
major question mark on the physical vitality of the oldest elected president in United States
history. However, his much publicized joking in the hospital, the frequent expressions of
amazement by attending physicians at his surprisingly quick recovery from a gunshot
wound to the chest only served to confirm these images of toughness. In an apparent
overlap of a number of coincidences, Reagan's first trip outside Washington since the
assassination attempt was to give the commencement address at the University of Notre
Dame, a Roman Catholic institution, on May 17, 1981. Only four days prior to the
address, an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II had left Catholics worldwide
extremely disturbed. Additionally, Reagan's often-noted portrayal of Notre Dame football
player George Gipp in the film "Knute Rockne," filmed on that campus some 40 years
earlier (Raines, 1981), seemed to render the recently recovered President as "the Gipper"
himself. University of Notre Dame President Revered Theodore Hesburgh reinforced
these images in introducing President Reagan by saying, "...we welcome the President of
the United States back to health, we welcome the President of the United States back into
the body of his peOple, the Americans, and lastly here at Notre Dame, here in a very special
way, we welcome the Gipper at long last back to get his degree" (Raines, 1981). The
following excerpt from his speech shows him taking full advantage of these images:

Now, if I don’t watch out, this may turn out to be less of a commencement
than a warm bath in nostalgic memories. Growing up in Illinois, I was
influenced by a sports legend so national in scope, it was almost mystical.

69

It is difficult to explain to anyone who didn' t live in those times. The
legend was based on a combination of three elements: a game, football; a
university, Notre Dame; and a man, Knute Rockne. There has been nothing
like it before or since.
...Now, I 'm going to mention again that movie that Pat and I and Notre
Dame were in, because it says something about America. First, Knute
Rockne as a boy came to America from Norway. And 1n the few years it
took him to grow up to college age, he became so American that here at
Notre Dame, he became an All American 1n a game that 1s still, to this day,
uniquely American.
As a coach, he did more than teach young men how to play a game. He
believed truly that the noblest work of man was building the character of
man. And maybe that's why he was a living legend. No man connected
with football has ever achieved the stature or occupied the singular niche in
the Nation that he carved out for himself not just in a sport, but in our entire
social structure.
Now, today I hear very often, "Win one for the Gipper," spoken in a
humorous vein. Lately, I 've heard it by Congressmen who are supportive
of the programs I've introduced. [Laughter]. But let's look at the
significance of that story. Rockne could have used Gipp's dying words to
win a game any time. But 8 years went by following the death of George
Gipp before Rock revealed those dying words, his deathbed wish.
And he told that story at halftime to a team that was losing, and one of the
only teams he had ever coached that was torn by dissension and jealousy
and factionalism. The seniors on that team were about to close out their
football careers without learning or experiencing any of the real values that a
game has to impart. None of them had known George Gipp. They were
children when he played for Notre Dame. It was to this team that Rockne
told the story and so inspired them that they rose above their personal
animosities. For someone who they had never known, they joined together
in a common cause and attained the unattainable.
We were told when we were making the picture of one line that was spoken
by a player during that game. We were actually afraid to put it in the
picture. The man who carried the ball over for the winning touchdown was
injured on the play. We were told that as he was lifted on the stretcher and
carried off the field he was heard to say, "That's the last one I can get for
you, Gipper".
Now, it's only a game. And maybe to hear it now-and this is what we
feared-it might sound maudlin and not the way it was intended. But is there
anything wrong with young people having an experience, feeling something
so deeply, thinking of someone else to the point that they can give so
completely of themselves? There will come times in the lives of all of us
when we '11 be faced with causes bigger than ourselves, and they won 't be

onaplayingfietd W 1981 pp 431-432)

Here, then, Reagan both foreshadowed and was a living example of what he was to
expect from Anrerican citizens under his version of fairness in the economic footrace. The
Federal Government's role in insuring an even starting line was less a matter of helping

those who had not been given a fair chance at the starting line-and Reagan apparently felt

70
there were much fewer in this position than Johnson had been willing to pay for- than it

was to make sure that, during times of economic hardship, all competitors in the race rely
on their own efforts and individual "character" to get through. Wills (1970) quoted Reagan
as having once stated, "we offer equal opportunity at the starting line of life, but no
compulsory tie forzeveryone at the finish" (p. 236). Recurring in Reagan's use of the sport
metaphor for years to come, and in direct contradiction to Johnson, was to be his
philosophy that "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the
problem" (quoted in Evans & Novak, 1981, p. 3).

