(Is Pres. Obama's Olympic bid a distraction? No. The man can obviously chew gum and walk at the same time.)
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(First Lady Michelle Obama takes Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics games to Copenhagen, Denmark.)
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(Should Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympic games? That's a no-brainer question. Yes!!!)
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Pres. Obama Stumps for Chicago’s Bid
Barely a year after his election, he was campaigning not for himself but for his adopted hometown. Yet as President Obama pitched Chicago’s bid to host the Summer Games of 2016 on Friday, he put his own credibility on the line as well.
Arriving here after an all-night flight, Mr. Obama swept into a convention hall in the Danish capital, took the lectern and appealed to the International Olympic Committee to choose “that most American of American cities,” the same place that put him on the path to becoming the world’s preeminent leader.
He did not invoke his campaign slogan, “Yes We Can,” but the Chicago bid team consciously echoed it with its own motto, “Together We Can,” repeated in the video shown to the committee. And the president summoned the spirit of his election, reminding them of the emotional crowds in Grant Park celebrating his victory last fall and effectively inviting the rest of the world to validate it by sending him the Games.
“Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. presidential election,” Mr. Obama told the committee. “Their interest wasn’t about me as an individual. Rather, it was rooted in the belief that America’s experiment in democracy still speaks to a set of universal aspirations and ideals.”
In his presentation, the first by an American president on behalf of a city seeking the Olympics, Mr. Obama portrayed himself as an unabashed city booster, noting Chicago’s international character in neighborhoods like Greektown and the Ukrainian Village. At one point, responding to questions from the committee, he touted the diverse nature of Chicago’s population. “We’ve got everybody,” he said. “This could be a meeting in Chicago because we look like the world.”
And in a more personal vein, he presented his city as a place for wanderers like himself to find a spirit and connection to a broader community.
“You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot,” he said. “I grew up in Hawaii, I lived in Indonesia for a time. I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group. Then I came to Chicago. And on those Chicago streets, I worked alongside men and women who were black and white, Latino and Asian, people of every class and nationality and religion.”
Mr. Obama’s remarks capped a presentation that also included Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley and the first lady, Michelle Obama. A lifelong Chicagoan, Mrs. Obama recalled growing up with a father who overcame adversity and inspired her to achieve. “He taught me how to throw a ball and a mean right hook better than any boy in our neighborhood,” she said.
For months, Mr. Obama and his crew have approached this competition with all the intensity of the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Obama taped five video messages pitching Chicago’s bid, created an Olympic office within the White House and hosted Olympic athletes on the South Lawn. For the past couple weeks, he worked the phones, calling some heads of state, and lobbied others at the United Nations opening session in New York and Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh last week.
He put Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to work making calls and sent Michelle Obama to Copenhagen a couple days early to buttonhole committee members. On Air Force One with him Friday, Mr. Obama brought a couple cabinet officers from Illinois, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as well as Senator Dick Durban. Before leaving Washington, Mrs. Obama made clear how seriously the first couple took the matter.
“Take no prisoners,” she vowed.
After his formal presentation to the committee, Mr. Obama shook hands as he left the room, then joined members in a brief mixer, pigeonholing them one on one for the Chicago bid, a little elbow bending familiar to politics the world over.
With Chicago considered in a tight race with Rio de Janeiro, the strategy involved not just finding votes for the first round but obtaining commitments from those voting for one of the two bids believed to be lagging, Tokyo and Madrid, to switch on subsequent rounds after their cities are eliminated.
The president and first lady left before the other city presentations and were planning to be on Air Force One somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean when the committee votes later in the day. Aides were trying to figure out if they could watch the decision live from the airplane.
The president’s decision to come personally, just two weeks after saying he did not have the time because he was busy pushing health care legislation through Congress, was a risky gamble predicated on the theory that Mr. Obama’s star power overseas — “the best brand in the world,” as his advisers have put it — was luminescent enough to sway just enough committee members to make the difference.
It was also a defensive calculation. Valerie Jarrett, his close friend and White House senior adviser who has been intimately involved in promoting Chicago, made sure he knew that the other candidate cities would have their heads of state or government in Copenhagen. If Chicago lost by just a few votes and he did not come, Mr. Obama knew he would be in for criticism.
And the prospect of winning was too irresistible. After all, Mr. Obama has already envisioned the day when he could welcome the world to his hometown, never mind that small matter of reelection. “In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president,” he told a rally in Chicago in June 2008. “So I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park ... as president of the United States and announcing to the world: Let the Games begin!”
Advisers in recent days tried to make the case that Mr. Obama would have gone all out even if it had been, say, Atlanta making the bid again. And they rejected critics who complained that Mr. Obama was acting more like the head of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce than a president with multiple big issues on his agenda, from Iran’s nuclear program to the war in Afghanistan to health care.
As he made his pitch, the Republican National Committee back home sent out an email attacking him under the subject line “Wrong Priorities.” The Republican statement cited a variety of news stories and commentaries to suggest that the president was busy with the Olympics but not tackling unemployment, that the Olympics actually cost the cities that host them and that several advisers and allies would be the ones to benefit.
“They shouldn’t try to make politics of this,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a Chicagoan himself, told ABC News. “I think they should take some pride in the U.S.’s win, and you know, we’ll make sure they get some good seats once Chicago does host the games.”
No one would get better seats, of course, than Chicago’s own first family. As he addressed the committee Friday, Mr. Obama noted that his own house in South Side sits near the site of the prospective Olympic venue.
“While we do not know what the next few years will bring,” he said, “there is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family’s home with Michelle and our two girls and welcome the world back into our neighborhood.”
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Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Washington Post, Google Maps
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