Physical fitness is often in the news today, but it has long been a national concern, and the government's response to it was shaped significantly during the Kennedy administration.
In the years just after World War II, concerns about the fitness of U.S. citizens, especially the young, attracted national attention. Several trends and developments in the country lay at the root of this anxiety. The nation's economy had changed dramatically since the beginning of the century, and with it changed the nature of work and recreation. Mechanization had taken many farmers out of the fields and allowed the ones who remained to do much of their work with far less effort. The factories, which had long been highly mechanized, were becoming even more so, and fewer and fewer factory jobs required heavy labor. Outside of work, new forms of entertainment emphasized watching rather than doing. But these changes may not have been as important as people's awareness that they were occurring. People were beginning to have to confront a new image of themselves and their country, and they did not always like what they saw. Worrying about physical fitness channeled and expressed these doubts.
A New Federal Agency Shapes Up
As a military man, President Eisenhower was probably already sensitive to the issue of physical fitness. There had been grumbling by officers of the armed forces about the condition of draftees during both World War II and the Korean War. But concern about the problem peaked in his first administration with publication of the work of Dr. Hans Kraus and Ruth Hirschland (better known professionally as Bonnie Prudden), whose study of American children found them alarmingly deficient in fitness compared to children in other countries. President Eisenhower established the President's Council on Youth Fitness with Executive Order 10673, issued on July 16, 1956.
The President's Council on Youth Fitness consisted of cabinet members representing several departments, which were also responsible for contributing to its budget. The first chair of the Council was Vice President Richard Nixon; later the chair of the Council was moved to one of the cabinet-level department representatives. In association with the Council, a Citizens Advisory Committee was also set up. To carry out the work of the Council, a director was appointed, with a small staff to support him.
Despite widespread goodwill and support both inside and outside the government, the President's Council on Youth Fitness never quite found its way during the Eisenhower years. All new government bodies are liable to jealousy and conflict over turf, and the President's Council was no exception. This problem was compounded by the first director, Shane MacCarthy, who, despite being a career government man, seems to have been remarkably ill-equipped to deal with bureaucratic friction.
While personality conflicts and organizational difficulties often bogged the Council down, the real difficulty and the core of many disputes was that no one was clear about the Council's purpose. President Eisenhower's original executive order founding the Council was clearly inspired by concerns about physical fitness, but the Council chose to promote a concept of "total fitness" defined in statements like this: "Youth fitness means total fitness—including intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and social fitness—rather than merely physical fitness." Yet when the Council suggested means to accomplish these sweeping, idealistic aims, they always seemed to come down to exercising more.
Uncertainty about the meaning of fitness went hand in hand with uncertainty about action to be taken. At the time, the most common description for the Council was the metaphor of a catalyst. The Council would not create rules and standards, or the tests to go with them; instead the Council would provide opportunities for ideas to blossom, and, somehow, things would happen. Under no circumstances was the Council to set up a national fitness program. For many connected with the Council's work, the idea of the nation’s youth constrained by a state-ordered regimen seemed a little "red," even fascist. The goal and ideal of the President's Council during this Republican administration was to make fitness a nationally recognized local problem.
In this way, the Council and its staff were caught in a dilemma. They were given the task of spreading the word about a national crisis, but could not use national resources to help resolve it. As a result, the state and local authorities to whom the Council addressed itself reacted with some reservations to Council pronouncements. Furthermore, even those who opposed the idea of programs on a national scale expected that the Council would do something, and grew increasingly skeptical when the Council gave the impression of spinning its wheels.
Still, even without many high-profile achievements, the Council basically accomplished what it was designed for in these early years: it kept the problem of fitness before the public. And in the end, if there was one thing that prevented the Council from reaching its full potential, it was the subtle but evident inattention of the President. Having established this President's Council, Eisenhower rarely spoke on the subject of fitness and did not appear at any of the annual conferences of the Council and the Citizens Advisory Committee. John F. Kennedy's approach to the work of the Council and fitness as a problem would be very different.
New Frontiers for Fitness
The issue of fitness suited Kennedy very well. It was an area that placed his relative youth, elsewhere a subject for grumbling about inexperience, in its best light. It dovetailed with a personal and familial reputation for vitality. Best of all, it played into his political message regarding preparedness; more than one commentator had already warned what would happen to a nation of weak Cold Warriors. Kennedy took up fitness with both hands, after the election publishing an article, "The Soft American," in Sports Illustrated. The article was an unprecedented announcement by a President-elect of public policy in the mass media. In it, Kennedy established four points as the basis of his program, including a "White House Committee on Health and Fitness"; direct oversight by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; an annual Youth Fitness Congress to be attended by state governors; and the assertion that fitness—physical fitness—was very much the business of the federal government.