• 1) Who are the most accomplished political leaders who also played a professional sport? 
• 2) Should the citizens of Puerto La Cruz decide to elect Ordonez, how have professional athletes performed as political leaders?

First we turn to Issue 1.  For starters, there have been no US Presidents who have also played a professional sport, but  there have been a few Presidents with notable collegiate careers (and some who have purported to have been college athletes*). The Bench Jockeys dug into the stats and offer our top three for consideration:

• 3.  George H.W. Bush (#41 )was first baseman, batted .354 in his senior year and played in the College World Series for Yale.
• 2.  Dwight Eisenhower  (#34) was a linebacker and running back at Army, Nicknamed the “Kansas Cyclone,” Eisenhower injured his knee while tackling one of the greatest athletes of all time, Jim Thorpe, in the famous 1912 Carlisle vs. Army game.
• 1.  Gerald Ford (#38) was an All-American and played center for 1933 National Champion Univ. of Michigan Wolverines football team.  He was voted team MVP in his senior year.

*Although there was a great deal of talk about the college basketball career of Barack Obama, there seems to be no documentation of the assertion that Barack Obama led the Occidental College Men’s Basketball team in scoring in 1979 as has been reported.  He attended Occidental for two years and we can find no corroboration that as a freshman he even played on the school team.  (You never know what will surface when you start doing a little good ol’ fashioned investigative journalism.)  As for other professional sportsmen turned public servants, we found the following tasty tidbits for your consumption:  The most accomplished member of this select group is former US Senator from New Jersey, William “Bill” Bradley who was a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was voted the NCAA Player of the Year in 1965. He played on the New York Knicks for ten years, winning two championship titles.   He was also a Rhodes Scholar so I am guessing he is a pretty smart chap.

US Congressmen from New York, Jack Kemp was appointed as Housing Secretary under George H.W. Bush. Kemp was selected as the Vice Presidential running mate in Bob Dole’s failed 1996 election campaign against Bill Clinton.  Ironically, like Barack Obama, Kemp also attended Occidental in the 1950’s where he was a record-setting javelin hurler and played several positions on the football team: quarterback, defensive back, place kicker and punter.  Interestingly Occidental does have a record of Kemp’s collegiate accomplishments.  Kemp went on to play professional sports as a quarterback for 13 years, with brief stints in the NFL and CFL, later securing star status in the AFL with the San Diego Chargers and Buffalo Bills.  Kemp was selected as the AFL’s Most Valuable Player award in 1965 after leading the Bills to a second AFL championship.

Although appointed to the role, defensive tackle and the most celebrated member of the Purple People Eaters, Alan Page, serves as a Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court.  Fellow Minnesotan Jesse Ventura was elected as Governor of the state, but to count him would mean we are calling the WWE a professional sport – which it is not – so he is out.   However, the late Jack Mildren, a two-way player who over the course of a three year career with the Colts and Pats made three interceptions as a defensive back and rushed for 22 yards and threw 1 incomplete pass as a quarterback, served as Lt. Governor of Oklahoma.  He meets the pro-pol crossover criteria on paper. 

Internationally, there have been some instances of professional sportsmen transitioning  to public office.  Both Alexis Argüello, who was Mayor of Managua, Nicaragua for a few months before he was assassinated (or committed suicide depending on who you ask) and Philippine House of Representatives member, Emmanuel “Manny”  Pacquiao, were professional boxers who became mid-level political leaders.  Sanath Teran is a former Sri Lankan cricketer and a current member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka.  Ari Uolevi Vatanen is a Finnish rally car driver who won the World Rally Championship in 1981 and the Paris Dakar Rally four times was a member of the European Parliament.  But perhaps the most successful foreign-born professional athlete is Donald Ross Getty, a Canadian politician who served as the Premier of Alberta after quarterbacking the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.  As Premier, Getty served as the de facto Chief Executive for the territory.  Nice work.

And then there is Ahhhhnold.  If bodybuilding is a truly professional sport – and according to ABC’s Wide World of Sports (which I grew up watching as a kid) it is – The Austrian Oak’s election as Governator of California has to trump them all.  But notice some interesting coincidences…and that leads us directly into Issue 2.  Schwarzenegger oversaw the workings of one the most financially unstable states in the US, with the majority of Californians suggesting his limited concepts of state management made fiscal matters even worse.  Imagine that?  

