The IOC just swatted Obama’s soaring rhetoric away, as Chicago loses in the first round of the 2016 Olympics decision.
Good thing we elected someone so popular outside of America, or we might have been embarassed.
The world loves Obama. They love him like a dog they can beat over and over, that will still dependably come back tail between legs, simpering and whining and begging for forgiveness.
{ 34 comments }
You know what this means, right? That the IOC is filled with a bunch of dirty, Neocon racists! for rejecting Obama.
From my blog:
“This is, or should be, a HUGE political mistake for Obama. While Iran is busily building nuclear bombs, Honduras is on the verge of civil war, Afghanistan is backsliding daily and his “signature” legislative effort is falling apart in the Senate, Obama very publicly flew to Denmark to overtly campaign for Chicago to receive the Olympics.
Chicago was one of the first cities voted out.
So not only did he fiddle while Rome burned, he fiddled very, very badly. He was unable to turn his “world class charisma” into a virtually insignificant political accomplishment.
Drudge’s headline was “The EGO has landed.” I thought that was perfect.”
You really should click on the link. Trust me. I’ve got a sneak peek at some of the Olympic uniforms from Brazil…
The most ridiculous part of this whole nonsense – sending Oprah. I imagine the IOC response to her was something like “And who are you, again?”
Why the hell would anyone outside the US give a rat’s ass what Oprah has to say about anything, assuming, of course, that there is a real portion of the population in the US that really cares, too.
Obama’s cluelessness is breathtaking
dead, that is certainly ridiculous, but there is nothing “wrong” or “stupid” in having an entertainer go campaign for the Olympics to come to her home city.
For a sitting President to do so is so far beyond the ridiculous that it is truly sublime. I have pointed out many, many instances of how Obama is a true political babe-in-the-woods. He seems to have no real understanding of how politics works. He thinks his mere divine presence makes things happen.
No sitting President with an ounce of political sense would have made this trip without knowing in advance that the fix was in and his City had already won. To go and not win is just too devastating to his political capital. This is an insignificant thing from a geopolitical perspective. For Obama to have invested his political credibility and his “infallible” image in this effort without KNOWING that it was in the bag is stunningly incompetent from a political perspective. I know high school seniors who have more political awareness than this. Seriously, I’m not snarking, I sincerely mean that I know high school seniors with more political savvy.
I’ve said before that I don’t think Obama is stupid.
After this, I’m not so sure.
Even if nothing else was going on, for him to have done this and lost would be an incredible political bungle. To do this in the face of Iranian nuclear bombs, Honduras on the verge of civil war (in large part due to Obama’s actions) and his main generals in Afghanistan publicly saying “Yeah, I only met with Obama once about Afghanistan since he got elected” is beyond incompetent. It borders on the criminally negligent.
While there are clearly some people who voted for Obama because of his stated philosophies and politics, Obama made history in the U.S by stimulating:
(1) identification — a history of disenfranchisement and discrimination has not been overcome in the U.S., and most of the black/African American population identifies with a 1/2 black man wining against a white man, and overcoming the white machine. Obama’s personal story is a tribute to to the rise of the minority.
(2) guilt — there is a large population in America that has been encouraged to feel personally guilty about historical slavery and discrimination, and the rather natural preference to hang with thier own kind. Supporting Obama is a nice way to ease the pressure.
(3) sympathy — like Clinton, Obama has a background that had to be overcome, and it feels good to help the pull-yourself-up by the bootstrap underdog. Obama’s personal story is a tribute to what can happen in America.
I listened to the speeches, and I heard Obama’s personal story again. I did not expect his personal story to play well to the non-American international audience, and I think his approach using his personal story was ill-advised. The IOC is not black America, not white America, and South America has more to overcome than black America.
Obama doesn’t understand the currency of being president of the United States.
Its lame. I mean, its REALLY lame and basic, but that’s what’s going on here. He just. doesn’t. get. the. importance. of. the. position. he. holds.
Dave W:
Or he is deliberately devaluing it…
I don’t believe that, but I know a lot of people who do.
What really cracks me up is the number of people who still blindly yammer on about what a brilliant politician Obama is.
Obama is a solid campaigner. That’s all.
