WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama had just one disclaimer when he announced former pro basketball player Arne Duncan on Tuesday as his education secretary: “I did not select Arne because he’s one of the best basketball players I know.”
Still, he conceded, “I will say that I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history.”
“Over the presidencies of the 20th century, there were golf Cabinets, there were poker Cabinets and even, I suppose, tennis Cabinets,” said John Sayle Watterson, author of “The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency.”
But basketball, he said, is a first.
“I think this is sort of an updating of that,” he said.
Obama is an enthusiastic player who picked up the game in junior high and became known as “Barry O’Bomber” in high school.
Duncan, a regular at Obama’s pickup games, can do him one better. He co-captained the Harvard basketball team and played professionally in Australia before becoming the head of the Chicago school system.
Obama’s choice for national-security adviser, James L. Jones, was a forward at Georgetown University. Incoming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hates to miss a pickup game.
Eric Holder and Susan Rice, the incoming attorney general and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, both played ball in high school.
Janet Napolitano, Obama’s choice for homeland-security secretary, has regularly guest-coached women’s basketball for Arizona’s three state universities.
The basketball court is clearly a place where Obama develops rapport.
But it’s also a proving ground for the kinds of skills a leader needs, said Dave Czesniuk of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston.
“I think there’s a lot to be said for folks who managed participating in sports with academics, with part-time jobs, with family commitments,” he said. “There are time-management skills involved and certainly social-development skills and confidence, self-esteem building as well as the ability to deal with difficult situations.”
What does that mean for Hillary Rodham Clinton?
“Probably Hillary’s not going to be on the basketball court, nor are other women who are either in the Cabinet or sub-Cabinet posts, but I don’t think it will affect his relationship with them,” Watterson said.
Clinton did play half-court basketball growing up, when only the boys played full-court. But who says she doesn’t have game?