Six months after his speech at Notre Dame, and shortly after revelations that Budget
Director David Stockman had expressed doubts about the President's plan for the economy
(Raines, 1981), Reagan was put on the defensive. At a Republican fundraiser in New
York City, Reagan both called upon his theme of character, but added a spiritual element as
well:

Much is riding on our economic program, and we can succeed if we
remember a few facts. First, we came to Washington with a plan to rebuild
this economy. And that plan is on track, even though the train was a little
late leaving the station, later than we had planned or wanted.

What we call supply side economics is now being born. If you listen
closely, you can hear hear the spank and then the cry. But only one-fifth of
the personal income tax rate reductions are in place, and they will not be
fully in place before 1983. The incentives to stimulate new savings, in IRA
and Keough retirement accounts, will not go into effect before January
1982, nor will the reduction on income, intended to coax investors out of
their tax shelters. Important incentives for business to stimulate new
investment and production will also begin in the next few months of 1982,
and then they '11 be phased in over the next several years.

Those Monday morning quarterbacks who insist our program hasn't
worked are a little too anxious. They're Monday morning quarterbacks, but
they're doing the quarterbacking on Friday night; they're not waiting. It
makes you wonder if some people just don't want our program to fail, if
they're not really rooting for recession and misery on Main Street. They
just can't face discovering that their tax and tax, spend and spend
philosophy over all these years didn't work, doesn't work, and won't
work.

...We didn't select our program because it would be easy or quick or
politically expedient. We chose it because it's the right solution to cure the
economic mess we 're in.

...You know, if you ask people in sports what enables them to come back
late in the game and win it all, invariably their answer is the same. Some
call it desire or mental toughness or second effort or unfailing
determination. What they’re talking about really can be summed up in one
word-~character.

71

Well, for nations in history, just as for individuals in everyday life,
character determines destiny. America faces a test of character that may well
decide its destiny. As I say, we never said it would be easy and we never
said it would be quick. But if we make up our minds to pull together the
American economy and all that we hold dear, we'll prevail.

So let me leave you with the words of Herb Brooks, who was coach of the
gold medal Olympic hockey team...He was in the locker room at Lake
Placid. His team was about to take the ice against the Russians. And
Brooks told them they were born to play that game. He said, "You were
born to be here at this time. This 1s your moment."

And my fellow Republicans, I believe that we are here to lead this struggle
to save our economy, that this is our moment, yours and mine. (21111115;

Banemtthefimsidents 1981 pp. 1021- 1022)

In light of the recent doubts about his program, then, President Reagan had to assert
that character was necessary not only for the American people in general , but also for the
members of his own party. Those who disagreed with his program were "anxious,"
"characterless," "Monday morning Quarterbacks," and lacked the "desire, or mental
toughness, or second effort, or unfailing determination" to see his program through. But
not only was character now an individual trait, it was especially that of Republicans.
Indeed, to see this policy through was apparently a Republican calling from birth, just as it
was the apparent calling of the "underdog" Arrrerican Olympic hockey team in defeating the
Soviet Union at Lake Placid in 1980. This theme of the "underdog" fighting back and
succeeding through mental toughness was called upon by Reagan in a national television

spot just prior to the kickoff of the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day, 1982.

...Although I know most of the world celebrates the New Year with us
today, I think this holiday is an especially American tradition. Most of us
are at home or with our families this morning, getting ready to watch the
splendor of parades and excitement of football Later our families will
gather around the dinnertable, and we '11 pray for guidance and strength tn
the New Year. Today we take a short break from the building and industry
and enterprise that make our country strong. We pause to reflect on the
values of God and fwnily and freedom that make us great.

I wish both teams this afternoon the best of luck, but Iowa has a special
place in my heart. Years ago I broadcast their football games on WHO in
Des Moines. I find special meaning in that this New Year's Day this
Hawkeye team has make it to the Rose Bowl.

