Guest editorial: the greatest? A revisionist view.(Editorial)

THE GAME OF ICON-BASHING, THOUGH ALWAYS WITH US, HAS BECOME easier to play than ever. Yes, it's true that the political leaders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries lack the stature of their earlier counterparts. But even though they do, haven't they also faced closer, more wicked scrutiny? The spate of books on JFK in the past two decades has changed public opinion in a way that would have been laughed at 35 years ago. Today, JFK's immediate predecessor in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower, enjoys greater public favor not only over him but also over both his Camelot cronies and his successor, Lyndon Johnson. Nor is JFK the only president since 1960 whose image has tarnished. Presidents Ford, Carter, and George H. W. Bush all lost in their bids at re-election. Nixon's triumphs in foreign policy, which peaked in his visit to China, have drowned in the Watergate scandal that pushed him out of Washington. More recently, the clamor created by the Monica Lewinsky scandal has dimmed the feats that Bill Clinton performed to create jobs, balance the federal budget, and keep the stock market strong and healthy.

Icon-bashing also occurs in sports, but its effects are different. Born in 1942, Muhammad Ali is Bill Clinton's senior by a scant four years. But because a professional athlete's career is so much shorter than a politician's (think Strom Thurmond), it is sucked quickly into the past. Ali's early heyday in the ring overlapped the movie careers of worthies like Cary Grant, John Wayne, and Jimmy Stewart, men thirty-five to forty years his senior. But any meaning generated by this coincidence breaks on the rock of individuality. Ali belongs to a minority that has roused the collective guilt--if sometimes also the confusion and wrath--of the white phallocentric culture that his ring magic magnetized. What is key here is his deployment of his minority status. It highlights the truth that his refusing, at great sacrifice, to join the army during the Vietnam War remains one of the bravest public acts of the last century. Besides forfeiting his boxing license (and thus his career and his livelihood), he also put himself under the close watch of the FBI.

Outstanding in its own right, this act of courage has gained currency in direct ratio to the contempt for America's involvement in Vietnam that has seeped into all levels of our society. The wiseheads in the Pentagon blundered while Ali, bucking the pressure to conform, stood his ground. But, while history has vindicated his stand, it has also conflated the distance between the moral high ground he occupied between 1968 and 1969, the years he was barred from boxing, and the boxing ring itself. Ali's heroism deserves our praise. But let's define it correctly, even if our definition clashes with his. His boast that he was the greatest (or The Greatest) has always pointed to his ring record; the pacifist has become confused with the pug.

There is evidence galore to support the claim that Ali is the most overrated fighter of the past fifty years. His knocking out but seven foes in ...