Obama is going to Copenhagen to personally press Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. He and Michelle will be making presentations. Difficult for the selection committee to resist, I would have thought.
As I've written before, the White House is putting an unprecedented effort behind this bid. This is partly for obvious reasons: it's Obama's home town. Valerie Jarret is in charge of the political offensive. But it's also because having the Olympics there would form the perfect narrative closure to what they hope will be eight years of Obama's presidency - and even more importantly, it will serve as a useful rocket-booster for the next Democratic presidential candidate, as he or she heads into the last stretch of the campaign.
(The HuffPo report linked to above says the president will be meeting with "Queen Elizabeth" whilst he's there. Huh?)
UPDATE THOUGHT: one thing this ought to remind us of is that although he's quite a cautious politician, Obama is willing to gamble when he thinks the time is right. He's a good poker player.
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