You see, when I knew them back in the thirties, the Hawkeyes were
struggling to get out of one of those low periods that come every once in a
while to a school and a team. The first game I broadcast turned out to be the
game in which Iowa scored its f rst touchdown against a Big Ten team in 3
years. And that marked a turning point in Hawkeye fortunes

72
Coach Ossie Solem took Iowa on the comeback trail with men like Zud
Schammel, Dick C rayne, Ozzie Simmons, Ted Osmaloski, the Fisher
brothers, and so many others. They followed the Ironmen under Coach
Eddie Anderson with the immortal Nile Kinnick. A similar team will play
the Washington Huskies today.
Like the Iowa Ironmen, we Americans are known for dreaming with our
eyes wide open. We live our dreams and make them come true. Our ideas
and energies combine in a dynamic force. The kind of force that brought
the Hawkeyes to Pasadena enables America overcome great odds. We call
it the American spirit.
In 1982 this country faces serious challenges. We're gripped by a recession
brought on by decades of government mismanagement. But we're making
a new beginning as a nation. The road to recovery is never easy. But
America is no stranger to convictions to set things right. We need only
believe in ourselves, in our country, and in tomorrow.

Happy New Year. MW 1982. p. 1)

In his speech at Notre Dame, the attribute of character was seen as individual sacrifice
for the common good. In the context of political trouble, character became a property of
exclusively conservative ideological discipline which would save the Nation from econonric
disaster. In the above message, athletic character has been rhetorically broadened into the
"American spirit," called upon when the Nation faces challenges. The corollary to this is
that to the degree one does not possess the American spirit,and hence Reagan's economic
philosophy of individual sacrifice, one is not American. Further, any partisan opposition
could be argued as against the wishes of the American people. In other words, the ideas
which Reagan brought to bear on the essential role of government versus the individual
were essentially that realization of the government's policy was the responsibility of the
individual. In this way, any outcome that the President's policy would eventuate would
ultimately be on the shoulders of individual Americans themselves. Failures or losses
could effectively be "socialized" (Burke, 1974, p. 98) as the blame would be assumed by
the country as a whole. A poll released two weeks after the President's message seemed to
provide support for this, as those polled felt Reagan's programs had hurt the economy, but
would eventually "help the country" (Clymer, 1982, p. 1). Of course, any successes could
be claimed as both victory for conservatives as well as victory for America. Further, these

victories would come not in the form of economic gain by large groups, but rather in the

73
form of individual "instantiations" of this athletic American spirit; the entrepreneurs, the

"yuppies" and the corporate executives. From here, Reagan simply needed to assume that
all to whom he spoke were "Americans" in this sense, and point up examples of how his
policy worked along the way.

This seemed clearly to be the case when Reagan addressed Howard University on May
20, 1982, some 17 years after President Johnson's eloquent articulation of the metaphor of
the footrace. The salience of that speech and its focal metaphor apparently required, as
Muir (1988) stated, a reinterpretation or "defusing" by President Reagan. But as the

following excerpt shows, the "socialization" of his policy was effected by assuming the

agreement of all:

...Fifteen years ago, President Lyndon Johnson came to mark the
celebration of Howard University's 100th anniversary, and he told
students, "T he task is to give 20 million blocks the same chance as every
other American: to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop
their abilities, physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue individual
happiness".

His was a message from the heart, and his answer was a program of
political action and economic redistribution to lessen the plight of those who
had not shared equally in the blessings of freedom. But as the wrongs were
gradually redressed and barriers broken down, more and more people began
questioning whether big government could guarantee economic abundance.
It's one thing to ensure everyone’s right to buy a ticket on the train-and that
government must do. But that ticket isn't worth much if the train can't then
leave the station.

Government has an essential role to protect those in need. But it's
self-defeating to keep cutting smaller and smaller slices of pie from an ever
shrinking pie. It is time now for all of us together to make a bigger pie for
all our citizens and everyone having a bigger slice, and that's what we're
determined to do...

...Each of you, I know, shares my belief in the principles of the free
market--personal initiative, competition, responsibility, reward, and
stewardship. Your presence here and your generosity demonstrate how
willing you are to live up to your beliefs. We can 't thank you enough for

that W 1982 pp 659 660)

The conversion of the footrace unfairly run without government to the metaphor of a
"train" unable to "leave the station" was clearly a way of avoiding the very question of
competition which Johnson's speech made clear. Instead, provision for the needs of the

poor was described as too heavy a burden on the apparently unified monolithic "engine" of

74
America. This unification was apparently made possible by the "wrongs" which had been

"gradually redressed" and the "barriers" which had been "broken down", and which
presumably meant that blacks had attained full-scale inclusion in mainstream America.
Accordingly, the assumption of full-scale inclusion also implied the assumption of
full-scale responsibility for one's own economic condition, as well as the adoption of the
characteristics of the American spirit. Only this could explain how President Reagan could
"know" that those attending the event shared his "belief in the principles of the free
market". These characteristics were again those of the mythical American athlete.

