10/07/2009
In “Damage Control,” at my Chicago-area (Oak Park) journalist friend, Jim Bowman’s blog, Blithe Spirit, Jim writes of the White House’s bungled exercise in impression management, following the failure in Copenhagen of the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama,” accompanied by Madame Michelle, billionaire Oprah Winfrey, and Chicago slumlord/presidential consigliere Valerie Jarrett, to secure the 2016 Olympics for their home base.Bowman: “LA Times has a story that makes the seasoned observer wonder if the White House isn’t throwing the Chicago Olympic Committee under the bus.Underlying this story are hubris and stupidity of theological dimensions.“The intelligence that we had from the U.S. Olympic Committee and Chicago bid team was that it was very close and therefore well worth our efforts,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House advisor. “The message was that … a personal appeal from the president would make a huge difference.”
Bowman: At first, Obama was to do some “quiet lobbying.”Working from the White House, he placed calls to half a dozen influential people, including IOC President Jacques Rogge. It quickly became clear that other heads of state were doing the same thing — especially the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“It was apparent when he made those calls that Lula had been there [Bowman: made calls?] earlier,” senior White House aide David Axelrod said.
Bowman: Jarrett, “a strong proponent of the drive to deliver the Games,” urged that Obama make the trip. So did Daley, of course. Obama wanted to go, but had to be sure Health Care would not be on the Senate floor. Chicago kept pushing.Daley and Patrick Ryan, chairman of Chicago 2016, were among those who told the White House that the nose count showed a presidential visit might close the sale, Jarrett said.
Bowman: She excuses them:“It’s a secret ballot. You can’t necessarily be certain that the people who tell you they’ll vote for you ultimately will,” Jarrett said. “So I’m sure they did the very best they could do to get the intelligence they had.”
Bowman: So. It’s done this way, subtly, indirectly. You can’t blame them for being wrong, dead wrong about sending the President across the waters. And you certainly can blame him or his supposed wise advisors.”
This shouldn’t even be a story. The story was, “IOC chooses Rio over Chicago,” and that should have been the end of it. But no. “Obama” and his advisers apparently believe that the simple story suggests that “Obama” is less than omniscient (the “intelligence that we had”?!–that’s how you talk about a real or possible terrorist attack) and/or less than omnipotent (in failing to bend the IOC to his will).
Sounds like a black thing to me, notwithstanding the certain involvement of “Obama’s” white Svengali, David Axelrod. With rare exceptions, whites do not feel the overwhelming need to present their leaders in godly terms, and those exceptions were mass-murdering, maniacal dictators. On Election Night 2008, Axelrod depicted “Obama” as an infallible genius to 60 Minute’s Steve Krofts. Axelrod unites the political worlds of black and white personality cultism, respectively.
Now Axelrod, Jarrett, et al., feel a need to explain that which requires no explanation. Can a racist conspiracy theory be far behind: “They banded together against the first African-American president’?
For me the real story, which we’e unlikely ever to see, is the amount of graft that the “Obamas,” Daley, and Jarrett had expected to see flow into their own pockets from a Chicago Olympics.
As George Reilly commented at columnist Lynn Sweet’s Chicago Sun-Times blog, “If you want to know how America is being run, look at Cook County, which means we need to apologise to Tammany Hall.”
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