I Plead the Third
I consider winning the Olympics for one's town to be roughly equivalent to army choosing to quarter itself in my house. So I am pleased that this particular financial locust will go someplace else to pig out. I am happy to watch it occur in some exotic locale to which I do not pay taxes.
I am reluctant to pile on Obama, though he certainly would have claimed credit had Chicago won. I will say that the US managed to win an Olympic bid during even the Carter administration, though because the Montreal Olympics were such a financial disaster, LA really didn't have any competition when it was bidding in 1978. One other city expressed interest that year - Tehran. What a disaster that would have been.
Please don't tell me the LA Olympics "made money." The city of LA and state of California subsidized the games in all kinds of ways that never hit the income statement of the organizing committee, starting with police and congestion costs. Only in comparison to the financial disaster that was Montreal could the LA Olympics be called a financial success.
