THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230459
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
In the public's perception, President Clinton seems to be faring better than usual, though the issues confronting him are bad as ever.
Some say it is because he speaks kindly to Republicans.
Others say it is because more and more voters, after looking at the GOP candidates, return to Clinton for yet another look. It may go on that way, back and forth, all year.
I lay it to his having quit jogging. Man, despite claims by jogging journals and manufacturers of running shoes and sweat bands, was not meant to jog. Nor woman either.
Nature didn't intend for human beings to pound along on pavement, jostling their innards and grinding down cushioning in knees.
There is no more delicate mechanism on Earth, save the brain, than the human knee. In some, the knee aces the brain.
Show me a veteran who jogs incessantly, and I'll show you a man who walks as if he has been a lineman 15 years in football against such mean machines as Lawrence Taylor and Conrad Dobler.
Some of my best friends have been joggers. Shucks, I was one as a boy, thin as a lath. Nobody could catch me in cops and robbers. In cross-country in college, I came down with shinsplints. That enlightens a body. Slows him down.
You realize that we were given two feet to flee and leap for a tree in case a tiger - escaped from a zoo or wandered across the Bering Sea when Asia was tied to Alaska - jumped out of the brush, not run around town dressed as if you are in a nightmare.
Jogging seizes a person like St. Vitus Dance. Even doctors are afflicted. Some years ago a bone doctor, cautioning me against jogging, said that it had sidelined three of his colleagues who had themselves been advising patients not to jog.
And it is all in vain anyway with President Clinton, who goes chuffing along for miles and then winds up in a drive-in wolfing a cheeseburger and a malt. He gets back to the White House to begin the day stuffed and drowsy.
A fellow runs miles of a morning, and when he gets to the office, he feels he has a done a day's work and deserves a rest.
He also feels superior to sane human beings who came to work without running around the landscape as if King Kong were after them.
It would do the jogger a world of good had he spent the time walking around a pool table or playing Ping Pong that would leave him feeling guilty at having indulged himself.
And we do not want a jogless guilt-ridden president.
Let him visit the pound and pick out a vigorous dog. Next morning the joyous hound will have him on the White House lawn pulling him around so you can't tell who is leading whom on the leash. The president will get ample exercise and, watching the dog, he will forget those dogging him in Congress. by CNB