Obamas Fail in Personal Pitch to Bring 2016 Olympics to Chicago
Olympic officials eliminated Chicago in the first round of voting from its bid to host the 2016 Summer Games, a surprise failure for President Obama who put his capital behind an enormous campaign.
COPENHAGEN (Fox News) - Chicago was eliminated in the first ballot of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday, a stunning defeat for President Obama who put his capital behind an enormous campaign.
Chicago had seemed to pick up momentum in the last few days, with many International Olympic Committee members seemingly charmed by Michelle Obama. But when IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the results of the first vote, Chicago's name was announced.
Obama's visit to Copenhagen was the first time a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal.
Related Material...
COPENHAGEN (Fox News) - Chicago was eliminated in the first ballot of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday, a stunning defeat for President Obama who put his capital behind an enormous campaign.
Chicago had seemed to pick up momentum in the last few days, with many International Olympic Committee members seemingly charmed by Michelle Obama. But when IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the results of the first vote, Chicago's name was announced.
Obama's visit to Copenhagen was the first time a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal.
Related Material...
posted by BP News Bureau | 12:00 PM
5 Comments:
From 'Hot Air':
Why did the White House put the prestige of the American presidency on the line for the 2016 Olympiads in the first place? Even Al Gore seemed taken aback by that earlier this week, and warned that Obama had better not come back empty-handed, lest he look like a fool. They seem to have an inordinately high opinion of their own influence on world leaders and organizations, and Obama apparently has no one to whisper Sic transit gloria in his ear when he embarks on these triumphs.
In short, this debacle closely resembles Greek warnings about the crippling nature of hubris. What an embarrassment.
From 'Red State':
So, Chicago was eliminated in the first round of bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics, despite (I assume despite) President Obama’s personal lobbying for the Games.
Now, as a New Yorker, I really would not want the Olympics anywhere near my city, and the Olympics don’t exactly have a grand history of making money for the host city (ask Montreal) or necessarily good press (ask Munich), but I take at face value for the moment that Chicagoans really wanted this one and felt it would be good for the city. Certainly great effort and expense was put into the bid, and many hopes seemed to be riding on it.
I’d questioned Obama’s priorities in making the trip, but now he has a much bigger problem. It’s one thing for the President to make a phone call or two to lend a subtle hand to this sort of effort; that would have been fine with me. But by the President and First Lady both making personal appearances and elevating this to the top news story of the day and a test of personal and national prestige, Obama stood a significant chance of being humiliated, and doing so for what is hard to describe as a critical national interest. Most of us on the Right assumed, whatever we thought of the trip, that Obama would never be fool enough to make it if he didn’t already have deals done to get this in the bag for Chicago. Apparently, we overestimated him.
This is why you don’t publicly stake your prestige on something that’s not (1) hugely important (2) a done deal or (3) ideally, both. All presidents suffer defeats and embarrassments, but you generally don’t walk right into one on an issue of purely local importance to your home city. Obama’s and the nation’s standing in the world can’t help but be chipped away by this; the next time he goes jetting off to a summit or some other international event, people won’t be so quick to assume that he has all figured out in advance how he’s going to get what he wants. That aura, that mystique is a thing of value that the President is supposed to husband carefully for when the nation really needs it. Bush was impotent by the end of his presidency because he’d burned that up, but he had it for the better part of five years. Obama’s losing it already.
What a waste.
But here's the most interesting question about today's Olympic vote: Why didn't Obama see this coming? He spends all this time, gets all this press, uses all this political capital to promote Chicago, and then loses? What an amateur. Prosecutors don't ask witnesses questions in court unless they're sure of the answers. Presidents don't stake their personal reputations on contests whose outcomes are uncertain. Very foolish move. No wonder he can't get health care passed.
From 'National Review Online':
One can understand an American president’s lobbying for an American city to obtain the Olympics, but the blitz by the Obamas proved a PR nightmare. Let us count the ways:
1) Obama’s brand is trans-nationalism and an “America is not exceptional” multiculturalism. According to his worldview, it makes sense that a South American country — especially a powerful, ascendant country such as Brazil — should at last have its turn at hosting the Olympics. It did not seem consistent that a politician who had reached out to the Castros, Chávez, Morales, and Ortega, in parochial fashion, would lobby for his own hometown over a “yes, we can” Latin American initiative, especially one involving an exciting city such as Rio.
2) The Obama lobbying speeches were counterproductive. The world has its own inspirational narratives and is not impressed that much by the Obamas’ Chicago sagas. It was accidental but unfortunate that the global viewers had seen some horrific YouTube clips of street fighting in the Windy City, and then were told by Michelle that her father had taught her how to land a right hook, and that it was a sacrifice for her to fly to Denmark to make the case for Chicago.
3) The Chicago bit was overdone. Obama should remember that there is a perfect storm brewing: The more we hear about Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Ayers, and all his old Chicago friends, along with rumors about Tony Rezko–style backroom deals to cash in on Chicago real estate involving the Olympics, and continuing stories about Chicago’s street violence and corruption — the more it hurts the president to be identified as a “Chicago politician” who tries in heavy-handed fashion to implement change through the “Chicago way.” To a younger Obama, Chicago was the romantic can-do town of Reverend Wright, Michael Jordan, Oprah, and the Daley machine; to the world at large, it is something quite different, and far more unappealing.
4) Obama’s messianic appeal is wearing thin, both at home and abroad. I think that once Sarkozy essentially said to the world, “The emperor has no clothes,” the Obama facade crumbled. And here we are.
I, for one, am exhausted by our new permanent campaign. That might sound strange coming from somebody who runs the Horse Race Blog, but it is true. The ominpresence of the Obama campaign apparatus is, frankly, wearing me down. I can’t get away from him or it, even in my down times. Watching the Office on TBS used to be a real pleasure for me and the missus, but now we must be interrupted by the President of the United States cracking lame jokes at us in the promotion of a second-rate comedian. There is no escape. And so it continues today. What should have been a story about Chicago - or better yet, Rio (good for you, Rio!) - is now a story about…Obama. Of course. Because just about everything in the public sphere must, must become a story about Obama. Because Obama injects himself and his campaign appartus/mindset/worldview into everything.
I was hesitant to place a bet on the outcome of the health care debates, but I’ll place one here. Sooner or later, the American people are going to say, “Enough is enough” with this constant, incessant politicking that is inevitably built around the person of Barack Obama.
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