Friday, October 02, 2009
No Olympics for You
My first thought on hearing that Chicago had lost the bid to host the Olympics: “I wonder if Joe Biden is going to be sent out to spin this as a big win for the people of Chicago.”
Just sayin’.
But here’s the most interesting question about today’s Olympic vote: Why didn’t Obama see this coming? He spends all this time, gets all this press, uses all this political capital to promote Chicago, and then loses? What an amateur. Prosecutors don’t ask witnesses questions in court unless they’re sure of the answers. Presidents don’t stake their personal reputations on contests whose outcomes are uncertain. Very foolish move. No wonder he can’t get health care passed.
Caught that on NRO and it made me laugh.
It is odd to me that he spent more time on this issue and treated it with far more urgency than, publicly anyway, we are seeing the administration deal with the question of ongoing strategy in Afghanistan. It’s a strange place to put that much effort, as Carlson notes, especially when you have no idea of the outcome. Unless he truly believed that his star power would bring the win. Then it’s just a case of poor judgement.
To be fair, I think Rio is a case of poor judgement, too. But what do I know?
Comments & Trackbacks
I’ve seen some translation of coverage from Denmark that suggests that the IOC resented Obama’s “fly-in-and-win-it-with-my-teleprompter” approach. Evidently his and Michelle Obama’s approach was all “Me me me”, “I I I”, “we ought to get it”. The IOC did not feel respected by the attitude.
If true, then the IOC voters showed a bit more insight into the man’s character than American voters did.
Isn’t Chicago in the USA?
I am pretty sure that it is.
In his eight-and-a-half months as president, he’s had about ten times as much exposure of his character than he did for two years-plus as a presidential candidate—and that’s despite media efforts to maintain the illusion.
So, I’m not sure I’d fault the 52% but so much. At least, not until we see what they do in ‘10 and ‘12.
Robin’s got it pretty accurate. I think both of the Obama’s speeches could be best summarized by playing a six second video clip of a tenor singer warming up their vocals, “Me, me, me, me, ME, MEEEEEE”
Hahah, I found a pretty good game earlier this week, I googled “usofearth” and came up with 2011: Obama’s Coup Fails.
It’s a disturbing little satire and strategy game revolving around a scenario that’s not entirely outside of the realms of possibility, where Obama attempts to dissolve the Constitution of the US and replace it with a global government of the western hemisphere, because he in all of his infinite wisdom knows what’s best for all of man kind.