Similarly, there have been two US mayors who were former professional athletes: the Mayor of recently bankrupt Detroit is former NBA-er Dave Bing and the Mayor of cash-strapped Sacramento is Kevin Johnson, formerly of the Phoenix Suns.  (As a former Bullet, I like Dave Bing, but that’s a big 0 for 2 on assuming NBA skills sets prepare players for the complexities of leading a city.)

Which brings us right back to Ordonez.  What experience during his 15 year career in the Major Leagues possibly prepares Magglio Ordonez for the leadership of Puerto La Cruz?  Given the vast anthology of professional sports figures who have come and gone over the last 125 years, success stories are scarce.  In fact, the lion’s share of those stories can be condensed into less than 1000 words (see above).  Ex-athletes seem to be able to serve as a part of a body politic, or a team, but when it comes to leading a state or a city, they fall flat.  With the exception of Don Getty, there is no success story where a professional athlete was elected to the role of a chief executive of a city, state or province.  Bill Bradley and Jack Kemp were strong representatives of a constituency, but effectively leading that same populace requires a completely different array of talents.  Maggs, please reconsider your political aspirations before you get in over your head, or even worse, lose it.  

On the flip side, I think all Presidents could use a DH.  While those who sit in the Oval Office think they can do everything (the obvious character flaw in politicians being oversized EGOs) who wouldn’t need a little help in running the country?  Watching President Obama’s lack of business sense filter through the economy, it seems we would be better served if a professional businessperson came in and pinch hit.  President George W. Bush needed a designated speaker so he would never have had to open his mouth in public and record an error.  The DH concept could trickle down right into our homes.  What parent wouldn’t want a professional nanny to come in and discipline their kids when mom and dad were too gassed to continue the inning?  Wouldn’t most families love to have a designated kitchen cleaner for mop-up duties?

The first DH in baseball was Ron Bloomberg.  My favorite was Edgar Martinez, who spent his entire career with the Seattle Mariners.  As a baseball purist, I would dump the DH.  But in today’s ADHD society, the average  fan’s desire to see home runs, and the constant barrage of Top 10 highlights on every sports channel, it’s hard to see it going anywhere.

When President Obama extended the Bush tax cuts, his donkey’s snout became an elephant’s trunk.  When President Bush enacted TARP, his elephant ears shrunk to the size of a donkey’s. Maybe this country would be better off if  all the states were purple.  Today we have the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, Boll weevils (which are conservative southern Democrats), gypsy moth Republicans (typically moderate representing north eastern and midwestern urban areas), and of course the Tea Party, based on conservative and libertarian views.  All hybrids, aimed at combining the best aspects of two philosophies.

It’s a great mental exercise.  Think of two things you like (or dislike) and consider how they’d be if they were combined into one.  Then come up with a name.  Let us know your suggestions.  I’ll lead off.  How about a cross between a puma and an orangutan…

Apparently, the reason the Administration agreed to join in Libya’s fracas was because the “Arab world supported action in Libya.”  Now we learn…. well, maybe, not so much.  According to the Arab League Secretary-General, leadership supported a no-fly zone, not tactical air strikes which could cause civilian casualities.   The question that no one is really considering is:  who is really in this from the Arab World?  Qatar is providing military support and the United Arab Emirates is offering humanitarian aid.  That’s it.  Qatar and the UAE are not necessarily the Arabian version of the Super Friends (that’s a little cartoon reference for those of you who grew up in the 70’s).

Further, President Obama has suggested that this action barely qualifies as a war.  Just like the wealthy girl who gets an invitation to the party because she gives the best presents, the US was apparently included in the Libyan Target Practice E-vite because we had some “unique capabilities.”  Uh,… unique capabilities for starting a war with a Muslim country – which we seem to be pretty good at lately. (I think we are now up to three in the last decade.)  Adm. Mike Mullen has stated, “[We are] leading it now. We’re looking to hand off that leadership in the next few days.”   That’s like playing Old Maid with two other players and you are only holding one card.  At that point, all three players know who is getting stuck with the Old Maid.

So now we have a new operation to fund, “Odyssey Dawn.”  Did they come up with that via some kind of web-based, military operation, random name generator?  What the hell does Odyssey Dawn even mean or convey?   Certainly, it is no more menacing than Operation Delightful Sunrise.  And just to be even-handed, who coined George Bush’s magnum opus, Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Wouldn’t that have been more precisely named, Operation Kill My Father’s Potential Assassinator?

Either way, this is not what an already fractured Congress needs this Spring.