Champions Should Never Visit the White House

“My son grows up, and I believe the legacy of our president is going to be what it is, I don’t want him to say, ‘Hey dad, why’d you go when you knew the right thing was to not go?’” Long told Barstool Sports on Sunday.

Fans and voracious media have come to anticipate such decisions. Eagles wide receiver Torrey Smith echoed Long on Wednesday; Long already skipped the trip as a Super Bowl victor with New England last year, as did Patriots teammates including Martellus Bennett and Devin McCourty. Curry’s comment—the sentiment of which was shared by his coach, Steve Kerr—prompted President Trump to “withdraw” an invitation to the Warriors that may never have been extended in the first place. News that the most recent title winner in the four major American team sports, the Houston Astros, had RSVP’d for a White House stop was contextualized in the press.

“[I]t is customary for the winner of major sports champions in the U.S. to receive an invitation to the White House to meet with the president,” wrote Reuters.

But it shouldn’t be. For posterity’s sake and not merely its own, the Trump administration would do America a tremendous favor by ending this tradition of deistic adoration, as if the purpose of scoring touchdowns was to honor Apollo in the Rose Garden. The country does not need the office of president to inflate its already exaggerated sense of self-regard.

Rarely are presidential customs challenged with the question of what they accomplish. A spokesman for President Obama, Frank Benenati, argued there’s a civic meaning to the commander in chief hosting our modern gladiators. “When these sports teams come to the White House to honor their championship, we also honor them for their work in the community,” Benenati told ESPN. “And in each speech marking a championship, [Obama] has mentioned their community work.” (As @PepeInLeningrad could tell you, such shout-outs aren’t what they used to be.)

Whatever community-minded purpose the tradition serves, it’s secondary at best. The president doesn’t welcome the Super Bowl winners and then together go landscape medians on the interstate. In a post otherwise directed squarely at Trump, the Nation’s Dave Zirin noted the primary point with an indisputable observation: “As long as there have been professional sports, there have been presidents attempting to use them to burnish their own credibility.”

This has manifested in tiers of self-importance in recent history. At the most public-spirited level was President Bush, throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in the World Series after 9/11: a moment of national unity, when his political profile was subordinated to his role as the chief representative of the national id.

Presidents have attended sporting events for unofficial reasons, like personal enjoyment; when Bush 43 took in Olympic beach volleyball the final year of his presidency, he ditched the power-tie for the civilian-visor. Obama is a basketball nut; when he showed up at a Georgetown-Duke game in January 2010, he was there to watch hoops—and be a part-time analyst at the broadcast table. “I’ve been impressed, at least in the first half, by the guards for Georgetown: big, strong guys, and they’ve been able to keep [Duke star Jon] Scheyer out having to shoot a lot of threes contested,” he said. In a preview of the coming November, the blue team was routed.

To presidents, this activity is a brief perk or respite from the job. To the public, it’s cultural popcorn: Obama picking his NCAA tournament bracket, he and Mitt Romney—then both presidential candidates—appearing during halftime of Monday Night Football, and President-elect Trump being interviewed during the Army-Navy college football game. Vice President Pence using an Indianapolis Colts game for a political stunt last year is an exception for what usually are anodyne indulgences for the executive branch.

All of them have in common that the president brings himself to the world of sports—as a spectator of their work, in their stadia, on their fields. Then there is the reverse: The president bringing the world of sports to him, asking them to witness his job, to stand behind and watch the podium that is his batters’ box, to give him thanks and gifts—the honorary custom team jersey, with the president’s surname on the back, the fabric he will never wear in public and toss inside a chest with the other frankincense and myrrh if its lucky.

This show of reverence was a normal, unchallenged, and minor characteristic of the president’s public persona until some athletes decided it wasn’t. And it didn’t start with Chris Long or Steph Curry. It goes back at least to Tim Thomas, then goaltender of the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins—and a Tea Partier disgusted with Washington, who declined an invite in 2012. “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People,” he wrote in a statement. “Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House.”

What transcends any rationale for rebuffing the president is how the event aggrandizes and glamorizes his office, turning a job of public service into brand ambassadorship for (to borrow from Miles Davis) The Cool. It was socially desirable to be in good stead with President Obama: a hip man whose likability remained steady as his approval rating oscillated. The same could have been said of Reagan: the amiable, fast-on-his-feet president under whom these regular visits from professional championship teams became customary. Trump—with his baggage of coarse language and behavior and bouts of bigotry—is no such person. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be flattered, which as anyone knows is how he feels in the company of winners.

If for no other reason than engendering humility, he and all his successors could afford being knocked down a peg.