William Howard Taft, from president to mascot

                 One of the weirder and more popular traditions of the Washington Nationals baseball team is the Racing Presidents.  (Come on, give the city a break.  It went without major league baseball for 33 years.)
                 In the fourth inning, a gate in center field opens and out come these 12-foot tall figures in giant foam heads representing presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.  They "race," interrupted by pratfalls and other diversions, around the warning track toward home plate.  The crowd loves it.
                This season, a fifth president will join the field: William Howard Taft, who at 340 pounds was our portlies chief executive.  He's perhaps best remembered for once getting stuck in a bathtub.  You would think Taft's addition would be accepted for what it is, a lighthearted attempt to enliven a PR stunt in danger of growing stale.
               But this is Washington, magnet city for earnest worthy causes.  Even before the season's first pitch is thrown, efforts are under way to enlist the towering rubber dummy as the poster president for the current war on obesity and its associated ills of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, stroke and respiratory problems.
              In real life, Taft was a distinguished public servant: the 27th president of the United States (1909 to 1913), chief justice of the Supreme Court, secretary of war, U.S. solicitor general, governor-general of the Philippines, president of the American Bar Association and founder of a political dynasty.
             Now, along with his four distinguished predecessors, Taft has found a new career promoting the virtues of weight loss while prolonging the middle of the fourth inning so the fans can load up on beer, hot dogs and nachos.
            At least it might make people forget about the bathtub incident.