From Wilson to Dubya: The Curious Case of Presidents and Rugby

Abstract

Where most chapters in this volume explore the interactions between American presidents and sports that are widely played in the United States, this one explores the rarely noted link between the presidency and rugby. The bulk of this chapter centers on two future presidents who played rugby in college – George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Both a very similar age, Clinton and Bush played rugby on different sides of the Atlantic, at Oxford and Yale respectively. It was a distinctly un-American sport in a period of increasing national self-reflection during the Vietnam War. This chapter considers the rugby-playing background of both Bush and Clinton as a useful step towards a career in high politics. It explores the use of rugby through the lenses of class and masculinity to see why a sport – that, on the face of it, seems so foreign – works well in signaling virtues key to most future presidents’ resumés. This British game – the precursor of American football – offered a more elite but maybe equally rugged pursuit through which two young students were able to trade blows away from the arenas where many of their fellow citizens and future political rivals fought a more deadly battle.