His default reaction to any problem is to campaign more. That’s what this whole trip to Denmark was, it was Obama basking in the spotlight of another campaign, reading another well-written (not by him) speech from another teleprompter in front of another adoring ideologically aligned audience.
Obama simply adores that spotlight, and the applause and the upturned rapturous faces of his sycophants and true-believers. He just can’t get enough of that.
I think he is totally befuddled and amazed when the world doesn’t just fall at his feet in awe at his magnificence.
Agreed, CC. I never thought Obama going was even remotely a good idea. But then I considered the other half of the delegation – Oprah. Who has negotiated, what, her own syndication contract ?
Sadly this is likely only symbolic to the real political situation in DC. But you do have to wonder, how is Obama going to accomplish anything if he honestly thought he had enough sway with the IOC and yet they turned him down flat on the first vote ? How is he supposed to influence Iran or North Korea, or anyone ? Hell, he can’t even influence the members of his own party that are running Congress.
The only silver lining appears to be that he doesn’t have enough sway to implement his destructive agenda. Thank goodness for that.
BTW, I do think there is a hint of truth to the idea of Obama intentionally inflicting damage to the office of POTUS. He clearly believes the US is on the bad side of almost every event in its history. Otherwise he would not be about apologizing for our past. And so even if by accident he is trying to diminish the influence of the US and therefore the office of POTUS.
“The only silver lining appears to be that he doesn’t have enough sway to implement his destructive agenda. Thank goodness for that.”
Well, but he doesn’t need to, because Nancy “this bill was more exciting than giving birth to my kids” Pelosi and Harry “Republicans are evil” Reid are more than willing to do it for him, and they DO have sway.
It’s not “rejected”, they just picked somewhere else. It’s completely different.
Gary
http://GarySaid.com/
I respectfully register a dissent!
If the Olympics would be go for Chicago, then I support it.
If not, then I would oppose it.
I’ve seen some polls suggesting that Chicagoans are split on this.
Regardless, I don’t think it’s fair or wise to mock Obama for trying and failing on this. At National Review, some of my winger friends, were postulating that this was already a “done deal” and Obama was merely swooping in to take credit.
I guess that hypothesis was rejected:)
In any event, I saw the left badgering and mocking George Bush for trivial things on a daily basis, so, although I do love a good guffaw and laugh, don’t think the President deserves it on this one.
Have a bitchin’ weekend!
–HB
After my snark I’ll say this. To my conservative friends: with all the computer/AV tech currently available to the average lower-middle class household having a set “workplace” is almost redundant; so the “White House” becomes wherever the President happens to be. To my leftists friends: I remember the left media and blogs going completely apesh*t when in ’02 (or ’01’03-’08) Bush went on his August vacations when: the unemployment rate was less than half it is now, all previous presidents had taken it off and the Congress also took it off.
I think perspective is needed in order to not look like a complete fool but I think the burden of perspective is obviously on the left.
MikeLyons:
A few rebuttals…
The complaints I have seen on the right are not that Obama’s body was not in Washington but that his mind was not on Afghanistan, Honduras, Iran and his agenda.
This is more revealed by the fact that he met with his Afghanistan commander for 25 minutes while hobnobbing with IOC voters and other Olympic hangers-on for hours/days. That complaint is legitimate. This is not about “taking a vacation” this is about “elevating the priority of a trivial (from a geopolitical perspective) sporting event over actual life and death realities.”
It also makes it appear (and I suspect there is some truth to this) that Obama was paying back his Daly machine supporters who demanded he go save the day when it looked bad for Chicago (the fact that Obama last week said it would not be prudent to get involved, and then reversed himself and flew to Copenhagen provides support for this).
Those of you on the right or left who under-estimate the impact of this politically will never quite understand why Obama’s influence has suddenly diminished (again). Coming just a few days after Sarkozy punctured the Obamillusion with his “emperor has no clothes” moment will simply exacerbate the image of Obama as a pampered toy poodle in a room full of scarred pit bulls. A fairly accurate analogy, I’m afraid.
