It was the “biggest shock in IOC history.”

At home and abroad, from D.C. to Copenhagen, there were dismay and genuine surprise as Chicago’s bid to capture the 2016 Summer Olympic Games came to an abrupt and startling halt. The city, considered by many the favorite going into Friday’s final round of voting, was met not just with disappointment but outright embarrassment.

Embarrassment, that is, for President Barack Obama, who, along with his wife Michelle and T.V. mogul/megastar Oprah Winfrey, failed to bring home the gold for the United States despite an inspirational, last-ditch speech given before the International Olympic Committee. The appearance — cheered by the president’s supporters and advisors but lambasted by his critics at home — was widely expected (given the president’s international popularity) to push Chicago’s bid over the top and into the winner’s envelope.

Let’s just say that things didn’t quite go as planned for Team Obama. “The ego has landed,” Matt Drudge so colorfully (and sensationally) characterized it.

Was Obama’s trip to Europe, as his detractors on the right are claiming, a serious blunder? If not as a blunder, how, then can the president’s defeat at the hands of the IOC accurately be described? What impact, exactly, does the rejection of Chicago’s bid have on the American political conversation going forward?

What it means:

• Obama’s credibility will take a hit…but only in the short term.
  The giddy glee expressed by some Republicans and conservative leaders (Rush Limbaugh called the Chicago rebuff a “bitch-slap upside the head“), while not without warrant, has little merit in the big picture. Unless, however, Obama’s political opponents are able to seize on the Olympics saga and create and/or foment a larger narrative on the president about his general ineffectiveness in all matters foreign and domestic. The early failures of the Obama administration to take an affirmative lead on health care reform coupled with the ineptitude of a Democratic supermajority in Congress to even coalesce around a definitive bill have already begun to wear at the president’s approval numbers.
• Not getting the Olympics might actually be a blessing in disguise for the president.
  Conservatives had already begun to howl and raise hell over the shady land deals and network connections that linked Obama with the corrupt Chicago establishment eager to profit off of an Olympics in their hometown. You can bet that a good many hours of Obama-Rezko-Daley-Ayers stories and blog postings were spared with the loss of the Chicago bid. Furthermore, with an Olympics almost certain to have run over-budget with a myriad of logistical and developmental issues intrinsic to any such big-city overhaul would have cemented Obama’s association (fairly or not) with tax-raising, budget-blowing, government inefficiency. He’s doing quite a good enough job of creating that perception himself without having an Olympic millstone to tie around his neck.
• Obama doesn’t have as much international pull as previously thought.
  It didn’t help Obama’s “hope of the world” on-going campaign meme that earlier this week at the G-20 convention, he was badmouthed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy as “naive and grossly egotistical.” Now, to have made a special appearance at the final IOC presentation to such fanfare from the White House and world media outlets, and yet return home empty-handed can’t do too many wonders to his global stature. If this stage were purely American, circa, say…a few weeks ago, we might be led by Jimmy Carter and similarly-minded race-baiters to question whether or not there was a racial tinge to the IOC vote. But, no, the stage is worldwide — which calls into question the president’s leadership and ability to influence world events. Then again, this is the Olympics we’re talking about, and not Iran’s nuclear program, so perhaps this is all being blown out of proportion. But seeing as though Iran is a tiny country that doesn’t pose a serious threat to the U.S. anyway, it’s hard to tell for sure what is and isn’t getting blown (or deflated) out of proportion when it comes to analyzing world events.

What it doesn’t mean:

• The president’s loss is the Republicans’ gain.
  Not so fast on this one. While the Olympic snafu will have admittedly unpleasant temporary consequences for Obama, that’s not exactly a good reason for Republicans to get in such a twitter about it. Lest the right forget: there’s still a war raging in the Senate on health care legislation and the public option. Best to focus opposition where it counts most, rather than scoring cheap political points on a relatively trivial matter (the extent of its true triviality, however, remains to be seen).
• Obama’s team of advisors will stop using the president’s presence as the end-all, Staples easy button solution for important political issues and affairs.
  If only. Let it not be forgotten that this is the same group of advisors (heralded as the most intelligent and competent White House staff in history) that decided to send the president to Copenhagen in the first place. Granted, the Olympic dilemma presented Obama with a lose-lose situation. If he didn’t go, and Chicago lost, he would have taken the blame for not having used his “star power” to tip the committee in the U.S.’s favor. But, if the president took the trip, as he indeed did, he risked public humiliation by involving himself so closely in the delicate and uncertain chaos that is the Olympics’ host selection process. It’s the same mistake Team Obama made during the health care debate, thinking that the president could ride in at the last minute like a knight on a white horse, save the day, and get all the credit. Tough luck, folks, but it’s not that easy. Obama is learning the hard way here that goodwill and rock star presence only go so far in achieving actual, desirable results. And then there’s the problem, as Limbaugh made clear on his show today, that, “Our president, Barack Hussein Obama, has been running around the world for nine months telling everybody how much our country sucks…. Why would anybody award the Olympics to such a crappy place?” But that’s another issue altogether…
• The Chicago snub was yet another thinly veiled thumbs down to the U.S. from the always prevalent anti-American contingent within the world community.
  Probably not. Remember, now, that the U.S. has hosted a total of eight Olympic Games, which puts it almost two times as much ahead of France, its next closest competitor, who has five Games to its name. The historic nature of Rio de Janeiro’s bid deserves some credit. No South American country has ever hosted a Games, and it’s high time that the continent was honored with an event of Olympic calendar to recognize its achievements in modernization and its partnership in the contemporary world order. Brazil, of all the Latin American countries, is most primed for such a prize, as it ranks among the globe’s top ten economies. Having a legendary sporting history (Pelé was given top billing during Brazil’s presentation before the IOC) sure doesn’t hurt, either.