Taking your eye off the ball

I just finished watching President Barack Obama give some comments this morning on the topic of healthcare reform and the need for Congress to move judiciously this week. The appearance of the president was far more important than anything he could have said. You see, he’s been AWOL on this subject while globetrotting to Copenhagen, Denmark, for a wasted attempt at bringing the 2016 Olympics to his backyard in Chicago.

I’ll only spend a few minutes on the topic, because I thought it was so poorly contrived and shortsighted. Why would the leader of the free world burn valuable political chits for a city that spent more time explaining why the Olympics would be good for Chicago and not heralding why Chicago would be ideal for the Olympics? That was Mayor Daley’s major weakness. He was so obsessed with plugging the Windy City’s budget gaps from the expected billion dollars in revenue the IOC pledged to the winning host city that he spent hardly any time on actually promoting the city’s venues and appeal (children mobbed in the street notwithstanding).
 
But the one who most has egg on his face is the president. I’m no foreign policy expert, but even I knew Rio was a certain shoo-in simply due to the fact that South America had never hosted the Games in modern times. Did Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton not see those signs? Just what kind of intel was the White House feeding its boss before his trip? If there was even a doubt, he shouldn’t have gone. It looked more like Chicago-style mob pressure on Obama to attend than his pulling a Tony Blair and securing the win. Besides, the former prime minister was peddling London, folks. This is an international city built on centuries of notoriety. Compare that to … Chicago? I love the town, but a London it is not. It hardly qualifies as “international.”
 
On to other topics … The White House is now toying with the idea of changing the 1993 policy on gays in the military. Can someone please remind this administration that we are in the midst of battling a war on two fronts, an economic recession only just now ending, record unemployment and spending and a trillion-dollar check being drafted on healthcare? Does the president feel he doesn’t have enough on his plate, or just the wrong items?
 
He has clearly taken his eye off the legislative ball, focusing instead on issues that seem to matter most to every one of his leftist friends. What’s next, school uniforms?
 
Yes, the Rose Garden speech this morning was needed, on so many levels. But the biggest antagonist to the president’s agenda seems to be the distractions he himself has conjured up.
 

Williams can be heard nightly on Sirius/XM Power 169 from 9 to 10 p.m.

Visit www.armstrongwilliams.com .