Standing by itself, there is nothing wrong with President Obama's trip to Denmark later this week to promote his home town of Chicago's bid to land the 2016 Olympics.
It would be good for both the U.S. and Chicago if Obama succeeds and probably worth a try even if he doesn't. But in politics, nothing occurs in a vacuum and this trip occurs at a time when the president runs the risk of appearing to go out of his way to pursue a clearly minor objective at the expense of other major objectives.
The president says, for example, that he will take the time to get the strategy right before deciding whether to dispatch more troops to Afghanistan. But he announced a strategy back in March and sent General McChrystal to achieve it.
Now that the general wants more troops, Obama wants more time. How often has he spoken to the general? Once, in the past 70 days.
Initially, the president said he was not going to Denmark because he was too busy pressing for health care reform. The White House says that situation has improved. Really? The latest polls show support for his ideas at an all-time low.
And Iran, which has met Obama's overtures of engagement with nose-thumbing and missile tests, now says it won't even discuss its nuclear ambitions with the U.S.
— Brit Hume is the senior political analyst for FOX News Channel.
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