Barack Obama risks prestige for Chicago Olympic bid

President Barack Obama has decided it’s time to leverage his international popularity to try to bring home a global goodie: the 2016 Olympics for his hometown of Chicago.

But now that he’s traveling to Copenhagen personally to make the pitch Friday, some experts say he better not come home empty-handed.

The White House knows that the decision to go before the International Olympic Committee is fraught with political risk: The president could be embarrassed on a world stage if he doesn’t land the games.

Plus, more than a few Americans are surely scratching their heads — with his inbox crowded with a troop request for Afghanistan, a new secret nuclear site in Iran, sky-high unemployment and a health care bill in Congress, does the president really have time for this?

Former Vice President Al Gore staffer Chris Lehane said the expectations will be high for Obama’s trip: “If they don’t come back with the gold, clearly there will be the same questions that American basketball would get if they don’t come back with the gold — they are expected to win.”

Obama — flying overnight Thursday to appear before the IOC on Friday — would be the first American president to make the pitch in person — but he won’t be alone. The leaders of the three rivals — Brazil, Spain and Japan — will also be there.

So the White House decided to go all in — calculating that Obama could also get blamed if he didn’t make the trip and Chicago’s bid fell short.

“You’re darned if you do, and you’re darned if you don’t,” said first lady Michelle Obama in a briefing with reporters Monday. “I’d rather be on the side of doing it, and I think that’s how the president feels. This is not one of those where you worry about what happens if not.”

The first lady, who will accompany her husband on the trip, said the opportunity was too good to pass up. “No matter what the outcome is, we’ll feel as a country, as a team, that we’ve done everything that we can to bring it home,” she said.

But Olympic bids are hardly a win-win for the politician involved. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took heat for pushing that city’s 2012 bid so aggressively because it looked to some like one rich guy helping out another rich guy, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who would have benefited from the Olympics development, said Doug Muzzio of Baruch College in New York.

Like Bloomberg, Obama is raising the stakes by investing the president’s most precious resource — his time.

“Clearly you stake your prestige, a little bit of your prestige and your political capital on this, and if you don’t get it, you’ve lost that political capital,” Muzzio said.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs had signaled two week ago that Obama probably wouldn’t make the trip, because of his crowded calendar, including the health care debate. But on Monday, Gibbs said the president thought health care was going better now and he was free to go.


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