While the world watches, Obama pays back a political debt
Image by NatalieHG via Flickr
President Barack Obama is going to Copenhagen to shill for Chicago. In spite of all the “will he or won’t he” speculation in the local media, I never doubted it for a minute. Neither it seems, did the “Chicago Tribune’s” John Kass:
The president of the United States shouldn’t have to fly halfway around the world to humble himself before a posse of international sports influence peddlers and beg for a track meet.
But that’s exactly what he is doing.
Mayor Richard Daley wants to host the 2016 games more than anything. He needs Obama to get them, and Obama surely owes him a favor or two. No one rises from the swamp of Illinois politics without the assistance of the guy in charge, no matter what Chicago 2016 president Patrick Ryan says.
“President Obama is coming here out of respect for the athletes and the bid,” Ryan said.
Oh, really?
Ryan may be many things, but dumb isn’t one of them. He’s a realist, worth a gazillion dollars. His former archrival, Near North Insurance boss Mickey Segal, is a broken man, sitting in federal prison, probably going stir-crazy. Someday, Ryan will end up owning the Chicago Bears. Yet he talks in terms of sport and competition.
If you think Chicago’s Olympic push is about sports, you’re mistaken. Sports has nothing to do with this. It’s like in the old movie, with Michael Corleone telling truths to his future wife, saying, “Now who’s being naive, Kay?”
Unless of course you think lobbying for fat contracts is a sport.
If Chicago gets the games, the contracts and the grease and immense leverage to reshape a city will be used as originally intended. To rebuild the boss, to give a mayor facing deficits and taxpayer revolts and headaches a much-needed shoring up of his political infrastructure.
And Daley needs Obama to seal the deal.
It is about paying political debts. It is about waltzing with the one that brought him to the dance, not so much Michelle, as dancing with the little guy with the short shanks on the 5th floor of City Hall.
So he will fly halfway around the world when he doesn’t have the time, with so many other items on his agenda, because he has to.
He’s Chicago’s president. And he got the call from the boss.
If Obama gets 2016 Games, Daley will be king, not mayor — chicagotribune.com.
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Laura, you’re getting yourself in a lather. And this is getting silly.
If Daley is telling Obama what to do, isn’t Daley already the king?
Is there no possible other reason that Obama would support a Chicago Olympics?
And what’s the evidence for these allegations? “Obama surely owes him a favor or two.”
Surely.
“No one rises from the swamp of Illinois politics without the assistance of the guy in charge.”
When one guy is the mayor and one guy is the president, which guy is in charge?
When media coverage is so predictable and agendized, so saturated with hatred and cynicism that fairness and sensibility have gone out the window, the media has found its own corruption.
And that may be why, at the end of the day, Chicagoans trust their mayor more than they trust their media.
Jeff,
In a lather? Sure, this is an issue I care about. There’s a multi-billion dollar price tag on this thing and it’s simply being supported by lies. I live here and don’t have the money to support the folly. Neither do most people I know; people who are upset and scared about the repercussions.
Just listen to people around you. At the restaurant where I had lunch yesterday, it was as though people could talk of little else.
The title of King comes from John Kass, not me.
But he’s been among the minority in the media criticizing the Olympic bid. For the most part it’s been cheerleading with both the Tribune and Sun Times’ editorial boards endorsing the plan. Even Crain’s thinks it would be “fun” to host the Olympics.
It’s hard to say who residents trust less, their leaders or their media. Both have failed pretty miserably at their jobs. The investigative work looking into the financials of the bid is being done in the final weeks leading up to the selection. Not last year when it would have made a difference.
I don’t know what Chicago you’re living in but to say the citizens trust the mayor right now is silly. His approval rating was recently below that of George Bush at the end of his term, 35 percent according to a recently published poll. You may be among those, but 65 percent of Chicagoans beg to differ.
Obama may be president now, but no one gets there alone.
I gotta agree with Jeff on this, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And frankly the notion of President Obama kowtowing to Daley is just absurd. I can see by the amount of bandwidth you’ve used on this topic it’s something you feel very strongly about but that doesn’t exempt you from good journalist practices, before you go accusing people of nefarious behavior you should have some evidence to back up other than your contempt for the parties involved.
Do you find political payback unusual or evil or as American as apple pie?
I think you and I probably don’t go to the same restaurants, because I haven’t heard any fear from the people, but I have heard a lot of fear mongering in the media. Not just the Tribune and Sun-Times, but establishment, dominant-culture, North Side-inflected media. I wonder if the fear you’re hearing from the people might be related to the fear mongering in the media?
It’s one thing to root out corruption in the Olympic Committee. That’s a good thing to do. It’s another thing to discolor everything, including the Olympics and the president, because of an irrational dislike for Richard M. Daley.
Which seems to derives largely from being frustrated while trying to park a car.
I’m not saying, as an absolute, that people trust Daley right now. Just that they trust him more than their media. With good reason.
The downside for Obama: Loss of a couple hours’ work time, the possibility of being upstaged in the TV coverage by the combined power of his wife and Oprah.
The upside: looking like a catalyst for development in the city, the chance to do whatever it is that the heads of countries do at
Opening Ceremonies, enthusiastic support from the Mayor’s political machine in 2012.
If the city gets the games, a lot of cronies will get rich flipping property. That’s the way the world works. I hope that we’ll be able to get some federal money to improve the roads, the El, Metra and other vitals of the area, but I’m not happy those couldn’t be taken care of without an Olympics.
Actually James, there’s some pretty solid research that shows the infrastructure improvements people think will come along with the games, would happen regardless. And another boat load of research that tells of how financially devastating to cities the Olympics really are, with buildings sitting empty and becoming a burden on the surrounding community.
No one makes money on the games. Except the ones who get the contracts. When all is said and done, those of us left pick up the tab, organize the neighborhood watch to patrol the now empty property and wonder why no one paid enough attention to the details to stop this before it happened.
As for my dislike of Daley. It’s hardly irrational, but rooted in nearly two decades of life under his rule and 10 years of solid community activism, attending countless city council meetings and actively campaigning for improvements to a rather derelict community.
I’ve been witness to back room deals, political maneuvering, retribution to those who oppose power and a bunch of other stuff so nasty a friend who worked in the Mayor’s office up and moved back to Washington, D.C., where things were “more honest.”
I get that people have invested a lot of hope and faith in Barack Obama, but his opportunity to accomplish any good nationally is because he was first elected locally. When politicians endorse each other, campaign for each other and raise money for each other, they accrue favors. That’s politics and that’s what Daley and Obama have done for one another. To think otherwise is plain naive.
You’re in fine company with this one Laura:
On Hannity, Malkin advances bizarre conspiracy theory that Obama’s Olympics push is “political payback”
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909300048
In response to another comment. See in context »Sorry, Laura. I didn’t mean *your* irrational dislike for Daley specifically. I was referring to the anti-Olympics genre. Lou Carlozo, for example, is also virulently opposed to the Olympics because he can’t park his car in Wrigleyville.
And certainly politicians do favors for each other. I don’t think any of us disputed that. That’s how the system works *openly* too. But to say that’s Obama’s only reason to suport the Olympics, to reduce all of his likely motivations to nothing but political patronage is spurious and cynical.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] the national political scene. But with the Olympics bid becoming so prominent, it seemed clear that someone in Chicago had called in a favor (see Laura Heller earlier this week) and had pulled the President back into the [...]
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