I am reminded of the Gates affair when I said “this is gonna hurt” and many on the right and left pooh-poohed the whole affair, and within a few days Obama’s approval index of strongly approve vs strongly disapprove went negative, and has not since recovered.
This is gonna hurt, and here’s why.
1. Many, many people who pay no attention to TARP or Cap and Tax DO pay attention to sports, and they are now seeing Obama=phail. This is a disproportionately young person audience too.
2. This directly flies in the face of the supposed Obama mystique, which is that he charms the rest of the world by his sheer charisma. He tried. He failed. People will notice, both here and overseas.
3. This is not the ONLY failure of Obama in the past few months, the failures are myriad (Russia, Iran, Honduras, Health Care, North Korea) etc., but this one not only caps it off with an exclamation point, this one was supposed to be EASY. This is like the Pittsburgh Steelers losing a few games to some playoff contenders and then facing the Kansas City Chiefs and getting blown out 35 – 0. It rips the blinders off.
Trust me, this is gonna hurt.
CC,
Good points. But do you think the President’s mind has been in “the game” sufficiently before this point? I think the lack of meeting with the Afghanistan theatre commanders proves it wasn’t. He’s the feel good president whose inclination is to focus on the trivial. He’s like the guy who organizes a company luncheon and ignores their own critical work.
MikeLyons:
No, I don’t think Obama’s mind has been on Afghanistan, Honduras or any other substantive life and death issue. First I frankly don’t think he cares that much about the lives of the little people (here or overseas) and second, he’s so totally focused on his own navel that I don’t think he spends much time thinking about much of anything but his next appearance in front of adoring sycophants and true believers.
However, and this is the point, a lot of people don’t know that but now more people do. This further erodes his political capital, which has been rapidly vanishing anyway.
I think my disdain and disgust in this man is pretty apparent. I have not yet become so inured to his narcissistic self-aggrandizement that it has stopped amazing me yet. However, even I am stunned by his ineptitude in this case, and my expectations were shockingly low to begin with.
I am more and more concluding that Barack Hussein Obama is the worst disaster this country has seen since Vietnam. I truly fear for this country. Whether by intent or by sheer oblivious incompetence, this man is systematically diminishing this nation.
Oh, let me just add that as if this were not already amateurish and incompetent enough, Obama was mind-numbingly stupid enough to do this on a Friday when the weekend news shows will have no choice but to cover it repeatedly.
The man is a buffoon. His tin ear for politics is corroded tin. He makes George W. Bush look like Ronald Reagan by comparison. He sneers at Sarah Palin for having been a small-town mayor, but lacks even the political instincts of a small-town mayor himself. He is all image and no substance, and people eventually notice that.
It simply boggles the mind…
FWIW here’s a Canadian op-ed which compares Obama to Gorbachev. I haven’t made that direct comparison, but this echos many of my own comments (so it must be right, right?). The point of the editorial is that Obama is systematically diminishing the USA. Sound familiar?
“Both men have been praised for their wonderful temperaments, and their ability to remain unperturbed by approaching catastrophe. But again, the substance is different, for Gorbachev’s temperament was that of a survivor of many previous catastrophes.
Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern “liberal” mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.
Gorbachev seemed to assume, right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and then beyond it, that his Communist Party would recover from any temporary setbacks, and that the long-term effects of his glasnost and perestroika could only be to make it bigger and stronger.
There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.
A variant of this is the frequently expressed denial of the law of unintended consequences: the belief that, if the effect you intend is good, the actual effect must be similarly happy.
Very small children, the mad, and certain extinct primitive tribes, have shared in this belief system, but only the fully college-educated liberal has the vocabulary to make it sound plausible.”
As is often the case, I actually agree with my friend Hank Barnes, a San Francisco Republican if I ever met one. ;-)
From where I sit, it is quite true that the President got embarrassed on this one. On the other hand, I also think he was in a “damned if he did, damned if he didn’t” situation. Really, I’m pretty sure at least *some* of his right-wing critics would be going after him if he didn’t made SOME visible effort to make this happen.
And I reject the idea that it’s all about Chicago. Chicago’s been trying to get the Olympic Games brought to their city for many years. If this was Los Angeles, or New York, or Seattle, or Dallas, I’m pretty sure this still would have hapened. Because hosting the Olympics within the United States is a Big Deal. It’s partly about the economics, sure, but it’s also about the prestige.
