Will President Obama Pout or Play Tough?
Yeah, okay. I’m happy that Chicago didn’t get the Olympic Games in 2016. I’m happy that it was bounced out in the first round like Ball State from the NCAA Tournament. I’m happy that President Obama has egg on his face tonight, that he got a very public reminder that he can’t, in fact, cast a Charm spell on the world, and that he is a laughingstock tonight.
I’m happy for all those things, but not for any partisan political reasons.
First, Chicago. It is an unmitigated good that a state already in dire financial straits isn’t going to put its people on the hook for a decade or more (via Michelle Malkin) in order to pay for a two-week pageant that has absolutely no lasting effect.
But saving Chicago from a humongous boondoggle is only a side-benefit. What I hope really happens from this high-profile defeat is that Barack Obama realizes he can’t solve every problem with his innate and considerable charm. The world is a very dangerous place and there are plenty of people looking at us right now and licking their chops. At some point, our President is going to have to bring his A-game to foreign policy and we need to know that he’s capable of doing that. So far, he hasn’t brought anything close to his A-game and there is some doubt about whether he even has an A-game at all. After all, he’s never won a real fight, where he’s has to apply experience, tenacity, and the ability to recover from setbacks. Every great achievement in his life has been, relatively speaking, a cakewalk. The right’s biggest complaint about him during the election was that he’d shown no chops at all and since he’s been in office, he hasn’t done a thing to prove us wrong. In football terms, he’s benefited from a great offensive line (the Chicago political machine, the MSM, the Democratic Congress) that has cleared huge holes for him, but he’s never demonstrated that he can take a hit or that he can get the tough yards. Well, Mad Mahmoud and Vladimir Putin are not pushovers and they can’t be swayed by Chris Matthews’ perpetually tingly leg or a day-long ABC infomercial. They aren’t going to roll over if Rahm Emanuel glares at them or if his political buddies start digging up dirt on them.
To use an analogy the President might understand, foreign policy is like a game of street basketball. If he continues to be the punk kid who whines about getting a body check going down the lane before the ball’s even out of his hands, well, you know just the kind of person I mean and you know what happens to a punk like that on the court. The tyrants who really do mean us ill are going to eat his lunch every single day because they know he’s soft. They’re going to keep throwing elbows until he’s too intimidated to do anything more than take bad shots from the outside and they’ll throw down dunks on him even while he’s complaining that they gave him a bump going to the basket.
The world ain’t 8th grade gym class and it’s about time he learned that. Perhaps this kick in the teeth from his beloved international community, despite telling them everything they could have ever wanted to hear, will be the thing that introduces him to the real world.
I hope he pulls on his big boy shorts fast. The evildoers out there aren’t going to wait for him to decide to get his head in the game.
UPDATE: Or not. Apparently, we have a President who doesn’t find the taste of humiliation bitter at all.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Michelle Obama is Ready to Fight, but Not for Anything Particularly Important
- Thank You, Mr. President, for Holding Fast to Your Values
- Again, the President Has Chosen Poorly
Category: Our Foreign Policy
In the long term, the loss may be a good thing for President Obama; if Chicago had won the bid, and struggled through the preparation and hosting, every difficulty could be used as ammo against the Obama administration. (It's consistent with Obamanomics–the technique to fix the city's financial problems is to spend more money on hosting the Olympic Games.)
I truly hope that this is completely unrelated to foreign policy–the State Department wasn't involved in the IOC bid, was it? If that was a demonstration of their best effort, it's just depressing.
No, I don't think the State Department had a hand in it. Usually, our government doesn't have a large part in any of our Olympic bids. Chicago had its own committee working on that in conjunction with the US Olympic Committee. The President jumped in at the end to put his muscle behind it.