Let me begin by saying that I don’t really have strong feelings one way or another when it comes to President Obama heading to Denmark to push Chicago for the Olympics. But as the story has developed I’ve heard some things that do make me wonder about the whole story.

When I first heard the reports that he was going to make this trip I assumed it would be for a few days and would probably involve meetings not only with the Olympic committee but also probably consults with various European leaders as well. I also assumed that he was going because we didn’t yet have a really high profile figure on site.

But I’ve now learned that Mrs. Obama is already there and that as recently as September 16th the President said that he could not go because he was busy, which is why he was sending his wife. I also have heard that he will take nine hours to fly there and nine hours to fly back, all to spend just three hours on site. This seems like an awful lot of time to spend in flight for such a short visit (let alone the cost of all those planes and security).

So it begs the question of why he is taking this last minute venture to Europe ? Of all the theories I’ve heard there are two of them which seem to make the most sense.

The first is that, to put it bluntly, that the fix is in, Chicago is going to get the nod and somebody gave the White House a wink and a nod to let them know. Being a normal politician, Mr. Obama wants to go there to bask in the glow of a success. Not the most noble of reasons but certainly human enough.

The second idea holds that the trip is a cover for something else, a trip to Afghanistan perhaps, or possibly a secret meeting with some world leader that he would rather not have too much press coverage on.

Again, I have no real issue with him going but it does seem odd to make an 18 hour round trip just to spend 3 hours doing some last minute lobbying. He could do that by teleconference.

Another issue of course is whether Chicago really wants the games, as they have a long history of being big money losers. In fact there is a rather clever web site called Chicagoansforrio.com which outlines just how much of a loser these events can be financially.