Losing the Olympics Bid Is Good for Obama
Such was the headline of an article posted at Newsweek's "The Gaggle" blog Friday.
The author, Katie Connolly, is a political correspondent for Newsweek, and she actually elaborated on this premise (h/t Hot Air):
This is pretty embarrassing for the White House. (Especially letting Obama having to fail in front of his wife—ouch!) But ultimately, it’s a good thing for him. As I wrote on Monday, the Olympics are notorious for running massively over budget. The organizing committees are always rife with infighting and power games as all manner of colorful cronies badger members to get their paws on some of those coveted Olympics dollars. Public support for the Olympics in Chicago itself was already lukewarm. Residents would have been facing seven years of disruptive construction and roadwork as their city raced to prepare itself. It’s a recipe for serious disgruntlement.
Obama would have been inextricably tied to all of this—the budget overruns, the construction hiccups, the predictable corruption. By going to Copenhagen, he became the public face of the effort. Already, some of his closest supporters and friends were on the bid committee: his campaign’s national finance chair Penny Pritzker and a co-chair of his inaugural committee, Patrick Ryan, both had key roles. Senior adviser David Axelrod’s communications firm, AKPD Media, was one of the contractors for the committee, and Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett had been involved in supporting the bid. When problems would start to arise in the planning of this mammoth event—and they invariably would have—Obama would be implicated, regardless of his actual involvement.
Wow! Now THAT's some SERIOUS spin!
If Katie keeps this up, she could be the next media member recruited to work for the Administration...or is that the point?
