WASHINGTON -- I struggled valiantly to climb ropes in my elementary school gym, survived hot September scrimmages in a heavy football uniform with a merciless coach and avoided prepubescent heart failure after hours of after-school tennis. And I was no athlete.

But those were the days when President John F. Kennedy spoke of a "vital link between physical fitness and national greatness" in 1963 and President Lyndon B. Johnson called children's physical fitness "a matter of national concern" two years later.