It’s probably a strange thing to admit, but when I saw Barack Obama accepting his nomination as president-elect on November 4th, one of the first things that popped into my mind was It’s so nice to have a fit president. Yes, there were other thoughts, too, but when your world is viewed from a public health perspective, as mine often is, you tend to look for the glimmers of positive health influences amidst the bevy of bad. My hope was that our leader’s fitness could inspire a national shift towards being more active, a collective—Wow! Isn’t exercising cool?—type of thing. It’s a hope, I fear, that will most likely be completely shot down.
Fitter President, Fatter Nation?
Because really, how much does a president’s fitness correlate into the nation following suit? Just because we saw Bill Clinton try to get in shape while in the White House (or at least out jogging for photo ops) doesn’t mean he inspired legions of Americans to do the same. And GW, who some consider to be the most active Commander-in-Chief to date, hasn’t done much to curb our nation’s rising obesity epidemic.
Despite the numerous benefits of exercise, more than half our adult population doesn’t get the recommended amount of physical activity and about a quarter are not active at all in their leisure time. While this number hasn’t changed much in the past decade, younger populations have become less active. In 1991 for instance, daily participation in high school PE was 42 percent; in 2005 it was 33 percent.
Pushing It to Policy
Even if we’re not getting fitter, one thing is for sure, we follow presidential workouts with a celebrity-like zeal and fascination. We know, for instance, that Teddy Roosevelt was boxer, Jimmy Carter an angler, and that George W. Bush could handle a mountain on his bike. On the campaign trail, we watched Obama bowl and shoot hoops, and learned about his morning workouts with exacting detail. Why we love to watch our candidates and leaders sweat is anyone’s guess. Maybe the mundane details of their personal activity makes them seem more like a common American (or rather, from the numbers on how many of us exercise, less like one), proves their physical prowess and ability to lead, or maybe it’s a just a nice reprieve from the heady issues. Regardless, we love to see ’em sweat.
But whether this can rub off on our own activity level, or whether a president’s policy measures affect national activity level is much murkier. Many not-so-fondly remember the President’s Challenge, the youth fitness goals initiated in 1966 that had us counting sit-ups and pull-ups in elementary school. In March 2008, President Bush expanded these goals to include adults and called it the National President’s Challenge; people can go online, track progress towards physical fitness goals, and if they reach them, get an award from the president. I’m not sure how many people have even heard of this, let alone participated, but I’m pretty convinced that a brownie button from the government isn’t really going to alter people’s behavior on a population level. And one of the tenets of the Bush administration’s attitude toward health—personal responsibility and that’s that—has simply not worked when it comes to helping people move more. President Bush’s advice sums up his policy approach: “First, be physically active every day. People say, ‘I don’t have time to be physically active every day.’ Well, my suggestion is, make time.”
Large scale measures, such as encouraging more walkable, bikable neighborhoods, creating open space for outdoor activity, and funding for public transportation—in effect, making it easier for people to get daily activity—haven’t exactly been Bush’s strong points. And some of his measures, which aren’t directly related to activity at all, have had negative implications on physical activity. No Child Left Behind, because it puts so much emphasis on test scores, forced many schools to cut funding from physical and health education, according to the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Schools have had to raise funds independently to support sports programs, or in lower resource settings, completely go without.
