Jack Squat.
This wasn't his bid for the Olympics. It was Chicago's and also in a way the whole country's pitch to let us have the games for another round. And out come the headlines that Obama is human. Where'd that come from. If he wasn't human, he wouldn't need secret service people to investigate nutty people inspired by talk show hosts to do harm to public officials.
This is all about ego, but it's not what we think. President Obama has an overinflated ego, that's for sure; but the fault lies not with him, but everybody else in this country. Whether conservative or liberal or none of the above, people give him the ego because they are all interested in watching him. What is an ego besides a sense of self-importance. And the media and us have given it to him. He can't do anything without creating a media circus. It's not his fault that he can't get a burger or meet a dying colleague without a hundred cameras in tow. The nation is obsessed with him, and whether he likes it or not, he knows that people listen (selectively in some cases) when he speaks.
The hilarious part of it is that Obama gets more conservative press than liberal. The conservative media doesn't just report that he's getting a burger, they focus on the mundane details like if he asks for dijon mustard. Then that ties into some circumspect logic that he hates America. Matt Drudge pumps up Obama's ego by constantly obsessing about him and how every unfortunate turn of events is somehow his fault. Lou Dobbs does it by declaring Chicago's loss as "Obama's defeat." Town hall screamers do it by declaring health care reform "Obamacare," when really, we've been talking about similar and more liberal reform for four decades.
The irony is that the liberal part of America just wants things done. They aren't obsessing that Obama is doing it. Of course, the more left leaning of us cheered that Obama stood up and told us we need health care reform. That's because we want him to put in an effort for causes we find just. Of course we want to hear what he has to say on a number of issues, we are most likely to agree--though in many cases we do not.
It's the people who don't like him that prop up his ego, so that they can criticize him for it. If he gives a speech, and the media turns to report it, it's the media who is helping him. If every story on Lou Dobbs mentions President Obama, that's him trying to tie Obama into everything under the sun. Obama has never declared interest in controlling everything. That was Bush when he famously said, "it would be easier if this were a dictatorship." Somehow Obama is an oppressive leader by suggesting things he'd like to see in legislation, then letting congress draft the legislation (they are doing such a shoddy job, I'd like him to step in again, but I'm sure he would just like a bill that he can sign). Bush was the one who force-fed legislation to the rubber stamp Republican congress.
I have no doubt that President Obama gave the Olympics his best shot because he thought it was in the interest of the nation to host them. I was never under the illusion, and I'm sure he wasn't either, that his word would guarantee the Games for Chicago. People who don't like him make him out to be an arrogant dictator so that they can hate him further; and they can also laugh when things don't go his way, under this strange impression that he had until then gotten everything he's wanted. If that were the case, we would already be reaping the benefits of an organized, humanitarian, option rich, and fairly priced health care system.
