Application to host the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was made in 2007 during the Bush Administration.

[Towlie]

http://www.chicago2016.org/our-plan.aspx

On April 14, 2007, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) selected Chicago as the U.S. Bid City for the 2016 Games.

Does anyone recall hearing of any protest from Republicans at that time?

[LibDemAlways]

1. Of course not, and this has nothing to do with the Olympics anyway. It's

just another excuse for the wingnuts to bash Obama. If Chicago had won they'd be bitching about the cost of the games.

If the Chimp was in office, had gone to Copenhagen to pitch this and lost, they'd be screeching that the Olympic committee was corrupt.

Partisan politics drives every move those idiots make.

[Igel]

2. No. Your point?

Bush also congratulated Chicago as the choice and said he hoped they succeeded. That's the standard way of doing things, as far as I know. Carter supported Atlanta's bid, but Carter wasn't in the Oval Office at the time.

Your question misses the point. There's a wide range of attitudes.

Their position: Obama took a city-level issue--albeit an issue affecting his home city, that of his wife, and that of many of his advisors--and raised it to a national-level issue, putting the authority of the US chief exective officer behind a parochial issue. Moreover, they took a city-issue and made it personal--they didn't talk about (just?) others, they talked about themselves, and thereby implied that the office of the president is personally his, or at least usable for his Chicagoan clan. Many considered it just more "All Obama, all the time", and go around saying in all false modesty about how he thinks he has "a gift"--his presence, his participation, will yield victory because, well, he's special.

How they react to Chicago's losing depends on what part of that they think is most important. Mostly their degree of joy reflects their degree of outrage that Obama "inserted" himself into the process. In some cases, a person might be happy at the perceived rejection; most of the repubs I know who cared about this--a minority, to be sure--weren't happy, just satisfied or they believe that this was the best outcome.

One can make the point that other countries' presidents and leaders were involved. Squid or Cobbler, for example. But the counterresponse would be, "So what? We're not other countries."

[WinkyDink]

4. The Olympic Games are merely "a city-level issue" to you? Even the '84 "USA! USA!" chants?

[mopinko]

3. what happened when new york lost?

don't recall any glee, but maybe i wasn't paying attention.