Two months after his address at Howard University, Reagan spoke at the Annual
Convention of the National Association of Counties, in Baltimore, Maryland. By this
point, President Reagan had become keen at picking up on cases of sporting performance

as metaphors for the American spirit in action:

It's a simple yet a revolutionary concept-this idea of giving the voters what
they voted for. And it has startled some people a little bit we're actually
doing what we said we were going to do, and that's not something
Washington is used to. We're determined to return government to the
people. Together, with the support of people like you, we will shrink the
Federal establishment, start our economy growing again, and restore
America to greatness.

I have no doubt that the American people, with God's help, are up to the
challenge. We need only believe in ourselves. In the course of our history
we've overcome far greater challenges. If we look at the daily lives of
Americans we can see case after case of individual mettle and pluck.

Just a few days ago in City Island Park in Daytona Beach such a story of
courage took place. Thirty-two-year-old J .R . Richard, once an ace pitcher
for the Houston Astros, stepped up to a minor league mound. Two
summers ago, a stroke had left him partially paralyzed, and his doctors
wouldn't predict whether he could ever play again. But that summer night
in Daytona the packed ballpark erupted in thunderous applause as J .R.
jogged onto the field.

Newspaper accounts reported his performance was not overpowering, but
neither was it an embarrassment. In four innings, the lanky righthander
gave up only two earned runs and left the game to another enthusiastic
ovatton

After the game, J .R. said, "I'm ready to work myself back up-it took a lot
of hard work to get here; it's going to take a lot more hard work to get back
into the majors. " And then he looked at the Astro’s general manager who
was present and said, "I will be back. "

75

JR. has the kind of American spirit that we all must tap to continue our
struggle for national renewal. We've won some major victories in the last
year and a half, but there's a long, hard road still ahead of us. If we can
focus as clearly on our goal as J .R. Richard has on his, if we can imagine
America once again strong and vibrant and alive with jobs for all our
people, security for our elderly, wealth enough for our poor, and new
opportun1t1esfor every new generation, then I believe that we, too, can find
the strength to make our dreams come true (

Presidrrrts 1982 p 921)

Clearly, none of these exemplars prevented the formation of vociferous disagreements
with Reagan's attempts at unloading of what had been years of Federal Governmental
responsibility onto individuals and localities. Those at this latter level of government,
including the county representatives who were the audience for the above speech, were
quite critical of the President's "federalism," which entailed that they assume the role of
administers of social welfare without Federal help (Raines, 1982). Their objections
succeeded in lessening the burden from that which had originally been planned, but that did
not dissuade President Reagan's continuing efforts to use the sport metaphor to equate his
administration's policy losses with those of Americans in general. This was particularly
evident during Reagan's attempts to pass his budget proposal for fiscal year 1984. As
Cowan (1983) stated, members of Congress, fearing their eventual prospects for
reelection, found very little desirable in continuing defense spending increases while
finding ways to cut into such programs as Medicare and Medicaid. Nevertheless, in his
nationally-aired radio address on March 26, 1983, the President reacted to an undesirable

budget resolution with the following:

As I 'm sure you've heard, the majority in the House of Representatives
passed its budget resolution last week. Since the vote on that budget was
announced by those who supported it, they've proclaimed it a great victory
over me. You, the people, are treated as mere spectators in the contest. But
you weren't. You were down on the field in that game. And if those
proposals ever become law, you '11 find you 're on the losing team.

76

...But this isn't just my struggle; it's yours, too. Together we still have
time to beat back the unfair tax increases, hold the line on spending, and
keep America strong. If you can make the big spenders see the light, you
can make them feel the heat. Please tell your Representatives not to turn
back the clock and squander America' 3 future Tell them to work with us to
keep America on the upswing. If you do, we can usher 1n a bright new age

of prospertty that outshines any other 1n our history W
W 1983, pp. 460, 462).

