Olympic Vanitas

President Barack Obama went to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Thursday to persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to select Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympic Games. The president’s past visits to Europe, where he was greeted by cheering crowds, convinced him that his personal charisma would sway the committee to select Chicago. After all, on earlier trips to Egypt and Europe, he prepared the way by apologizing for America’s past foreign policy. Last week, before the U.N., he even offered to unilaterally disarm America. He must have deluded himself that these apologies and offers would convince IOC members to love Chicago as much as their countrymen love Obama.

Fortunately for Chicago, President Obama was not successful. About half of the people in Chicago did not want the Olympics in the Windy City, because the city can not afford it. Chicago has a major fiscal crisis. Private sources already spent $100 million on the failed bid. Obama’s trip to Copenhagen aboard Air Force One cost American taxpayers $900,000. The cost of hosting the Olympics runs into the billions of dollars. Historically, Olympics cost their host cities a lot of money that is not recovered from the spinoff benefits of the games.

Since there is rarely an economic benefit to hosting the Olympics, there must be other reasons why major cities vie for the honor. After one cuts through the babble of sportsmanship and international good will, the real reason is vanity. Host cities and their leaders get to dress up and show off their city to the world. For one month in the late summer every four years, the Olympic host city is the center stage of the sports world and the media covering it. Had Chicago gotten the nod from the IOC and Obama won a second term, he would have been Caesar in his home city, presiding over an international vanity fest with even more media coverage than he normally gets.

On Friday, Illinois Sen. Roland Burris (D) made it absolutely clear why the IOC did not select Chicago. According to Burris , it was President George W. Bush’s fault. President Obama has not had the time to undo the international damage to America’s reputation caused by Bush. There are a lot of fiscally conservative taxpayers in Chicago today who are secretly thanking the former president from saving their city from further fiscal distress. The Chicago political machine is now unable to use the Olympics as an excuse to reach deeper into taxpayers’ pockets to finance the machine’s vanity.


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