Of Vital National Interest

Good grief, is this what a president does? Concern himself at a strictly regional level with hands-on efforts to convince the International Olympic Committee that his old city hang-out of Chicago is deserving of hosting the 2016 Olympics? A president seen as the primary figure representing the state of the free world, with any number of truly difficult decisions to make, matters to attend to, political fires to put out, is prepared to travel to Copenhagen to make the case for the Windy City?

President Obama, along with his wife, have committed themselves to speaking in Denmark at the final presentation to the IOC, using their vast diplomatic and popular appeal to lend credence to the city as the choice site for the 2016 Olympics. Chicago a world-class destination as opposed to Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo? Really? Gritty, politically corrupt, Tammany-hall Chicago trumps the historical, exotic metropolises of Spain, Brazil, or Japan? Uh, don't think so. In any event, why is this a priority for a time-beleaguered president of the U.S.?

This man, still a freshman on the world stage, come to think of it - and who is facing a true backlash in his own country around his proposed health care changes, along with a foreign-war-disenchanted public eager to withdraw the country's troops from the deadly mountainous muck-and-mire of Afghanistan, coping with the country's allies in attempting to impose rigidly-purposeful sanctions against Iran's obvious threat to the world - oops, almost forgot the Israel-Palestine problem - is taking a break to promote the U.S. as the obvious IOC choice.

Conventionally, traditionally, previously, no U.S. president has joined that populist fray. Other countries may have become involved at the federal level, sending their executive officers to plead the case for consideration of their world-class sites, but it is this particular wholly-invested, hard-working, totally dedicated president, assailed on every side by world-class problems of immense proportions who has decided to throw his weight behind his adopted city.

And not only Barack Obama, but other high-ranking individuals in his administration have been dedicating their 'free time' to vigorously advancing the Chicago-site nomination. Even while at the United Nations General Assembly opening and the Group of 20 Economic Summit, both Obamas made their pitch to their international counterparts. Along with making very nice to IOC members. Who knew, who might have imagined that the hosting of an international sports event ranked right up there with:

• Preventing a fundamentalist theocracy ruled by their committed militaristic Revolutionary Guard - determined to spread their iron-fisted ideology and ascendancy on the rest of the world, abetted by the persuasion of nuclear warheads on far-ranging missiles - from having their way;
• Persuading the American public that it has an obligation to itself as a leading liberal-democratic country, one proud of its heritage of equality for all its citizens, that none of its less-advantaged should fear end-stage debilitation, both physical and economic for want of a national health program;
• Enticing two autonomous, antagonistic entities, one a recognized and legal State, the other a nascent state-in-the-making, to relax hostilities for the greater purpose of normalcy in nation-to-nation relations to advance both their futures;
• Battling a wide-ranging and covertly deadly Islamist terror web threatening to overturn all hopes of final and reasonable conciliation between the world of Islam and that of the West;
• Restoring and advancing peaceful relations between itself and the once-superpower Russia;
• Bringing the United States, and with it much of the rest of the world back into a state of superior and nicely balanced economic/financial health;
• Coping with the problem of facing a future of financial indebtedness, and balancing that with its relationship with the emerging industrial giant that China has represented;
• Developing, along with its global partners, a reasonable response to the very real challenge of environmental change.
  

Might this diversion of a temporary nature be the solution to all work and no play?