Facing this opposition, Reagan had to again mount an attack on the Great Society
metaphors that entailed that these "entitlement" programs were necessary. He used the
forum of a fundraising dinner for a former U.S. Representative to label the Great Society
programs as "the central political error of our time" (Weisman, 1983). For him, the
rationale for his proposed cuts in such programs as education, welfare, job training and

child nutrition (W eisman, 1983) were as simple as back-to-basics athletic coaching:

When new management takes over a failing business or a coach tries to
revitalize a sports team, both will frequently find that the key to success is
cutting out the extraneous or extravagant, while returning to the basics and
emphasizing those resources that have traditionally been success/id. Well,
this is precisely what we're trying to do to the bloated Federal Government
today: remove 1t from interfering 1n areas where it doesn' t belong, but at the
same time strengthen its ability to perform its constitutional and legitimate

functions WW 1983 p. 672)

As the 1984 election approached, President Reagan was met with generally positive
public reactions to his policy objectives, as indicated in a poll taken reported on March 2
(Roberts, 1984). This poll seemed to show that, while voters generally saw failure in his
policies, they did not blame their "affable president" (Roberts, 1984). It was not
surprising, then, that he solidified his hold on the conservative imagination using familiar
sportive imagery and spirituality in the following conclusion to his remarks at the

Conservative Political Action Conference Dinner on March 2, 1984:

Fellow citizens, fellow conservatives, our time has come again. This is our
moment. Let us unite, shoulder to shoulder, behind the banner for
freedom. And let us go forward from here not with some faint hope that
our cause is not yet lost; let us go forward confident that the American
people share our values, and that together we will be victorious.

77

And in those moments when we grow tired, when our struggle seems hard,
remember what Eric Liddel, Scotland's Olyrrrpic champion runner, said in
"Chariot's of F ire." He said, "So where does the power come from to see
the race to its end? From within. God made me for a purpose, and I will
run for His pleasure.

If we trust in Him, keep His word, and live our lives for His pleasure, He’ll
give us the power we need-power to fight the good fight, to finish the race,
and to keep the faith WW 1984, p. 293-294).

Just as the circumstances of Reagan's initial months in office in 1981 served his
purposes by providing rich metaphor, so did the summer prior to the 1984 election. The
1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, hosted in the state of which he had been
Governor, provided a series of preliminary events, and, given the Soviet Boycott,
successful United States performances within which to cast his conservative pleas for

reelection. These included speeches at a White House Ceremony on the cross-national

Olympic Torch relay Wm 1984, p. 698), the U.S. Olympic
Training Center W, 1984, p. 757-759), a radio address on
the Summer Games Wiring, 1984, p. 1104-1106) and, of course,

a ceremony honoring the medal winners Wm, 1984, p.
1132-1133). This was irresistible material for President Reagan in a August 18 radio

address:

My fellow Americans:

Something very bright and happy and hopeful has been happening across
our country in recent days. We've watched a grateful nation shower its
affection on those who showered us with glory--our Olympic athletes.
Theirs was a triumph of faith and hope. In honoring them, ours has been a
celebration of the new patriotism. Nancy and I saw our athletes in Los
Angeles the day after the Olympics ended. You could just feel their joy and
energy. And when our famous gymnast, Mary Lou Retton, stood on her
toes to give me a hug, I couldn't help thinking, "How can anyone not
believe in the dream of America? "

Now I 've been accused of being an optimist, and it’s true. All my life I 've
seen that when people like Mary Lou have a dream, when they have the
courage and opportunity to work hard, when they believe in the power of
faith and hope, they not only perform great feats, they help pull all of us
forward as well.

78

...In 1984, we face an historic choice. Will we heed the pessimist's agenda
of higher taxes, more bureaucracy, and a bigger welfare state leading us
right back to runaway inflation and economic decay, or will we continue on
our new road toward a true opportunity society of economic growth, more
jobs, lower tax rates, and rising take home pay?

I believe in the spirit we've seen during and after these Olympics reveals
something very important about America. We believe in ourselves, we're

hungry for real opportunity, and we're up to any challenge W
W, 1984. p. 1145).

As I showed in the series of superficial deployments of Olympic sport metaphors,
these images were created within a context of huge margins in preelection polls. During the
months of September and October of 1984, Reagan's speeches at rallies considerably
weakened the images in these metaphors. But this does not minimize President Reagan's
apparently overwhelming success in use of the sport metaphor in his first term of office.
As this extensive history of usage reveals, his deployments of the sport metaphor
constantly did battle with President Johnson's Great Society rhetoric, which included the
fundamental image of American life as a footrace. By gradually extending the notion of
athletic character to increasingly larger segments of American society, Reagan was able to
transform his conservative policies into the very definition of American individualism and
initiative. This culminated in the equation of American support for the Olympic athletes as
the "new patriotism" in his last substantive use prior to reelection. Through this series of
rhetorical strategies, the policies which had significantly curtailed the established Great
Society programs to which Americans had grown so accustomed, were seen as parts of a

necessary transformation in the American political order.

