Bizarre Reactions
Posted on October 2nd, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Like Jay Cost, I am fatigued by the permanent campaign, but he isn’t making any sense when he says this:
And so, in this case, what would otherwise have been a “mere” rejection of Chicago and Mayor Daley has now become a rejection of the entire country [bold mine-DL]. Why? Because of his decision to perpetuate the permanent campaign while holding the power of the executive.
This is wrong in several ways. If the President lends his support to an American city’s Olympic bid and that bid fails (as most informed observers outside the Chicago delegation guessed it would from the beginning), the “entire country” has not been rejected. This is ridiculous. While we invest it with some national symbolic importance, the Presidency does not embody “the entire country.” Though we may forget this at times, the Presidency does not even embody the entire federal government. There is something rather creepy in Cost’s assumption that a rejection of Obama, if that is what happened, is a rejection of America.
Why don’t we see the decision instead an affirmation of Lula, an embrace of Brazil, an endorsement of Rio de Janeiro? Because Obama’s critics and fans alike insist on making it about him and us, and they do this even when they are complaining that Obama inserts himself into everything. The problem here is as much our national self-absorption and continental provincialism as it is Obama’s politicking: most people criticizing Obama for this trip could not imagine losing out to the Brazilians, and it is even more unthinkable when the President involves himself. This is a product of an American feeling of entitlement, as if our city’s bid had to be the prohibitive favorite just because it was ours. After all, why would it be a “shock” that the IOC gave the next Games to a major city in an emerging-market country in South America instead of giving the U.S. yet another chance to host the Olympics? Everything pointed to Rio all along, but for many of Obama’s critics this seems incredible.
More to the point, while Obama went to Copenhagen when he didn’t have to go, it was the breathless obsession with this trip that both critics and admirers indulged in that has created the impression that the IOC’s decision represented, as Larry Kudlow absurdly said earlier today, “a crushing blow for the United States.” As far as I could tell, Rio had had the win locked up for some time, and today’s vote was mostly a formality. If Obama is “just the President,” as Cost says, we should be willing to ignore him whether or not he inserts himself into all sorts of things. Obama persists in campaign mode to the extent that he does because journalists, pundits and viewers respond to it and keep giving him reason to continue.
P.S. I should add that if Obama had ignored Chicago’s bid and it went down to defeat as it was always going to do, we would have heard endless groaning from the usual suspects about how Obama refused to “stand up” for America or some such nonsense.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics, sport
Aside from the fact that no Olympics has ever been held in S. America, I’ve been to Chicago and to Rio de Janeiro. The latter is more fun, even in winter (when the Games will be held). It can rain a bit, but it’s a fun place.
It’s not about Obama, one way or the other. It’s the new reality. Brazil is a continental power. Um pouco de respeito, por favor.
I would have cheered for Chicago, having lived there, as it would have necessitated long-overdue public transit improvements. Other than that, though, who wouldn’t rather have gone to Rio?
Now, the Olympics are of course irrelevant, and far more important are the US’s bids for the 2018 or 2022 World Cups. If those both fail, we will know without a doubt that Obama is the worst president in the history of elections.
The problem with the Neo-Con Right is that they do not recognize that Obama is a normal person. He did the sports nut, homey thing by flying to Copenhagen. He thought it would have been a gas to have the Olympics in his home city of which he is proud. Chicago politics are what they are, but still..
Bush and Clinton were/are tinged with weirdness. Almost everything they did was contrived for political reasons. Bush as president could not have authentically lobbied for Houston because there is nothing authentic about him.
Neo-Con Republicans insist on finding weirdness in Obama that does not exist. Newt Gingrich? Well that’s another story.
My only criticism here is that while Rio may have been the favorite, Chicago certainly had a better than good chance if their presentation had blown away the IOC, which it didn’t (for good reasons–the IOC makes noises about keeping costs down, but in the end Chicago’s low cost, existing facility-laden bid lost to the bid willing to spend 14 billion and build lots of stuff that won’t get used again.) There’s the idea that if Obama had spent a few days there like Tony Blair had in 2005 (or like Lula ended up doing this time) that might have put Chicago over, but I can’t fault him for not doing that, he has enough going on.
And I’d rather visit Chicago, frankly. You think the crime there is bad….
Sorry, but there’s a huge hole in all of this, and it extends much farther than just this set of comments (and the original post). Does anyone in America actually ever read the complaints that non-Americans have about the extraordinary difficulties they encounter in entering the country? I live in London, and these stories are legion here, and have been for years. And the darker the skin of the person telling the story, the more Kafka-esque it gets. The US has spent the past eight or nine years pretty much telling anyone coming in from another country (especially a darker-skinned one) that you’re really not welcome. Does anyone still think that the US is ever going to get an Olympics again–or the World Cup, for that matter? From the viewpoint of all the Americans I know living in London, Chicago was never going to get this, although they appreciate that Obama gave it a shot. But the fact that I’ve seen two days of discussion, cauterwalling and whining without anyone once mentioning this point speaks volumes about American self-absorption.
I’ll second the point about US airport officials. As Americans in general are the most helpful, polite and hospitable people you could imagine, I don’t know where you recruit your airport and customs officers.
Another point not brought up is the fact Rio had Pele in Copenhagen. Pele is the all time sports hero for the boomers that cast most of the votes in the IOC. Many of these people would just as easily vote for Hoboken 2016 if Pele asked them to.
Seconding wufnik (not from personal experience, as I’m a light-skinned US citizen) – the people most likely to have experience with this would be frequent world travelers; I’d guess that the IOC members travel a lot, and so have had lots of opportunities for unpleasantness. For personal reasons, they’d be prejudiced against the USA, and objectively, they’d realize just what a PITA it’d be for people travelling to the Olympics.