I mean, seriously you guys, do you HONESTLY think it’s all about nothing but Obama’s love for Daley? Really? Really really??? So an American President would not want the Olympics hosted in the United States, unless he owed someone a favor? What, if George W. Bush, or George H.W., or even Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford, had gone out there and tried to get the next Olympics hosted in the United States, you would automatically assume croneyism?
Come off it. The President wanted the Olympics hosted here. And other than Carter’s horrible blunder in boycotting the Olympics in the ’70s, wouldn’t ANY President want the Olympics here? I mean, seriously, isn’t that part of the job?
Stop it. He didn’t take part in it merely because he wanted it in Chicago. He wanted it in AMERICA, and last I checked Chicago is part of America.
I agree that this was an embaraassment for the President, because he foolishly threw the dice not knowing the outcome, and lost. OK, fine, he lost some face there.
But really, you’re gloating way too fracking much. Our President just failed, and America doesn’t get the gold ring this time. You’re celebrating this? You’re gloating about it?
Guys, it’s unseemly. It really is. It’s not as bad as the lefties who gloated every time the terrorists had a victory against American troops, but: you guys are warm and glowy and happy that our President failed.
This was a little bit about Chicago. But it was ultimately about the United States. If George W. Bush had actively worked to try to get Dallas or Houston to host the Olympic Games, would you be similarly gloating and gleeful and happy if he failed? I sort of think not.
I’m going to remind you again: Chicago is a part of the United States, last I looked. And the United States had an opportunity here, and we lost. Are you really really happy about that, just because our current temporary occupant of the White House maybe didn’t play his cards right? Is that really something you want to be all happy and gloaty about?
By the way, I’ll even put in a good word for the IOC: the Americans have gotten MANY opportunities to host the Olympics. We HAVE hosted them many times. I don’t blame the IOC for saying, “Uhhrr, no, this is supposed to be international, and only every four years, should we really give it to the Americans yet again?”
Because, here’s a news flash for you: the International Olympic Committee couldn’t give a rat’s ass less about Chicago politics. All they’re looking at is, “what, we should give it to the Americans, AGAIN?” I’m pretty sure that’s why they said no.
I’ve gone after the left–unremittantly, even sometimes savagely–for their defeatism on Iraq and Afghanistan. But now you guys are crowing and gleeful at the news that the next Olympic Games will not be in the United States. Have you guys checked yourself in the mirror lately?
Dean: Seriously, don’t waste your time lecturing me on my “unseemly” behavior. I have not once said whether I thought is was good or bad for the Olympics to be in the USA or whether I supported them being in Chicago or not. I’ve focused entirely on the political significance of Obama’s amateur hour incompetence.
I also am not “crowing and gleeful” about this situation, I am using it to illustrate the points I’ve been making about Obama for months.
Now, for the record, I DON’T support the Olympics in Chicago for a variety of reasons. And believe it or not, I am GLAD to see the Olympics in South America, in a beautiful city. It’s about time.
It is my considered opinion that the Olympics in Chicago would be a financial disaster of monumental proportions, and the resulting graft, fraud and corruption would clog up Chicago’s and Illinois’ courtooms for years after the fact. So no, I don’t give a “frack” about Chicago losing the Olympics. I’m glad to see they didn’t get them.
Had the city been Denver, I’d have supported it. Or Dallas, or Phoenix, or any of a number of cities and states which are not so overtly and conspicuously corrupt that their last two governors now sit behind bars, and whose mayor is the dynastic offspring of one of our nation’s most acknowledged corrupt public officials. Please. You lecture about “unseemly,” well I can think of little as unseemly as this city running the Olympics.
As far as whether I have a warm happy glow when Obama fails, no I wouldn’t say that, but you know what Dean, I do in fact get a warm happy glow when more people (like Ann Althouse, for example) see through the empty suit to the corrupt lying collectivist inside.
I get a real warm happy glow when that happens. I’ll get a warm happy glow when you finally realize it too.