CHAPTER V
Summary and Conclusions

My purposes in this section are to summarize and attempt to draw some general
conclusions on the questions posed in the study which seem to follow from the above
analysis. I will also briefly offer implications and questions for future study in the general
area of sport and politics, and the specific study of the sport metaphor. Because of the
somewhat original theoretical position and methods used, I feel that caution is warranted in
offering this study as a model for future work. Perhaps the criticism that it will likely invite
will leave at least some rudimentary bases for continuing study in this area. In any event,
such caution is best manifested in brevity.

I began this thesis by introducing the ways in which sport sociologists have
approached the topic of "sport and politics" and their discussions of the sport metaphor in
American politics. I noted that while sport language continues to be used for political
purposes, there has been little interest within sport sociology literature in discovering what
these uses have meant as bases for understanding American life. Suggesting along with
Lipsky (1981) that there is a tension between seeing sport as a passive reflector of
American society, and its apparent role in promoting certain political orientations, I
concluded that sport is best conceived as a "Rorschach" (Lipsky, 1978) from which
divergent ideological messages can be created and delivered. For this reason, it seemed
fruitless to simply interpret sport language from either the conflict or the structural
functionalist perspectives of current sport sociology literature, as each have presented
strong nonnatively based perspectives on sport. Their wholesale adoption would tend to
lead to a rather polarized and predictable set of conclusions, regardless of the evidence

which an empirical study might reveal.

79

8 0
As an alternative to these perspectives, I turned to a select literature from the sociology

of knowledge which was consistent with an empirical approach to political language. In its
following of Kuhn's (1970) notion of scientific paradigms, I found Pocock's (1971)
innovative idea of verbal political paradigms attractive for this study for its focus upon
empirical analysis, historical context, the influence of salient social institutions, and an
active role for language in influencing the formation of political realities. Within Anrerican
society, it appeared obvious that sport is one of these salient institutions, whose language
has been used to construct paradigms through which people may understand other social
spheres. These paradigms are created and sustained, I proposed, through use of sport as a

metaphor. I considered metaphor as constitutive of the realities to which they refer, as
opposed to more or less accurate versions of some reality, used because of its structural,
affective and normative properties.

The employment of an accuracy perspective on metaphor would not only have led to
troubles with its internal inconsistencies, it would also have presupposed a neutral standard
by which to judge accuracy. Three past studies of the sport metaphor, which to some
degree adopted an accuracy perspective, did not empirically study the sport metaphor in
actual use, yet nevertheless speculated on its general meaning within American society.
These interpretations ultimately relied on preestablished normative perspectives, rooted in
neo-Marxist theory (Balbus, 1975), political-historical conclusions (Lipsky, 1981) and
aesthetic considerations (Hariman, 1982). While these interpretations had problems
associated with their speculative characteristics, I did not dismiss them entirely on this
basis, but instead left open their applicability pending the observations to be conducted.
Choosing a constitutive perspective allowed for an examination of the sport metaphor
guided not by an interest in whether specific instances were in keeping with the predictions
of a theoretical perspective, but rather by an interest in establishing the meaning of a
metaphor given its position within historical circumstances. In this way, the structural,
affective and normative properties of a particular metaphor could be examined without the

necessary assumption that it was necessarily always a deceptive (Balbus, 1975),

8 1
anachronistic (Lipsky, 1981) and/or shallow (Hariman, 1982) aspect of political rhetoric.

Further, these properties were discovered to be useful in classifying metaphors according
to their significance in rendering a view of Anrerican life and politics.

Given the constitutive perspective on metaphor, I attempted to employ methods that
would both identify sport metaphors in actual use, as well as supply historical context
information which would help explain the meaning of each usage. Based upon the
prominent position of the president in modern American politics, the propensity of
presidents to speak on a range of topics, and the considerations of availability, I chose
presidential speech as the source of data for this study. Choosing econonric, partisan and
selected commencement addresses, I analyzed these speeches for their inclusion of sport
metaphors. I also collected a limited amount of historical data from both immediate and
general political contexts, including that which concerned presidential involvement in
sport-related activity. Based on close readings of these speeches, I concluded that some
usages were rather superficial in content; that the "garrre p " metaphor was surrounmd by
circumstances which reduced to moderate the severe interpretation given it by Balbus
(1975); and that the footrace metaphor of Johnson, and its transformation by Reagan, were
substantive usages.

