The Conservative Soldier

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Olympic torch arrived for its only North American stop amid heavy security Tuesday, a day after its visit to Paris descended into chaos and activists scaled (San Francisco’s) Golden Gate Bridge to protest China’s human rights record. Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said the committee would consider ending the international leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay because of the protests.

Many individuals are reading news reports like this one today and many will conclude that China is finally paying the price for thinking it can host the Olympic Games without curtailing or ending its supression of human rights, specifically among Tibetans and other dissidents.

This might, indeed, seem a rather obvious conclusion. It is also a flawed conclusion.  It is an inaccurate take on what actually happened, first in London, then in Paris, and on what will inevitably happen tomorrow in San Francisco.

What is destined to go down in history as the 2008 Olympic Torch Debacle (presented by Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung) is not so much a condemnation of China, worthy of condemnation though it may be, but a swift kick in the pants, and elsewhere, inflicted on the International Olympic Committee and, to a lesser degree, the multinational corporations who underwrite the Olympic movement as $60 million-plus sponsors in four-year cycles.

Let’s be clear about what we’re dealing with here, and what we’re not. The International Olympic Committee is not, as some misperceive it, a hapless, monolithic entity guided by senile old men in tweed jackets and hunting boots, swilling brandy and inhaling cigars. Although some do a fair amount of smoking and drinking in various wood-paneled places, a good many members of the IOC these days are intelligent, engaged, connected business people, politicians and power brokers who are drawn to their volunteer roles as voting members both by a love of sports (many are former athletes, some even world-class) and a keen appreciation for the splendid, well-tuned financial engine that is the Olympic property as we know it today. 

Any way you want to slice them, ”the Olympics” — as Games, as an ideal, as a unifying social force, as an inspiration to the world’s youth — generate billions of dollars from many sources. These billions create a huge crest upon which IOC members can ride around the world, attending meetings, embracing pomp and circumstance, making great proclamations and rubbing shoulders with world political leaders. They are not merely representing the IOC. They represent their own favorite causes and organizations — international and national sports associations, sport administrative bodies and national Olympic committees and Olympic Games bid organizations.

The Olympic engine churns out cash that trickles down to the members’ pet causes just as the enormous United States government tax base churns dollars that elected officials here direct to constituents and hefty pork projects in home states.

As an IOC member, you are free to achieve great success in your professional and political life, while adding the ego rush of being an “Olympic insider” who has the solemn duty of deciding where the Olympic Games will be contested. And you are given this power by your peers. You don’t have to be elected by the masses and you need not risk a dime of your own cash at any time. It’s a free ride.

Why should we care? Because what these Olympic Torch protests that have blindsided the IOC and its sponsors — even though it was obvious to some they were coming — suggest is not that China is the bad guy. The protesters can’t be surprised that China has failed to play nice just because it is hosting the Olympics. Who is that naive?

What the protests really tell us is that the IOC’s 105 voters made a colossal blunder when selecting Beijing as the winner in the race for the 2008 Summer Games. And they tell us how misguided sponsors Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung were when deciding that it was a good idea to invest millions of dollars and thousands of manpower hours in an historic global relay of a torch that carries more than a flame. It carries a tip of the cap to China’s political brass, which is not returning the tip but thumbing its collective nose.

A Coke spokesman last year explained the brilliance of a global relay by noting that the Olympic torch ”has become a symbol of optimism that connects people across different cultures.”

Clearly, while Beijing was an obvious choice economically for the IOC — what’s not to love about a federally funded $30 billion Olympic Games orchestrated by Communists marshalling an unlimited workforce? — and its sponsors — what’s not to love about Olympic sponsor visibility in the last great untapped consumer products and technology frontier? — it was a choice in which the risk far outweighed the reward.

The torch is being transformed into a symbol alright, connecting people of different cultures who share violent opposition to the jailing and killing of dissidents by brutally dictatorial governments.

The IOC has made risky choices before.  In fact, every Olympic host choice is a risk. They risked facing grits and collard greens in the gourmet buffet in Atlanta, then ended up with a homemade bomb attack. They risked sun stroke and collapsing venues in Athens; eroded U.S. television ratings by going many time zones away to Sydney; and the risk and reality of boycotts by sending the Games to Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984.

Looking back, we find that 49 IOC members actually voted against Beijing in the second and final round in July 2001 — 22 for Toronto; 18 for Paris; nine for Istanbul. But the other 56 votes carried the day.

A Canadian guy, who makes a living tracking and analyzing Olympic bidding and voting, reached this conclusion about the 2008 decision: “The campaign was controversial, especially for Beijing which was a heavy early favourite but the object of criticism due to human rights violations and pollution,” wrote GamesBids.com publisher Rob Livingstone. “The one-sidedness of the final vote did not fairly represent the relative quality of the bids, raising further suspicion on the IOC.”

Oh, yes. The pollution. It is of such concern for the Beijing Games that there is now talk of running the Olympic Marathon on a day other than in the end of August, when it is scheduled. Maybe months after the fact.

So as the protesters scheme in San Francisco, and as the flame flickers in an undisclosed Bay Area location (perhaps inside Nancy Pelosi’s head, where the lights are never on), we are left to wonder how so many smart, successful, savvy  IOC members made such a dumb decision.

Perhaps we need only remember that there were also a lot of smart people at Bear Stearns.