Barack and Michelle Obama meet the IOC
COPENHAGEN — Barack and Michelle Obama made a compelling case Friday for Chicago. They were expected to be nothing less than thrilling. And they were.
The First Lady spoke with emotion of her father’s struggle with multiple sclerosis.
He taught her and her brother, she said, “to engage with honor, with dignity and fair play. My dad was my hero. And when I think of what these Games could mean to people all over the world, I think of people like my dad, people who face seemingly insurmountable challenges but never let up. They work a little harder but they never give up.”
If he had lived “to see this day,” she said, “I know it would have restored in him the same sense of unbridled possibility he instilled in me.
“Chicago’s vision … is about so much more than what we can offer the Games. It’s about what the Games can offer all of us. It’s about inspiring this generation and building a lasting legacy for the next. It’s about our responsibility as Americans not just to put on great Games but to use these Games as a vehicle, to bring us together, to usher in a new era of international engagement and to give us hope and to change lives all over the world.”
The president, for his part, declared, in echoes of the speech he gave recently at the United Nations, “We stand at a moment in history when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations — a time of common challenges that will requires common effort.
“… I believe deeply at this defining moment the United States has a responsibility to help in that effort, to forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world. No one expects the Games to solve all our collective challenges. But what we do believe … is that in a world where we’ve all too often witnessed the darker aspects of our humanity, peaceful competition between nations represents what’s best about our humanity.
“It brings us together, if only for a few weeks … it reminds us that no matter how or where we differ we all seek our own measure of pride and fulfillment and happiness in what we do. That’s a very powerful starting point for progress.”
A few minutes later, in response to a question from Syed Shahid Ali, an IOC member from Pakistan, about the challenges those from overseas can sometimes face in entering the United States, the president himself took the answer.
That is simply remarkable. The president himself.
And what he said offered evidence of the hope he has stirred, in particular on Election Night in Grant Park last November — a scene he had touched upon in his prepared remarks just a few moments earlier.
He said in answer to Ali’s question, “One of the legacies I want to see coming out of the Chicago 2016 hosting of the Games is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world.
“… In Chicago, we’ve got everybody … we look like the world. I think that, you know, over the last several years sometimes that fundamental truth about the United States has been lost. One of the legacies of these Olympic Games in Chicago would be a restoration of that understanding of what the United States is all about and the United States’ recognition of how we are linked to the world.”
The president was met with sustained applause.