As is usual for a Democrat, he can’t win. If he’d refused to go lobby personally and Chicago lost out (as was likely given that people here don’t like the idea of paying a bazillion dollars for a party for the rich when the city can’t pay its own workers) then the loss would have been his fault.
Since he went, and Chicago lost out, it’s that he wasn’t persuasive enough or that his presidential penis was too small or something.
Given that it was a lose-lose, why not go and say nice things about where you live when you’re not in the White House? I’ve made no bones about my list of stuff I’d rather the press focused on, especially the local press, but the stupidity of the area TV critters is not his fault.
I also think the shrieking about anti-American sentiment on the IOC is overblown. We just had the Olympics in Salt Lake. Maybe it was just somebody else’s turn. Seriously, are people in Tokyo and all the other places that lost freaking outthis much? You’d think the IOC ran over our dog, backed up, poured gasoline on the corpse and set it on fire. Jesus.
A.
I wonder if the wingnut glee is yet another example of how out of touch they are, given recent polls showing 84 percent support in the US for Chicago’s bid.
Town hall meeting shriekfest, the sequel.
My own .0000000002 cents worth is that Chicago certainly could be a world class Olympics host; however, the overall cost and logistical headaches associated with an event that size might make being turned down sort of a blessing in disguise…
they had the lowest bid. i bet obama did it for the food.
GO FOR THE KRINGLE.
Agree with Michael. At the same time, I want to compliment Chicago in putting together a regional Olympics which could have been a boost to the entire area. So it isn’t just Chicago.
I wonder if two inputs to the wingnuts weren’t 1) Cities are bad (but Chicago included a lot of rural boost too) and, above all, 2) Every country is equal in vying for the Olympics, but the America I know and love has always been more equal than others (as one fear of the TeaBaggers is that America can’t tell the world what to do any more).
i think this obviously proves that hatoyama is a failure as a prime minister, and it’s time for the japanese tea baggers to get a chance to run their country.
also, it’s obvious that it’s time for king juan carlos to abdicate his throne and let spanish tea baggers have at it.
They should stop the bidding process for the Olympics all together. Just come up with a checklist of criteria to host, and then put people in line. There are hundreds of cities worldwide that can handle events of this size so having a bidding process just means ‘how corrupt can the IOC be this time?’. Not that I’m picking on the IOC. The USOC is a kettle of snakes too.
Rio had just about the easiest pitch ever–just throw up a map of the world with all the past Olympic host cities. It’s pretty hard to miss the ginormous hole of South America. There are, after all, five Olympic rings representing the five major continents–it seems wildly inappropriate that one of those five has never hosted an Olympics.