When the International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics in the first round, they may have given America a glimpse into just how ineffective President Obama’s diplomatic strategy of direct negotiations will turn out to be.
For a President who seems to revel in symbolism, this is surely one symbolic moment he’d like to escape.
The modern Olympics has always traded implicitly and explicitly on symbolism. While Jesse Owens’ four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was an impressive athletic feat, more remember it as a representative defeat of Hitler’s theory of Aryan racial superiority. And who can forget the Miracle on Ice where a team consisting primarily of no-name American college students beat a Russian squad made up of ostensibly professional hockey players. Indeed, the movie Miracle seems to credit this game with lifiting the United States out of the malaise of the 1970s.
So too has our current president traded implicitly and explicitly on symbolism. During his campaign, his staff created its own Presidential seal. The Shepard Fairey poster became the biggest "must have" item since the pet rock. And his speeches before and after his election are so self-reverential, it’s hard not to come away from them with the conclusion that he revels in his role as a symbol of America.
So when Obama took time out of his busy schedule to get on a plane to go to Copehagen to win a position as host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, many commentators thought it was a done deal. Who doesn’t think that the IOC picked Chicago as a finalist in the middle of last year’s election as an assist to Obama? You figure the only thing left was to book the hotel rooms and buy up all the relevant real estate.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.
Maybe they thought Michelle Obama’s description of a taxpayer funded vacation as a sacrifice was too arrogant. Maybe the President’s dithering on Iran bothered more countries than just France. Maybe this was payback for hanging Eastern Europe out to dry on missle defense. Maybe they were just tired of America winning everything. Or maybe they just don’t see us as winners any more.
As a symbol, this is disastrous for the President. Most policy initiatives, foreign or otherwise, are either complex or can be made to seem so. This makes it easy for the regular person to dismiss the lack of a satisfactory conclusion upon the belief that not enough knowledge is available. So this policy failed, maybe there’s more stuff going on behind the scenes. More importantly, that makes it harder to pinpoint the exact moment of failure.
Losing the Olympic bid is the exact opposite. We know when it failed. Today. And people won’t care about the background drama because it’s not about anything more important than picking a location for a sporting event. It’s just too easy to get. President Obama’s direct negotiations failed. Moreover, he couldn’t make the shot when it counted.
And now we all look like losers.
–R. J. MacReady
It’s not so much that the bid failed due to Obama’s involvement, but that it failed in spite of it. After all he is the Messiah, or so we thought. Maybe Europe thinks otherwise. This is a stunning PR catastrophe. Getting the Olympics was more important than saving the lives of our men in Afghanistan. O looks like a fool on the world stage at this moment. This was all calculated to put him squarely in his place.
I also have to wonder how his cronies in Chicago that were promised a slam-dunk for the city are going to react to this. This is not what they paid for.
I think that what the Times is doing, and what I see R. J.’s article as doing also, is analyzing the difference between the President’s cultural effect and his competence at governance. That is an immensely relevant and important matter.
Both articles argue that although Obama is very inspiring as a speaker, he has failed to govern well. That says much about our contemporary political culture, about the nature of elected representative government in general, and about the limits of presidential symbolism.
I agree that it is speculative to say that the IOC added Chicago to the list of cities for consideration as a nod to Obama, but it’s a reasonable matter about which to speculate. The attempt by outsiders to manipulate U.S. elections is a serious thing.
Finally, R. J. MacReady did not make up the idea that the unexpectedly quick elimination of Chicago was in part a slap at Obama–the New York Times reported it in its very first story on the subject:
“The appearance by the Obamas was hoped to overcome some of those problems, but the former I.O.C. member Kai Holm told The Associated Press that the brevity of his appearance might have hurt. Holm called it ‘too businesslike,’ adding, ‘It can be that some I.O.C. members see it as a lack of respect.'”
Hence that is certainly a valid topic for discussion. And thus your opinion on the matter is valued as well.
I can accept the fact that Obama has not lived up to expectations with regards to his promises, but the basis for this assessment was it was Obama that was responsible for the failure of the Olympic bid. To say that “who doesn’t think that the IOC picked Chicago as a finalist in the middle of last year’s election as an assist to Obama?” it a charge that wholly lacks merit. It once again proves that those who oppose Obama will say anything and do anything to defeat him rather than to pose solutions for this country that are viable and effective for all Americans.
I still believe this article is not about the Olympic bid at all really, but a masked attempt at trying to embarrass our President as I said before. If the Times wishes to try and stick it to the United States with poison pen, then let them do so on their own!
Very good analysis, R. J.
The Times of London strongly agrees with your assessment of how this will affect Obama:
“There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.
“Chicago’s dismal showing today, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good—but carries no heft. . . .
“Mr Obama was greeted—as usual—like a rock star by the IOC delegates in Copenhagen—then humiliated by them. Perception is reality. A narrow defeat for Chicago would have been acceptable—but the sheer scale of the defeat was a bombshell, and is a major blow for Mr Obama at a time when questions are being asked about his style of governance. . . .
“[His continual failures to get policies adopted and accomplish things in international affairs have] added to the perception that Mr Obama’s soaring rhetoric—which captured the imagination during last year’s election—is simply not enough when it comes to confronting the myriad challenges of the presidency. His spectacular Olympic failure will only add to that.”
Your charge that the bid failed today because of Obama’s intervention is completely baseless. A bid for the Olympic Games is a long and complicated process that is crafted over time, and not some contest that is decided in one location on one day only.
I cannot believe that the lost bid can even be remotely compared to foreign policy issues, which only makes this article even more outrageous and unbelievable. To attach a vendetta is laughable, for you cannot expect Americans to swallow that European nations are involved in a gigantic conspiracy to embarrass us. The whole tone of the article smacks of petty politics just for the sake of it rather than a serious look at why we didn’t win the Olympic bid. Have we gotten this bad that any loss is suddenly all of the shoulders of Obama?
I give him credit- at least he tried to bring it home- that is a heck of a lot more than any previous President has done. Theodore Roosevelt would be very proud, for he himself believed that the man who fully tried and lost is a far better man than one who sat on the sidelines and gained victory through little or no effort. I’m with T.R. and Obama here.