@Diest TKO,
Diest TKO wrote:
Can we just kill the Obama-Chicago-Olympics discussion now? I fear if we don't it will be a 5 page ramble if we don't kill it early.
It seems like nobody here is suprized at the spin, nor would have been surprised by the spin in any outcome. Doesn't sound like there is anything to be discussed.
T
K
O
Doesn't work that way Diest.
Maybe you should leave this thread for a couple of days and come back after all of the "drama queens" are finished brutally savaging poor Barrack.
After all, it's not his fault Chicago's bid was rejected...he
inherited it.
The IOC are an odd bunch and although it's possible that they rejected Chicago just to show the young whippersnapper they're not besotted with him, I doubt that is the case.
So I think its fair to say he didn't lose Chicago their bid, but it's certainly the case that neither he nor our international star of a First Lady won it for them.
While his presidency is shaping up to be a Carter styled disaster, it's tough to call this flop a disaster except as it applies to the White House publicity machine.
Expectations were very high, in part because Tony Blair seems to have glad-handed London's prior bid to success, but also largely because the Obama Personality Campaign hasn't pulled back at all since his election.
If you lay claim to an almost mystical power of oratorical influence, you are going to be embarrassed when said power so dramatically fails.
I don't have a huge problem with the US president campaigning before the IOC for the bid of an American city. You have to wonder if Obama would have made the trip on behalf of Dallas or Boise, but let's be charitable and say he would have. Not that big of a deal to spend a day or two promoting US sports venues., but has already been suggested, if Chicago won, we would be reading cover stories in Newsweek and People on how Michelle charmed the pants off the old farts in the IOC and how Barrack moved some of them to tears.
There was some talk that Obama was assured the bid was in the bag before he decided to fly to Copenhagen and pitch the Windy City, but that doesn't seem likely now, and if it was true, someone on his team will soon be headless.
But its puzzling why Obama, who clearly needs some sort of PR victory, would have risked the embarrassment of a failed bid if he didn't have a strong sense that his efforts would pay off. That confidence may have flowed from faulty intelligence, but it may also have flowed from his supreme egoism.
In any case, the fact that Chicago was the first city to get knocked off only intensifies the embarrassment. The predictions I noted before today were split evenly between Chicago winning, and coming in second to Rio.
Well, Rio won but Madrid came in second and Chi-town couldn't beat Tokyo, a city that already hosted the games in 1964.
No matter how you look at it Obama has to be embarrassed, and unless you stick your head in a hole in the ground for the next few days, you are going to be reminded of that embarrassment whether on A2K, your local newspaper, SNL, or the Sunday news shows.
As for A2K, no we can't agree to "kill" commentary of Obama's flop, and, frankly, the fact that you suggest the same is part of the creepy, Obama hero worship that disturbs a lot of us.
