Did Obama's Speech Blow the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid?

The International Olympic Committee just voted the city of Chicago out of the running to host the 2016 Olympics.

President Obama, depsite his words to the contrary just two weeks ago, flew over to Copenhagen to make a final pitch for his city.

Could it be that Obama's speech was the spoiler? Or, was Chi-town never really in the running?

In his speech, which ran over 1,100 words, Obama said "I" more than 20 times. However, when it came to convinving the IOC that Chicago could handle the massive impact of the games, he could only muster two sentences that are short on convincing rhetoric:

It's a city that works -- from its first World's Fair more than a century ago to the World Cup we hosted in the nineties, we know how to put on big events. And scores of visitors and spectators will tell you that we do it well.

Obama's evidence that the Chicago area can create an appropriate environment for the Olympics is how well the city ran the World's Fair in 1893 and the World's Cup in 1994?

Not one word on the city's ability to build the infrastructure needed for the games. Not one word on the abiltiy to pay for the games. Not one word that would convince anybody in his right mind that Chicago could hold the 2016 Olympics.

Instead, Obama spun stories of his childhood and sang about the diversity of his hometown.

Chicago is a place where we strive to celebrate what makes us different just as we celebrate what we have in common. It's a place where our unity is on colorful display at so many festivals and parades, and especially sporting events, where perfect strangers become fast friends just because they're wearing the same jersey.

What?

So I've come here today to urge you to choose Chicago for the same reason I chose Chicago nearly 25 years ago -- the reason I fell in love with the city I still call home...

You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot. I was born in Hawaii. I lived in Indonesia for a time. I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group. And then I came to Chicago.

Ahhh. That is a nice story, but no reason to site an event that hosts thousands of athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators from around the world.

Chicago is a city where the practical and the inspirational exist in harmony; where visionaries who made no small plans rebuilt after a great fire and taught the world to reach new heights.

That Great Chicago Fire was in 1871. Why would this convince the IOC that the city can make "no small plans" nearly 150 years after?

But, this is Barack Obama; as such, he couldn't get by without a reference to inherited problems.

...the United States of America has a responsibility...to forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.

And we all know who broke down those partnerships, don't we?

In the end, it was just another Obama speech; full of flowers and flourish, but completely absent any substance. And in the end, Obama loses again.

Thank goodness.