Why America's Olympic team is an implicit rebuke to Donald Trump

This America is a black girl and a Jewish girl hugging after blowing everyone's mind with their skills and winning gold and silver in gymnastics — not the xenophobic vulgarian promising to build walls along our borders

The gold-medal winning U.S. women's gymnastic team.
(Image credit: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

Thirty-two years ago, the Olympic Games had a profound effect on an American presidential campaign. With a strong economy behind him, Ronald Reagan was running for re-election under the slogan "Morning in America." His ads were full of patriotic imagery and words of confidence. And by happy coincidence, the Games were held in Los Angeles that year.

Even better, because the Soviet Union and many of its satellite states (including East Germany) boycotted the 1984 Games in retaliation for the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, the Americans pretty much had the field to themselves. The result was, as Donald Trump might put it, so much winning we almost got tired of winning. The U.S. won 83 of the 226 gold medals awarded, more than four times as many as any other country, and 174 of 688 medals overall. The whole thing was so flag-wavingly spectacular that it felt almost like a two-week-long ad for Reagan's campaign. As William Greider wrote that December:

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.