Politics: Rio gets Olympics while Chicago lost in round one

When I had heard that the President and First Lady were making a trip to support Chicago's bid for the Olympic games, I was surprised. I don't recall any other President doing so. But I figured that Chicago's organizers must have been pretty confident they would win because you wouldn't want to bring the President in on something that might go down to defeat.

So when I heard they lost the vote quite badly, I figured the Chicago people may have taken advantage of their connections to the President and overplayed their hand which reflects badly on them. Of course, one could say that President Obama should have been more shrewd and recognized that his Chicago friends didn't have the cards to win. In this scenario, team Obama probably royally chewed out the Chicago people for getting the President involved in a losing effort.

This morning while listening to the Prager radio show, an alternative explanation was offered.

Prager said, the alternative to the President being duped by the Chicago organizers is that they knew the bid was in trouble and President Obama stepped in because he was so confident in his powers of persuasion that he and they thought he could turn the whole thing around!

In one scenario, it was a political miscalculation. In the other scenario, it was hubris.

It may well have been scenario one. And certainly, any "leaks" about the fiasco would be to highlight scenario one. But if it is scenario two then I hope Team Obama becomes more realistic about their ability to shape events by rhetoric alone.