His punch was convincing, so was his stand on the war. “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he famously said in 1966, and that simple declaration focused the nation’s attention on the war in southeast Asia and started, for sports fans not yet thinking about it, a great and bitter debate on why American troops were fighting that war.
As my Sun colleague Mike Preston points out in his piece on the champ’s passing today, Ali showed the country that leadership meant more than just being celebrated for accomplishments in your chosen field, whether it was boxing or running a business. Sports is entertainment, a diversion from the hard realities of modern life. Those realities require hard thinking and deliberation. Being a full-fledged citizen means being vigilant, paying attention to what the government does in your name, for better or worse, and standing up for what you believe is right.
One of the lasting images of Ali is from the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and the opening ceremonies -- the champ, his left hand shaking and body trembling from Parkinson's disease, atop that high stadium ramp, awash in light, holding the Olympic flame, as the crowd cheered and cried for one of its greatest fighters and one of its greatest citizens.