The superficial metaphors identified tended to be quite limited in their development of
cognitive, affective and normative implications. Nixon's ad hoc cementing of the coalition
of supportive students within a football stadium, Ford's ingratiation and attempted
moralizing to a golf clientele, and Reagan's references to successful Olympic athletes and
college football teams as parallel to American economic success were all rather linrited to
specific situational contexts. That is, in each case, the appeals clearly drew from immediate
surroundings, recent events or particular audiences for their effect. The sport references
used were in all of these cases neither very imaginative or particularly memorable. These
seemed to be the types of uses in which Lipsky's (1981) and Hariman's (1982) notions of
unexanrined partisanship and ambiguity, respectively, seemed to apply. It is therefore

highly unlikely that any noteworthy change in conceptions of life or American politics arose

82

from these instances.

Within the moderate category, I focused solely on Balbus' (1975) criticism of Nixon's
game plan metaphor. While I found Balbus' (1975) development of the technocracy thesis
an idea quite worthy of consideration, I could find only one instance of the game plan
metaphor in the selected speeches. After having noted the contextual factors which
surrounded this particular use of the game plan metaphor, I was convinced that the charges
of pure instrumentality, the critique of economic planning, and the consideration of play as
a replacement for sport in changing public consciousness tended to lose force. While these
considerations appeared to lessen the structural, affective and normative properties of this
particular use of the game plan metaphor, I suggested that there are likely other areas in
which technical information couched in homologous sport terms may be found. This
includes competing Federal bureaucracies and other organizations which are endeavoring to
either cloud their activities to outsiders or to clarify their activities to insiders. Generally,
however, these technical meanings are only one dimension of a much larger set of potential
meanings for the sport metaphor.

Finally, I argued that the uses of the sport metaphor by Johnson and Reagan were
instances in which these Presidents attempted to use sport to drive certain ideas home to a
Nation in need of answers to the serious problem of providing for basic social welfare.
Johnson appealed to the extreme individualism of the footrace and argued that it is
incumbent on a Nation that claims to be based on equality that fairness be insured to all
competitors. Reagan, on the other hand, argued in a sequence of metaphors and anecdotes
that fairness already existed in the United States, and that it was incumbent on each
individual to use "athletic character” qua "American spirit" qua "new patriotism" to recover
from harsh economic conditions. Further, Reagan's pleas were in response to the
widespread acceptance and dependence upon Johnson's Great Society programs and its
associated rhetoric. The progranrs which he saw fit to reduce so drastically therefore
needed to be presented as counter to the wishes of each individual American, who instead

was seen to prefer to run a race in which the needs of fellow competitors were quite

83

secondary in consideration.

This study also led to sorrre general impressionistic results as well as an analysis of the
contextual circumstances of each usage. Regarding the former, my findings indicated the
apparent infrequency of use of the sport metaphor within presidential speech in general,
and within Democratic presidential speech, in particular. This seemed to lend support to
the conclusions by Hoberman (1978), Hargreaves (1982) and Valentine (1977) of a natural
and mutually benefiting association between conservative ideology and sport. Having
classified and examined these speeches, I am now in a position to speculate on the issue of
conservative affinities to sport. The fact that all of the presidential uses of the sport
metaphor in this study, save Johnson's imagery of the footrace, are from Republican
presidents, seems to indicate some positive association. What is not clear is whether these
associations are rooted in anything necessarily conservative or Republican. According to
my interpretations, Nixon, Ford and a portion of Reagan's uses of the sport metaphor
stayed largely within the realm of superficial references (e.g. progress as football yardage
or touchdowns, president as coach, compassion as golf etiquette, etc.). Not only is there
little in these uses to suggest a distinct conservative orientation to progress, leadership or
morality, there is little of political significance in them generally. Further, Nixon's stated
commitment to a particular game plan with which to confront inflation needn't have
necessarily entailed actions consistent with conservative policies. A game plan may
suggest rigidity and discipline, but that does not necessarily entail policies with which a
Republican might agree.