So even if I had supported Chicago getting the Olympics (which I did not) I could simultaneously be disappointed in the outcome, while still being glad of a silver lining of more people recognizing that our country is in real trouble with this man in office.
Oh yeah, and since you are collecting items for the “unseemly catalogue” be sure and put right on the front page the whole idea of a President of the United States shilling openly for the Olympics while rogue states pursue nuclear weapons, his generals in a hot war are begging for time to talk to him and get decisions about that war, his State Department is helping slide a democratic nation into a potential civil war and his own legislation is coming apart at the seams in Congress.
Talk about “unseemly.”
… and he didn’t even seal the deal. Unseemly and a failure.
Heh, just another interesting point on this. As Obama’s ego comes crashing to earth, Sarah Palin reaches #1 on Amazon…
I think that’s frackin hilarious.
To me the “damned if he did, damned if he didn’t” logic is nonsense. First of all, I disagree that there is anyone on the right that could give a fig if Chicago did or did not get the olympics. Dean, you claim there would be some and I wholeheartedly disagree.
Second, I don’t buy that Obama would have been involved at all if the city were any other than Chicago. It has nothing to do with “Love for Daly”. Give me a break. Talk about an oversimplified strawman. No, it was payback for the Chicago political machine that is 1) very strong and influential and 2) whether true or not surely lets Obama know routinely that they put him in the White House and he owes them.
And I’m sorry there is no “prestige” for the US in hosting the Olympics. The US is the richest most powerful nation on the planet that can mobilize and pull off a first class olympics in any US city with ease. Doing so does not add to the nations prestige.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that in the last 30 years the US has hosted an olympic games 4 times while no other country has hosted more than 1. Canada will get their second this winter. Call that whatever you like, but unseemly fits in my book. And regardless of anything ELSE, Obama should at least recognize that fact in his post-racial, multicultural landscape, Chicago and the US in general, should probably NOT be hosting an olympics any time soon.
Nobody is or was rooting against the US or the President and nobody is “crowing” about this. If anything we are angry that the media did such and abysmal job of vetting Obama that we are now stuck with someone so naive and politically clueless as President.
And for the record, CC, I think the 2010 midterm voters have a LOT more influence than Pelosi or Harry Reid, who is done in 2010 anyhow.
And let me just add this… I didn’t pay much if any attention to this issue until this week and only because Obama deemed his own cult of personality enough to sway the IOC to his side. But when I first caught wind of this I thought it was a bad idea in general. I recall stories from previous IOC host awards that spotlighted the very strong politics and tit for tat nature of the IOC (probably surrounding the Utah games). I had a gut feeling that considering the limited amount I knew about the IOC that sending celebrities and imposing the will of the US president on the event would actually be a negative. I was right, but the amazing thing to me is I could sense this but the brilliant intellectuals in the Obama administration couldn’t ??!?!?!? As CC says, truly mind boggling.
Lastly, I think Chicago is a terrible place to host an Olympics. Were they planning on building ANOTHER arena there ? The sports venues in Chicago are flung to the four corners of the earth and there is no real need for a new venue, especially since Soldier Field was recently renovated.
Someone in the know explain how Chicago is setup for a a good olympic experience
Regardless, I don’t think it’s fair or wise to mock Obama for trying and failing on this.
I think it’s both.
This wasn’t entirely trivial. No POTUS ever did this before. He put the symbolic power of the office behind the effort and it failed.
If he wants to discredit himself this way, great. I certainly hope it impacts the rest of his agenda.
The selection of the great Brazilian city for the 2016 Olympic games was neither a rejection of Chicago in particular nor of President Barack Obama, who apparently put some of what is left of his prestige on the line to bring the games to his home town.
What it was about was the internatinal Olympic games committee making their own selection, having reviewed a number of applicant cities.
I’m not convinced that from the standpoint of the taxpayers of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois and the United States of America, any of us and of them lost anything from that choice.
In any case, Chicago has had its great moments of international show and tell: The Columbian Exposition of 1892, which left Chicago Jackson Park and the Museum of Science and Industry as permanent reminders of that great event marking the 400th anniversary of the transoceanic voyage to the new world of Christopher Columbus in 1492; the Century of Progress Exposition of 1934. Add to that the fact that Chicago has had — and retains — two major league baseball franchises and one of the best professional football teams in the country.
