Japan had an environmental bid - cleanest Olympic Games ever!
Madrid had Juan Antonio Samaranch - the greatest IOC President ever - in failing health making a personal appeal to the IOC to award the games to Madrid.
Rio had Pele and the Copacabana and the fact that the IOC had never awarded the games to South America before.
Chicago had...
And so, the President was doomed from the start. If he's smart and stays out of the Olympic bid, and they lose to one of the better cities, Chicago and the US blames the President for not representing the country. If he goes, like he did, and the bid fails (as it was bound to do), he is seen as ineffectual and tarnished. If nothing else, he's taken the onus off all future Presidents to have to represent their countries bids at the IOC.
Still... last place? How badly have we p-ed off the IOC in the last 8 years? Maybe they secretly wanted the opportunity to vote for San Francisco in 2012 and 2016 and the USOC screwed it up? Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So the rest of the USOC will just have to imagine my tongue sticking out at them. Shame on you for not letting SF represent!
2 comments:
Actually, I don't think anyone would've cared had he not gone. After all, no other president has ever done that.
I can't believe somebody convinced him it was a bright idea to invest a substantial amount of political capital in this endeavor, especially given everything else that's going on domestically. Sometimes, I think his cadre of advisers are a bunch of lightweights.
Cheers.
I think the biggest problem right now is the same problem that most President's face when they first get into office - he's reacting, not acting. To be fair, certain events have derailed his plans. He's had to react to so much - more than any President's fair share - right off the bat. But this was clearly a case of reacting to perceived criticism - which ought to be beneath the dignity of the office. I doubt he'll make this mistake again.
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