![]() ![]() And he is the first American president to make a personal appearance before the IOC to promote a U.S. Obama had pitched his "Together We Can" campaign for Chicago aggressively in videos and one-on-one telephone calls to officials. "The people who are not going to support him anyway," he says, "will just use this as an example of how he's not a persuasive president." That will come when Congress decides what to do on health care. "It's not a make-or-break moment for the president," Zelizer says. But it did temporarily shift focus from the president's signature issue. No one is predicting that the lost Olympics bid will change votes or sentiment on the health care debate. This is the attention you're going to get," he says. "He asked for it the minute he went and personally made the appeal. The loss will cause some embarrassment and give fodder to late-night comedians and Obama's opponents, Zelizer says, and the president has no one to blame but himself. "Why spend time on this, given that it opens the president to jokes and criticism?" "With Chicago rejected so early, they clearly didn't have a shot," says Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University history and public affairs professor. Hometown pressure notwithstanding, even those who don't believe the loss will inflict long-term damage to the president or his agenda say there are questions to be raised about advice he got before inserting himself so publicly into the selection process. Harstad predicted that Chicago's loss of the Olympics would be a one-day story, "less than a blip that's very soon and rightly forgotten." "Chicago would have lost in the first round if he didn't go, and then they'd say, 'Gee, why didn't you go?' " he said. "He was damned if he did, damned if he didn't," says Harstad, whose firm is based in Boulder, Colo., and who worked with the Obama campaign in 2008. The president clearly went to Copenhagen without private assurances that his trip would not be in vain - but he had little choice, argues longtime Democratic pollster and consultant Paul Harstad. "He's been juggling torches on the economy, health care, Afghanistan, Iran, and he chose to get some extra credit - and it fell flat," Bonjean says. "It's been a lost week for President Obama," says Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist who spent years on Capitol Hill as an adviser to top Senate and House Republicans. Meanwhile, his supporters were still scratching their heads over his decision to insert himself into an uncertain competition, while debate over his signature health care plan reached fever pitch back home. city in the running - fodder for a day of questioning the president's powers of persuasion. The stunning first-round ouster gave Obama's opponents - even those who say they were rooting for the only U.S. The president's high-profile lobbying for the Windy City crashed early and embarrassingly: Chicago attracted the lowest number of votes in a four-city contest eventually won by Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro won the summer games.įriday was destined to be either a "phew" or an "uh-oh" political day in Copenhagen for President Obama, who had traveled to the Danish city to pitch his adopted hometown of Chicago as the site for the 2016 summer Olympics.Īt least it didn't take long for him to find out that relief would not be the emotion of the day. Chelsea Matiash Above: Michelle and Barack Obama ride on his campaign bus in New Hampshire after a late night of campaigning in 2008.President Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrive for Chicago's presentation for its 2016 Olympic bid before the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen on Friday. Here’s a look back at some of the moments, many of them captured by the Obama’s White House photographers, that followed that date on Chicago’s Southside 27 years ago. Obama watches the president speak on a television, alone. In one frame, hundreds of spectators photograph the couple dancing during the official Inaugural Ball. Hand in hand, they face the public, poised and relaxed. Thanks to more than a decade in the public eye, thousands of photographs capture their relationship, seeming at once comfortable and restrained, joyous and subtle. 26.Īfter a three-year courtship, the couple wed in 1992. Now, their first date, a trip to see Do the Right Thing in 1989, is getting the Hollywood treatment through the film Southside With You hitting theaters on Aug. The public’s introduction to the couple came on the campaign trail in 2007, but the Obamas’ story began nearly two decades earlier when Michelle Robinson was assigned to mentor Barack Obama at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin. ![]()
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