You can watch her speech:
Or read it:
I was born and raised on Chicago's South Side, not far from where the Games would open and close. Ours was a neighborhood of working families, families with modest homes and strong values.
Sports were what brought our community together. They strengthened our ties to one another. Growing up, when I played games with the kids in my neighborhood, we picked sides based not on who you were, but what you could bring to the game. Sports taught me self-confidence, teamwork and how to compete as an equal. Sports were a gift I shared with my dad, especially the Olympic Games.
Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad's lap cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis and others for their brilliant perfection. Like so many young people, I was inspired. I found myself dreaming that maybe just maybe, if I worked hard enough, I too could achieve something great. But I never dreamed that the Olympic flame might someday light up lives in my neighborhood.
But today I can dream, and I am dreaming of an Olympic and Paralympic Games in Chicago that will light up lives and neighborhoods all across America and all across the world, that will expose all our neighborhoods to new sports and new role models, that will show every child that regardless of wealth or gender or race or physical ability, there is a sport and a place for them too.
That's why I'm here today. I'm asking you to choose Chicago, I'm asking you to choose America. I'm not asking just as the First Lady of the United States, who is eager to welcome the world to our shores -- and not just as a Chicagoan, who is proud and excited to show the world what my city can do, not just as a mother raising two beautiful young women to embrace athleticism and embrace their full potential, I'm also asking as a daughter. See, my dad would have been so proud to witness these Games in Chicago. I know they would have meant something much more to him too.
You see, in dad's early 30s, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As he got sicker, it became harder for him to walk let alone play his favorite sports. But my dad was determined that sports continue to be a vital lifeline, not just to the rest of the world, but to me and my brother. And even as we watched my dad struggle to hold himself up on crutches, he never stopped playing with us, and he refused to let us take our abilites for granted. He believed that his little girl should be taught no less than his son. So he taught me how to throw a ball and a mean right hook better than any boy in my neighborhood.
More importantly, my dad taught us the fundamental rules of the game, rules that continue to guide our lives today -- to engage with honor, with dignity and fair play. My dad was my hero, and when I think of what these Games can mean to people all over the world, I think about people like my dad, people who face seemingly insurmountable challenges but never let go. They work a little harder, but they never give up.
Now my dad didn't live to see the day that the Paralympic Games became the force that they are today, but if he had lived to see this day, if he could have seen the Paralympic Games share a global stage with the Olympic Games, if he could have witnessed athletes who can excel and prove that nothing is more powerful than the human spirit, I know it would have restored in him the same spirit of unbridled possibilities as he instilled in me.
Chicago's bid for the Olympic and paralympic movement is about so much more than what we can offer the games, it's about what games can offer all of us, it's about inspiring this generation and building lasting legacy for the next.
It's about our responsibility as Americans, not just to put on great games, but to use these games as a vehicle to bring us together, to usher in a new era of international engagement, to give us hope and to change lives all over the world. And II brought somebody with me today who knows a little something about change, my husband, the president of the United States, Barack Obama.
While there are things I like about that speech and there are places I can envision where it would have been both appropriate and moving to deliver it- that seems to me to be a strangely self-centered kind of speech to give to the IOC on why Chicago deserves to host the Olympics. Not to mention, as others have, the fact that it's a bit strange to picture pretty grown up Michelle sitting on her ailing daddy's lap while watching Carl Lewis win the Olympics (she'd have somewhere between 17 and 20 years old).
I am kind of painfully embarrassed for Michelle, and wonder if there isn't anybody in the White House who can advise her better than her friend Valerie Jarret can.
It's not losing the Olympics that bothers me. I worry that the way the White House went about this is indicative of some other problems with this White House, and those problems will not serve this country well.
From Drew at Ace of Spades:
I find this very disturbing, and I hope that this isn't indicative of the level of preparation that goes into the President's talks with, say Iran. But I very much fear it is.Based on the postmortems starting to appear on Obama's No So Excellent Adventure, not much. (NY Times link)
A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was....
So they didn't do any independent research on the stat of play for the bid? Huh, another case where Obama is willing to meet without and preconditions or preparations. See how well that works out?
[...]
The IOC and Iowa caucus vote is a dubious comparison but weren't we told that the proof of Obama's executive experience was his success in running a political campaign? Turns out that's actually not a skill set that transferable to every situation after all.
The New York Times writes:
After his formal presentation to the committee, Mr. Obama shook hands as he left the room, then joined members in a brief mixer, pigeonholing them one on one for the Chicago bid, a little elbow bending familiar to politics the world over.
