Twelfth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

By late 1983, the prospects for President Reagan’s reelection looked grim: unemployment stood at ten percent, the budget deficit soared, his anti-Soviet rhetoric had allies and Americans worry about nuclear war. His approval rating hit rock bottom. Nevertheless, a year later, he handily won the election, sweeping forty-nine states. This paper investigates how the XXIII Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles boosted Reagan’s reelection campaign, restored (White) American confidence, and paved the way for the country’s supposed triumph over Communism. The president, prone to referencing sports, especially his role as “the Gipper,” successfully appropriated the torch relay, the Games, even the Soviet boycott. Peter Ueberroth and David Wolper’s LA84 celebrated diversity, volunteerism, and racial harmony, in ways that reinforced the president’s messaging but distorted reality. ABC’s excessive focus on US athletes created the impression of unmatched American greatness. The LA Games ushered in the era of “good feelings” for which Reagan is remembered, pulling a blanket of oblivion over his disastrous fiscal, economic, and social record. The perception of unparalleled US greatness, on display in the Coliseum, soon morphed into the triumph over the “evil empire,” Communism, and the rest of the world. The paper deploys Michael Billig’s concept of “banal nationalism” and relies on documents from the State Department, the CIA, the Reagan Library, US and German newspapers, (auto)biographies, and secondary literature to highlight the manipulative political and social function of sporting mega events, and the LA Games significance for American self-perceptions at the end of the Cold War.