President Obama and a complex calculus
CHICAGO — Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Games is unquestionably the best the United States of America has ever put forward for a Summer Games.
President Obama, moreover, is a singular figure of global charisma.
Were the president to appear in Copenhagen on behalf of the bid before and perhaps even through the International Olympic Committee’s Oct. 2 vote for the 2016 site, by all rights that appearance ought to be no less than the tomahawk slam-dunk on a sure winner.
If the 2016 race had gone the way many expected, that’s the way the IOC session, and the president’s long-anticipated appearance, should — and unquestionably would — have played out.
Instead, it’s now the case that Chicago not only wants the president in Copenhagen — it may very well need him there.
Even so, with fewer than four weeks remaining now before the vote, it remains uncertain if the president will venture to Copenhagen on behalf of the bid, the political calculus complex indeed for all involved — for the president himself as well as for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, bid leaders, the U.S. Olympic Committee and others.
Earlier this summer, signals from the White House suggested the president was less likely to appear. Today it seems, absent a domestic or international incident not now foreseeable, he may be more inclined to show.
This much, though, would seem clear:
In the abstract, it’s not that Chicago can’t win without the president in Copenhagen. There certainly will be others there to make Chicago’s case. Probably not Michael Jordan — MJ doesn’t typically do this kind of thing. But the American political, entertainment and sports scene is hardly lacking in star power.
But in reality — if President Obama doesn’t show, it’s going to make a tough job exceedingly more difficult. Maybe, frankly, impossible.
There may well be that much riding now on the president.
Why?
Three reasons.
One, the Chicago bid has been forced since July to beat back the considerable distraction created by the USOC’s announcement of a TV network — a move the IOC had warned the USOC not to do but the USOC did, anyway, and this just months after the USOC and IOC had announced peace on a long-running dispute over the USOC shares of certain marketing and broadcast revenues. The July announcement furiously brought all that tension back to the race, and for what? The USOC finally announced last month that the launch of the network would be put on hold; the network figures to be a talking point indeed at the USOC’s annual assembly, which kicks off Wednesday in Chicago.
Two, it’s inarguable that Rio de Janeiro has momentum. There are three others in the race besides Chicago: Rio, Madrid and Tokyo. A close reading of the evaluation report the IOC issued last week after touring all four cities this past spring indisputably tilts toward Rio.
Three, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is an ebullient booster of the Rio bid; he’s going to be in Copenhagen. The king of Spain, Juan Carlos, is a 1972 Olympian (sailing); he’s going to be in Copenhagen. Japan has invited incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Crown Prince Naruhito to attend.
In sum:
There’s an expectation that Obama will go, too. Right or wrong, fair or not — that’s the expectation.
Moreover, that expectation has been heightened because the past two IOC votes, in 2005 for the 2012 Summer Games, and 2007 for the 2014 Winter Games, attracted the likes of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair (2005) and Vladimir Putin (2007), then the president and now the prime minister of Russia.
With Blair’s support, London won in 2005 for 2012.
With Putin, Sochi, a Black Sea summer resort with grand designs on becoming a winter destination, won in 2007 for 2014.
The Blair model and the Putin way underscore for the White House the two approaches President Obama might want to take to make the most of an appearance in Copenhagen. There’s also the Jacques Chirac way — a lesson in how not to impress the IOC.
Chirac, then the French president, appeared at the IOC’s 2005 session for some ceremonial functions but did little else on behalf of Paris.
At the same time, Blair was meeting quietly and individually with about three dozen IOC members. He left before the vote — that is, he did not not take part in London’s on-stage presentation to the IOC. He did, however, make plain in each and every one of his meetings — for which he had been fully briefed, with key details about each IOC member — the British government’s unqualified support for the Games.
Putin took it one step further. He appeared as part of the Sochi presentation. And he spoke from the lectern in English, one of the IOC’s two official languages. He made abundantly, unequivocally plain the Russian government’s unqualified support.
Both the Blair and Putin models are obviously proven IOC winners.
Intriguingly, for those who might suggest that Obama would be taking a political risk were he to appear in Copenhagen and Chicago not prevail, there’s this:
Blair took political risk on behalf of London; Paris was widely thought to be the 2012 favorite. Putin took the same sort of risk on behalf of Sochi; in the three-way 2014 race, Sochi vying with Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea, had produced no obvious pre-vote favorite.
The initial thought for some had been that an Obama appearance ought to be more like the one Blair executed. The reason: The potential that the Secret Service presence at the IOC assembly hall might prove intrusive.
Then again, the Russians did it cleanly and clearly — so, too, can the Americans.
Beyond which, the logistics of the day of the final presentations, which immediately precede the IOC vote, actually work in Chicago’s favor. By protocol order, Chicago goes first that morning — it always goes first of the four in any presentation (the 2016 protocol was set by the drawing of lots in 2007). So the Secret Service can do what it does overnight with minimal, if any, disruption.
Which would enable the president to appear on stage and, while making it clear Chicago indeed enjoys full federal support, mention that, oh, the White House was even now making plans for a symposium on the import and impact of sport in our lives and he was thus hoping to see each and every one of the IOC delegates there in the very near future as his honored guests.
If indeed the president were to extend such an invitation: would the IOC dare turn him down?