And the prospect of winning was too irresistible. After all, Mr. Obama has already envisioned the day when he could welcome the world to his hometown, never mind that small matter of reelection. “In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president,” he told a rally in Chicago in June 2008. “So I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park ... as president of the United States and announcing to the world: Let the Games begin!”
That bit in red? According to Weasel Zippers, since word came that the Obama's bid for Chicago to host the Olympics went down in ignominy, the NYT actually sent those words right down the memory hole, deeming them double plus ungood. If WZ is correct, those aren't the only words they scrubbed without acknowledging the article had been altered significantly, either. Now, a late commenter to that thread says he thinks there's been some confusion, that there were two different articles at the NYT, one before and one after the Olympics pitch, that the second quoted extensively from the first but wasn't a replacement, just an entirely different article.
I don't know. I do know I find it amazing that before he'd been elected the first time, the President was giving speeches about what he was going to be doing at the end of his second term, and that involved the further assumption that he'd naturally and easily sweet-talk the IOC. He believes he has a gift. I find that Reid story about Obama's serious claim that of course he gave a great speech and moved people, because he has a gift more than a little unsettling.
Mike Potemra thinks all this is not cause for concern, it's actually proof that the President is very secure and self-confident and that's a good thing. I hope he's right. But I can't help but feel that there is a level of self-confidence that goes beyond reason, and I suspect the President and his circle are way past that point. There doesn't seem to be anybody around him willing to say things that might be unpleasant. There doesn't seem to be anybody around them with any influence on them who isn't equally unrealistic about who they are and what they are doing.
I mean, Valerie Jarret insisting that Michelle's speech wouldn't leave a dry eye in the room? That was unkindly setting her up for failure, but I don't think Jarret herself understood how very mediocre that speech was for its purpose. With a few modifications it would have been a great speech for the Special Olympics, for a group of athletes, for a group of kids (yes, for a school), to a Chicago group or for the Paralympic athletes. It just was an embarrassing speech to give to the IOC when trying to convince them to send the Olympics to Chicago.
So why, again, didn't the Obamas realize this? It's sort of like the boxed DVD set to the vision impaired Gorden Brown (and in a format that doesn't work in England). There's supposed to be somebody whose job it is to tell the Whitehouse these things. Is this person not doing his job, is the Whitehouse not listening, or have the President and the First Lady staffed all the positions near them with sycophants and cheerleaders? These are not mistakes that would have been made by Nixon, Carter, Clinton, or either of the Bush Presidencies.
Even the most rabid of Obama detractors assumed that the Obamas flying to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics meant that it must actually already be in the bag. Nobody imagined that they would do this without some pretty clear reasons to believe they would be succesful. Yet, so far were they from being successful that Chicago was eliminated immediately and resoundingly- in the very first round. It wasn't even close.
Ed Morrisey writes:
One of Jim Geraghty's readers writes him:Let’s see. The White House jumped in front of a situation without understanding it, relying on the word of political cronies to shape their comprehension without checking for themselves. Only after they failed did they ask themselves about the political environment in which they made their proposal. Are we talking about ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, or the Olympics? It’s hard to tell.[...]
In short, this is a microcosm of the entire administration. They entered into a situation about which they knew nothing and put the prestige of the presidency on the line without bothering to listen past themselves and the Daley Machine in Chicago. It only occurred to them that they didn’t know the first thing about the situation until after having wasted their time and distracting themselves from much more pressing — and presidential — matters of war and the economy.
There's actually something worrisome about this whole Chicago fiasco, and it goes back to President Obama's inexperience. Diplomacy 101 tells us that your head of state only shows up on the high-profile stage when a deal is complete. The lesson that most politicians learn well before they gain positions of power is that diplomacy is done by diplomats, professionals who work through all the negotiations and the hardball tactics and the carrot/stick combinations. The principals in the matter gather to discuss high-level topics and to smile for the cameras as the agreement is being signed. Heads of state do not conduct diplomacy, they ratify it, and surprises are entirely unwelcome at those summits and signing events (hence Reagan's anger in Iceland.)
Why were you and Ramesh surprised? Because you thought that President Obama at least knew this very basic lesson. Today's announcement suggests that he does not, and it just got advertised big-time to countries who already were pretty sure we had a rookie at the helm who didn't know how to use international power. President Obama just got upstaged by an organization against whom no retaliation is acceptable, and he wants to meet with the Iranians next month? We are in deep, deep trouble.
And that's what I am afraid of. Pin It
