Obama Goes for the Gold

Iran is going nuclear, Afghanistan is turning into Vietnam, and health care reform is hanging by a thread. What will President Barack Obama do? Fly to Copenhagen Thursday night to ask the International Olympic Committee to select Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Obama will be the first U.S. president to make an in-person pitch for an Olympic bid. The move worked for Great Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair, whose surprise appearance before the IOC four years ago helped London beat Paris for the 2012 Games. The president will be joining Michelle Obama as part of Chicago’s team. The Associated Press reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, both from Illinois, also will make the trip.

The IOC will make its decision public Friday. Besides Chicago, the other finalists are Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Madrid.

Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, also from Chicago, told Politico that Obama “decided over the weekend that he wanted be a part of the final push as we enter the home stretch.” “The Olympic spirit is about giving it your very best down to finish line and not taking anything for granted,” Jarrett said. “That’s what his presence in Copenhagen will demonstrate.”

That could be good news for Chicago, and maybe the president will get some neat Olympic pins to put on his Chicago White Sox cap.

Obama, however, is the president of the United States, not head of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. His loyalty to his hometown in endearing, but it’s hard to see how the nation will benefit from this use of his time and international prestige. The only benefit holding the Olympics in Chicago will have for the United States as a whole is that we’ll get to see more events live on television in prime time instead of having to settle for taped replays.

The Olympics may benefit Chicago, but some Chicago residents doubt that. The Chicago Olympic Committee asked Fox’s local television affiliate in Chicago to stop running a report about Chicagoans who don’t want their city to host the games, according to the Drudge Report. The committee was afraid it would hurt their chances of winning the bid.

The TV station’s story was prompted by the appearance of a “Chicagoans for Rio” website. Rio de Janeiro is believed to be Chicago’s top competitor for the games. Crain’s Chicago Business blogger Greg Heinz revealed Monday that Kevin Lynch, a digital advertising executive with BBDO, was behind the site.

Lynch followed up that news by hosting a mock online press conference. He said he is “confident Chicago would host a great games. But while Chicago does things well, it also does them consistently way over budget. As we saw the bid process unfold, we simply lost confidence this would be any different.”

Chicago officials have estimated they would need to raise $4.8 billion if they win the Olympics. It’s a safe bet the federal government would kick in a chunk of change as well.

Is hosting the world’s best athletes for a couple of weeks worth it? Atlanta, home of the 1996 Olympics, got more mileage out of its selection as Olympic host than it did out of actually holding the Games. The selection validated the city’s claim to be an international city, but IOC officials were offended by the swarms of souvenir sellers who turned downtown Atlanta into a carnival during the Games.

IOC voters may be more susceptible to Obama’s charms than are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Taliban, or the U.S. Senate, so maybe the president will come out of Copenhagen with a win. If so, let’s hope Chicago has broad enough shoulders to handle the Games without the rest of us having to bail them out.

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.