It all seemed too much to ask: choosing the home city of an American president as the location of the Olympics, at a time when that president, if re-elected, would still be in office. Barack and Michelle Obama went all the way to Copenhagen to personally make the case for “Chicago 2016” to the International Olympic Committee. But their city was the first of the four finalists to be eliminated.
Conservative opinion-makers in the US were ecstatic at what they saw as a personal defeat for Obama.
“I’m glad that the Obama White House’s jingoist rhetoric and attempt to pay back Chicago cronies at the expense of undermining our relationships with our allies failed,” wrote John McCormack, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard.
“Game over on Obamalympics. Next up: Obamacare,” columnist Michelle Malkin wrote on Twitter. “World Rejects Obama,” read the headline on the influential Drudge Report website.
As expected, talk-radio heavyweights Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh joined in the schadenfreude. “For those of you … who are upset that I sound gleeful, I am. I don’t deny it. I’m happy,” Limbaugh told his 14 million listeners. “Anything that gets in the way of Barack Obama accomplishing his domestic agenda is fine with me.”
While the Olympics bring prestige and create a few jobs in construction and marketing, they can hardly be considered part of a president’s “domestic agenda”. Chicago, like Madrid, Doha and the other cities, made its bid in 2007, before Obama was even a likely candidate.
“IOC puts US on back burner” would, however, have been an accurate headline. Another Olympics in the US? Been there, done that. An American city bids every time. The US has held the Summer Olympics in 1904 (St. Louis), 1932 (Los Angeles), 1984 (Los Angeles again), and 1996 (Atlanta), and the Winter Olympics in 1932 (Lake Placid, New York), 1960 (Squaw Valley, California), 1980 (Lake Placid again), and 2002 (Salt Lake City) — eight times altogether, and a lot more often than other countries.
Brazil, in fact, sealed the deal for Rio de Janeiro by showing a map of where all the past Olympics have been held; South America and Africa were blank. But Americans tend not to see it that way. The US has the infrastructure, the ability to pay extortionate amounts for broadcast rights, a well-funded Olympic training program, and the necessary marketing know-how to actually turn a profit on such a risky and gigantic enterprise.
America likes an opportunity to prove it’s the best at something, and each medal that the athletes earn gains a bit of luster when the host country ensures that everything runs smoothly.
…except when it doesn’t. The 1996 Games in Atlanta, already criticized for being extremely commercial, were marred by a bomb that killed two people and injured more than 100 others. Salt Lake City was chosen as the location of the 2002 Games because millions of dollars were spent to bribe officials (who were caught and fired).
One can only imagine the level of security necessary for an Olympics attended by President Obama. If anything went wrong — cost overruns, a terrorist incident, a scandal, or if (God forbid) Americans didn’t win the most medals at their own Olympics — the outcry would be deafening.
It’s nice to be a host, but it’s someone else’s turn now.
