Saturday, October 3, 2009

Obama’s 2016 Olympic bid

.....................
Posted by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it about time the Voice stopped running the nonsense this Chastanet writes ?
Below is the real Obama.

I must admit I was a little surprised to read this scathing account of cluelessness and incompetence in the effort to land the 2016 Olympics for Chicago in the New York Times … until I realized it ran in the Sports section. However, political reporters Jeff Zeleny and Peter Baker wrote it, and their inside look at the run-up and the reaction at the White House shows just how much this administration has bought its own press:

_________________________________
Losing out on the Olympics, of course, is not the sort of war-and-peace issue that defines a presidency, and the embarrassment will presumably fade in a news cycle or two. But it provides fodder for critics who are already using it as a metaphor for a president who, in their view, focuses on the wrong priorities and overestimates his capacity to persuade the world to follow his lead. …
A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.
But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was.
___________________________________
Let’s see. The White House jumped in front of a situation without understanding it, relying on the word of political cronies to shape their comprehension without checking for themselves. Only after they failed did they ask themselves about the political environment in which they made their proposal. Are we talking about ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, or the Olympics? It’s hard to tell.
No one can accuse the Times of assigning an Obama-hater to this story, either. It doesn’t sound like Zeleny and Baker are terribly enchanted with Obama and his staff at the moment, nor should they be.
In short, this is a microcosm of the entire administration. They entered into a situation about which they knew nothing and put the prestige of the presidency on the line without bothering to listen past themselves and the Daley Machine in Chicago. It only occurred to them that they didn’t know the first thing about the situation until after having wasted their time and distracting themselves from much more pressing — and presidential — matters of war and the economy.
It’s not the end of the world, but perhaps it’s finally the end of the fawning and obsequious assumptions of brilliance about Barack Obama that have informed his media treatment since January 2007.

October 3, 2009 at 3:47 PM
Anonymous said...

Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency


Barack Obama fails to make the case for Chicago to the IOC in Copenhagen
There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.
Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good — but carries no heft.
It was only the Olympic Games, the White House will argue — not a high-stakes diplomatic gamble with North Korea. It is always worthwhile when Mr Obama sells America to the rest of the world, David Axelrod, his chief political adviser, said today. But that argument will fall on deaf ears in the US. Americans want their presidents to be winners.
Mr Obama was greeted — as usual — like a rock star by the IOC delegates in Copenhagen — then humiliated by them. Perception is reality. A narrow defeat for Chicago would have been acceptable — but the sheer scale of the defeat was a bombshell, and is a major blow for Mr Obama at a time when questions are being asked about his style of governance.
At home, it is difficult to turn on a television and not see Mr Obama giving a press conference, or an interview, or at a town hall rally, in his all-out effort to sell his troubled reform the US health insurance system. After three months of enormous exposure, Mr Obama has achieved this: the growing likelihood of ramming a Bill through Congress with — at most — just one Republican vote.
Abroad, Mr Obama promised in his Inauguration address to engage America’s enemies, and he has done just that. He has very little to show for it. Yes, Iran took part in bilateral talks with the US this week over its nuclear weapons programme — but that is something Tehran has wanted for years. There is still a very good chance that the meetings will prove to be an exercise in futility and a time-wasting ploy by Tehran.
Mr Obama also scrapped a plan for a missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, hoping to get in return Russian co-operation behind new sanctions against Tehran. There was optimism when President Medvedev said “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable”. Yet Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese, remain fiercely opposed to sanctions.
Meanwhile, America and its allies are being forced to witness a very public agonising by Mr Obama and his advisers over his Afghan strategy — six months after he announced that strategy.
This has all added to the perception that Mr Obama’s soaring rhetoric — which captured the imagination during last year’s election — is simply not enough when it comes to confronting the myriad challenges of the presidency. His spectacular Olympic failure will only add to that.

October 3, 2009 at 4:13 PM
Anonymous said...

At least someone tried to do some good for his city, what have you done lately?

October 7, 2009 at 9:52 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)