Anti-Obamaites revel in loss of Olympics: And they're undercutting his foreign policy, too

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

How about R-I-O! R-I-O! R-I-O! instead?

Signs showing President Obama with a Hitler moustache apparently didn't do it, nor right-wing commentators calling him a racist. Now maybe the sight (but especially the sound) of conservatives exulting over Chicago losing to Rio in its bid to host the 2106 Olympics will confirm the obvious: Some people so desperately want Obama to fail, they are willing to undermine America's reputation to make it happen.

Most Americans (84 percent, according to one poll) wanted the 2016 Olympics to come to Chicago - the president and first lady's hometown. The city had worked for years on its bid.

But before the president took 14 hours last week to join other heads of state in lobbying the International Olympic Committee in Copenhangen, right-wing commentators openly rooted for Rio. They said the Windy City is so crime-ridden, athletes wouldn't be safe (although Rio's crime problem makes Chicago look like the Vatican). They claimed the project would be riddled with corruption. Portly Bill Bennett even said that Chicagoans were too fat to deserve the Olympics.

Then, after the U.S. entry was eliminated in the first round, the same critics blamed Obama for not strong-arming the IOC into giving the games to crime-ridden, corrupt, corpulent Chicago.

We're not sure the Olympics is a good deal for the host city or host country, although the 2016 games would have created an estimated 315,000 full-time jobs for Americans. There were legitimate reasons to oppose the bid - in particular, the possible displacement of poor citizens as new athletic complexes were built. Besides, taxpayers would have been on the hook for construction overruns.

And there were many reasons for the IOC to choose Rio over Chicago - and Madrid and Tokyo, the other finalists. Rio was a favorite simply because South America has never hosted the games. (The U.S. has done it eight times.) Onerous anti-tourist policies instituted by the Bush administration after 9/11 also might have been a factor. As a Pakistani IOC member put it, foreigners entering the U.S. can still find it "a harrowing experience."

Whatever the reason, imagine if liberals had cheered in 2005 when New York's bid for the 2012 games was eliminated. (By the way, Britain's prime minister Tony Blair traveled to Singapore to make a pitch for the ultimate winner, London.)

The Olympics got a lot of publicity, but recent efforts by Republican members of Congress to undercut Obama's - that is, America's - foreign policy are more insidious.

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe is going to Copenhagen, too: In December, he plans to tell foreign officials meeting at the global-warming summit not to trust the United States' promises to act. Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor went to Israel to criticize President Obama's insistence that the Israeli government stop expanding illegal settlements. Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk boasted in June that he had told officials of China, our biggest creditor, not to trust the U.S. government's budget numbers. And South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is in Honduras right now reportedly to discourage a compromise supported by the United States to end the political crisis in that nation.

Once, politics stopped at the water's edge. Of course, that was when Americans cheered for America, and not against it.