It’s official: President Obama will, indeed, appear in Copenhagen later this week on behalf of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, a turn that significantly enhances the chances the Summer Games will make a return to the United States and that makes for extraordinary political theater.

Expect the president to leave Washington late Thursday, arriving very, very early Friday into Copenhagen. Just a few hours later, he and First Lady Michelle Obama will together take part in Chicago’s presentation to the International Olympic Committee.

“The president is very excited about participating,” Valerie Jarrett, the Obama Administration in charge of the White House’s first-ever Olympics office, said early Monday in a telephone interview.

“The Olympic spirit,” she said, “is about not giving up, giving it your very best, until you cross the finish line. As we enter into this homestretch, that’s what the United States intends to do.”

Everything about this development heightens the suspense and the drama about the IOC vote later in the day Friday in Copenhagen.

Never before has an American president appeared before the IOC in such a capacity.

Never before has there been such anticipation about an IOC vote, the curiosity about an Obama appearance in Copenhagen the stuff of speculation within Olympic circles virtually since the triumphant scene on Election Night last November in Grant Park.

And now the anticipation simply gets to build with delicious intensity all this week.

Chicago is locked in a vigorously contested race with Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

King Juan Carlos of Spain, a 1972 Olympic sailor, will be in Copenhagen. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil will be there. So, too, the Japanese announced Monday, will their newly elected prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

So now the stage is fully set for Barack and Michelle Obama.

For maximum impact.

“President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama symbolize the hope, opportunity and inspiration that makes Chicago great, and we are honored to have two of our city’s most accomplished residents leading our delegation in Copenhagen,” Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said in a statement released by the 2016 bid committee.

Pat Ryan, the Chicago 2016 bid chief, said in the same statement, “There is no greater expression of the support our bid enjoys, from the highest levels of government and throughout our country, than to have President Obama join us in Copenhagen for the pinnacle moment in our bid.”

The president’s appearance doesn’t guarantee a Chicago victory. Nothing guarantees anything in an IOC vote. But it likely would have diminished Chicago’s chances considerably had he not gone to support a bid from the city he called home before election to the presidency. The overarching question on scene in Copenhagen would have been, why is the president not here?

Recall that in Singapore, the site of the IOC’s 2005 assembly, Tony Blair pushed for London, and London won for 2012. Two years ago in Guatemala City, Vladimir Putin pushed for Sochi, and Sochi won for 2014.

It’s plain now what is all but expected at an IOC vote.

It’s not mandatory — again, for emphasis, it’s not mandatory.

But it’s abundantly clear that if you want to win, everyone has to be all in — that is, Olympic and public officials, everyone from the mayor on up to, in the instance of an American bid, the president of the United States.

As Dick Pound, a Canadian member of the IOC since the late 1970s, put it in an interview two weeks ago given amid an appearance at a symposium in Chicago, referring to Obama, “If you have a popular and transformational leader and you don’t use him, you’re not maximizing your chances.”

It matters not that the presidential stay in Copenhagen will be brief. This is what matters — his appearance will signal to the world that the Chicago bid has the full backing of the government of the United States even as it makes clear that the Chicago bid is not just a key federal priority but a project in which he himself is emotionally and politically invested.

Which he has been from the get-go — even before his election as president. Then-Sen. Obama made it plain his support for a Chicago bid when the bid was just getting going, when the U.S. Olympic Committee was choosing two years ago between Chicago and Los Angeles for its 2016 choice.

That announcement Sept. 11 that the president couldn’t commit “at this time” to Copenhagen and was sending the First Lady?

That announcement served a number of key purposes. For instance, it gave the White House breathing room. For some days, the Copenhagen would-he-or-wouldn’t-he didn’t have to be a recurring topic at every presidential appearance.

Moreover, it also shone the spotlight, appropriately enough, on Michelle Obama, and then in turn on the likes of Oprah Winfrey and on Jarrett, and on the Olympic athletes (Edwin Moses, Nastia Liukin, Kerri Walsh, Gary Hall Jr. among them) in the Chicago delegation.

Last Monday, the White House said it was sending an advance team to Copenhagen to preserve the president’s options — in case his calendar cleared enough to go.

Last Thursday, the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, asked if the president would make a “day trip to Copenhagen,” replied, “I think it would be a very quick trip, yes.”

It will, indeed, be a quick trip.

But it could very well make all the difference.

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