Besides, a lot of good arguments could be made that Rio is a better location for a great international sports event than Chicago. Apparently the international committee thought so, and they’re the ones solely in charge of making a choice and banging the gavel to officiate it.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I think it’s at least naive to think some people didn’t joy in Obama’s failure. Clearly some did.
I think it’s naive to call this a US failure; also naive to think that some overseas and at home will call it anything else.
I think Obama has gotten a pass in the U.S. for a lot of stuff because he is the first black POTUS, and the IOC was not prepared to give him a pass for it; he missed his audience entirely in his appeal. It makes me wonder if he really doesn’t know how much the US MSM is pulling for him and willing to overlook about anything.
He just missed the audience on every level that he could.
Arnold:
“The selection of the great Brazilian city for the 2016 Olympic games was neither a rejection of Chicago in particular nor of President Barack Obama, who apparently put some of what is left of his prestige on the line to bring the games to his home town.”
Maybe before you pontificate as if you had inner circle knowledge about something, you should wait to see if inner circle information comes out.
Story from Denmark today is that the IOC specifically rejected Chicago because of Obama and his team. A quote from Instapundit: “It comes down to respect. President Obama showed none. . . . He was ill-prepared and his staff failed to lay the foundation for his appearance. He came off as an ugly American who knew nothing about the territory and who felt the world somehow owed him something.”
This sounds spot on to me.
No. Effing. Way. He would campaign for any other city with the IOC.
It isn’t that he owes someone in Chicago. It’s that he’s from Chicago, which in his mind, makes Chicago important. This wasn’t about Chicago or the USA. This was about the Olympics at his hometown. Because it was his. This was all about his ego.
Dallas wanted the Olympics while Bush was in office. He didn’t campaign for it, because he has a sense of what it means to be POTUS. When NYC was in the final 5, he did was American Presidents do — he taped a statement and sent Rice.
The world hates him so much he won the Nobel Peace prize! Yes, the prize is arguably political, so that means he obviously lost all popularity contests.
jrogge:
If you don’t think this “winning” of the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t simply make a mockery of the whole Nobel Committee, then I don’t know what to say. Of course I’ve considered the Peace Prize to be a mockery since Yassir Arafat won it.
Obama “won” the prize for not being Bush and for badmouthing this country nonstop since he got elected.
Any credibility the Prize had after Carter won it for bashing Bush has now been totally blown out of the water. I mean for goodness sake, Obama’s OWN response was “it’s not April 1st, is it?”
If you think this has any reflection on Obama’s accomplishments or any actual respect world leaders have for HIM personally, you’re fooling yourself.
But fooling themselves is what liberals do best, so no surprise there.
I mean in all deadly seriousness, the closest thing Obama has done so far to promote peace in any form was the beer summit.
So I have to assume he won the prize for that.
CC
You overreact as usual. It simply proves that he is indeed popular. Whether or not you want to believe it is up to you. I find it especially amusing considering that this whole circle jerk is about how unpopular he really is.
jrogge,
No, what it shows is that he is very popular among the Nobel Prize selection committee. So much so that they would hammer the last vestiges of its credibility into the Earth.
jrogge:
#1: How is it even possible to “over-react” to this travesty? This trivializes the life-and-death struggles made by generations of WORTHY Peace Prize winners, such as, oh, Solzhenitsyn for example. I guess so long as YOUR guy gets a gold star, you don’t care much what that means historically.
#2. Nowhere in this thread have I said that Obama is unpopular. Your belief that this is the point of the thread is incredibly revealing about your mindset. In fact one of the first comments in this thread is about how Obama is popular like a dog that keeps coming back to be kicked again. Nobody questions Obama’s popularity. At issue is whether Obama has any RESPECT. Sure he’s popular. But he is perceived by savvy world leaders as a deer in headlights. In large part the world “loves” Obama because they think they can roll him. And roll him they have, several times.
#3. I find it quite revealing that you confuse popularity with respect. I think that’s a particularly unsettling pathology which goes a long way to explaining a lot of the problems we have in this world.
Comments on this entry are closed.