On the other hand, President Reagan's uses of substantive sport metaphor to promote
his economic policies were clearly conservative in orientation. The cognitive appeals to
unrestricted competition and individual initiative, the affective appeals to American "spirit"
as athletic character in the face of adversity, and the normative focus on government as a
facilitator of achievement versus an insurer of fairness, are unmistakably in line with
traditional Republicanism. But, it must be considered that these uses were in part a

response to Johnson's singular, but apparently powerful, image of American life as a race

84

among atomized and egocentric individuals unwilling to voluntarily assist those
traditionally excluded from participation. Johnson's plea for fairness led to the conclusion
that it was govemnrent's responsibility to do what individuals could not be counted upon to
do themselves. To reiterate, this seems to render the sport metaphor as exploitable for both
liberal and conservative political ends, and supports the notion that sport is a "Rorschach"
(Lipsky, 1978) before being appropriated for some political purpose. Hence, the
observation of greater Republican frequency in use of the sport metaphor should not, at
least in terms of this study, be mistaken for a natural affinity between conservative politics
and sport.

More generally, this analysis shows that sport has and continues to serve as an
institution whose importance in Anrerican society serves as a source of familiar images by
which meaning may be lent to political and social experience. Sport's status as an
institution does not, however, indicate that it is a unidimensional reflection of some more
authentic set of social realities. To some degree, and for perhaps no small portion of
American society, sport constitutes that reality. This appears especially to be the case in
eras of marked political change, as in the transformation in federal economic policy
associated with the Johnson and Reagan administrations. To be sure, these were not
"radical" shifts in the sense of dramatic ideological changes. However, within an American
citizenry which generally expects the continuation of capitalism, these were changes in the
version of capitalism to be practiced. The transition from an era in which the American
footrace was seen as unfair until the historically disadvantaged could equitably compete, to
an era in which the unfairness of past injustices was apparently to be supplanted by
individual initiative and athletic character, may be seen as constituting a revolution partially
waged in metaphor.

It is to the details of these metaphorical battles--details being contextual historical
inforrnation--as well as the meanings that sport takes on in such battles, that may serve as
the most fruitful path for future research in the area of sport and politics. That our current

president is perhaps the most sport-absorbed in U.S. history (Plimpton, 1988); that top

8 5
collegiate coaches are increasingly lending public support to political candidates

(Oberlander, 1988); and that former athletes are increasingly likely to become powerful
political figures (Hart, 1987) are only a small portion of the evidence that the fields of
meaning which sport and politics share are likely to become increasingly intertwined.
Further, when such information is added to the fact that President Reagan is the most
frequent and rich user of sport language in modern presidential history, four years of
which are not included in this study, it is clear that there are data piling up unexamined. If
it is accepted that these and the multitude of other instances where the Bildfelds composed
of sport and politics (e. g. political journalisnr, Congressional debate, and the desired "level
playing field" of international trade,) are worthy of investigation, there is an even more
urgent need to undertake study in earnest.

This thesis, of course, does not begin to cover the issue of the sport metaphor versus
other metaphors. Indeed, I did not include the numerous other competing metaphors which
the studied presidents used in addition to those from sport. Further, I did not investigate
what metaphors those from sport replaced, for example, Reagan's sport metaphor as
opposed to the metaphors of President Carter. Future studies of this type should pay close
attention to the histories of metaphors of other types and how they interrningle. This seems
particularly important across audience types. Did these presidents use the same collection
of metaphors across audiences composed of various gender and ethnic combinations?
Finally, this thesis did not address how sport metaphors are perceived by individuals.
How might individuals react to sport metaphors used by politicians versus teachers, clergy
or parents? To what degree are individuals sensitive to uses which are superficial versus
those which are substantial? These are only a few of the types of questions that future
researchers may address.

For the present, we may most productively concern ourselves with the dimensions of
sport that are currently appropriated by those in positions of influence, whether formally in
the political or the athletic arena. We should be careful, however, in gauging their

influence based upon the notion that individuals accept their implications unchallenged.

86

Sport metaphors are not used in any substantial sense because they merely add color to
speech. Rather, they are used precisely because there exists resistance to the ideas they
produce. Hence, attention should be paid to those ideas from sport which actually emerge
and the arenas in which ideologies through sport come into contact, the most important of
which may increasingly be public discourse. Whether the President of the United States is
the most influential source in such discourse is certainly debatable. It does seem to be of
capital (importance, in any case, that we begin to study the dynamics of these debates; what
peOple say and how others respond. Which ideas expressed in verbal paradigms from
sport are currently driving ideas about life in the United States, and where do they come
from? By keeping up with the uses of the sport metaphor in public discourse, we may
more fully understand the collective meanings and principle influence of sport in American

society.

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