I didn’t realize that ACORN, the Teamsters, and/or the Chicago Daley Machine had the ability to rig International Olympic Committee elections, but National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru apparently thinks they do:
Does anyone seriously believe that the president would take a quick trip to Copenhagen with the possibility of coming back empty-handed? If the president is going, it’s because he knows that Chicago has already won. He’s going.
In all seriousness, I had the same thought as Ponnuru. I just wonder how Obama could actually “know” such a thing. Maybe he had a flash forward? Or Nancy Reagan told him?
(Hat tip: Joe Mama.)
…or maybe he just got a courteous heads up from the IOC 🙂
In theory, there’s no way the IOC could know, because the election hasn’t taken place yet. And, given the multiple “rounds” of voting, and the likelihood that nobody will have a majority until the third or fourth ballot, it’s not all that easy to predict the outcome. Whom will the fourth-place finisher’s supporters vote for, once their favorite candidate is out? What about the third-place finisher? It’s a bit like the Iowa Caucuses that way. 🙂 Unless Chicago has an outright majority from the start, which would fly in the face of the CW that this will be a “close race,” I don’t see how anyone could “know” with certainty how the vote will come out. Unless the fix is in. 🙂
Got it (I’m not familiar with the IOC voting process).
The “fix” could be somewhat similar to the process that elected Ratzinger Pope in 2005. In that papal election, you had great candidates from both South America and Africa vying to become the first non-European pope. Each continent had a strong constituency but possibly not enough support to win the papacy. Needing the advocacy of the traditional European church to have one of their guys eventually ascend to the papacy, neither the Africans nor the South Americans dared offend the sizable Ratzinger contingent. Due to Ratzinger’s advanced age, it looked like he wouldn’t be in the papacy long (and lacked an obvious European follow-up Ratzinger of his own).
Rio de Janiero’s bid is similar in this important respect to the South American papal bid in 2005: credible, but not yet their time. Given three plausible, equally viable “First World” cities, Rio might throw all their support behind the only other Western Hemisphere candidate, as the US could return the favor by being a natural First World patron of a Rio bid in 2020 or 2024.
Once Rio is in Chicago’s camp, it makes Chicago the prohibitive favorite, assuming Madrid and Tokyo don’t have a side deal of their own.
So do all the other word leaders that are going to lobby for their country also know that they’ve won?
The interesting thing about the “up-and-comer Rio supporting Chicago in return for first world patronage” scenario is the immense bummer such an outcome would be for Madrid.
I mean, if you told the Madrid folks that the 2016 Olympics location would be decided by a South American city looking to trade on a natural first-world sponsorship of their later Olympic ambitions, Madrid might have felt pretty good about their chances…as long as it isn’t a Brazilian city…just…not…Brazilian…(damn Portuguese).
So do all the other word leaders that are going to lobby for their country also know that they’ve won?
Good point…as far as it goes. The only other cities in the running for 2016 are Madrid, Rio and Tokyo, so you’re only potentially talking about three other world leaders. The Spanish king is reportedly coming to support Madrid, not Prime Minister Zapatero. That leaves President da Silva and Prime Minister Hatoyama. These are admittedly two political leaders of their respective countries, but they’re certainly not POTUS, and they likely don’t have as much to lose by going back to their homeland empty-handed (especially if they lost out to OBAMA!…I mean, what chance did they really have?)
But wouldn’t it be understandable for Obama to lose out to Obama! as well? 😛
Well, Emperor Akihito could show up for the Japanese contingent, that would make a great joke actually:
A king, and emperor and Obama walk into a bar…
AN emperor, not AND