Chicago Looses Olympics: What Went Wrong?

Was this really so important? The fact that the US has hosted lots of Olympics and other entire continents haven't hosted any would have bben a powerful factor if I had had vote. At the end of the day, I think that the Olympic Officials made the right choice. South America ought to get their just due.

Now as to what went wrong: one idea is that it wasn't Obama's fault. Chicago had such a corrupt reputation, that this caused people to be against this. I don't buy this. Rio has big problems, too.

No, I think that the significance of this news story is that Obama did screw up. This is not to diss him (okay, a little.) Rather, it demonstrates some important attributes to good salesmanship. This is a good case study in basic principles of sales. This article says that 3 basic principles were violated in O's presentation:
1) Believe in the product
2) Stress benefits to buyer, not to the seller
3) Talk about the customer, not the sales force

Given the drive to bring the Olympics to a new area of the world, it is doubtful that anything the Obamas could have said would have changed anything, but all the talk about what sacrifices they were making to be there was the wrong approach.