From the American Thinker comes an amazingly on-target analysis of why the Obamas’ appearances at the IOC meeting last Friday were such abysmal failures:

Of course Barack and Michelle Obama failed in Copenhagen. Their strategy could not possibly succeed. In their academic arrogance, they thought they could sell a product they clearly do not believe in (the United States) and moreover, they could do so by stressing the benefits to the seller (Chicago) and not the buyer (the IOC). And to top it off, they committed the faux pas of talking too much about the sales force (themselves) and not about the product or the buyer.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Anyone who has had to succeed in the real business world — and that includes few if any on Team Obama — instinctively knows that to get business done you have to believe in what you are doing and offer a product or service that is focused on the benefits to the customer. In the Obama World of Chicago pay-to-play power, business gets done by flexing muscle and clearing the field of your competitors. You don’t have to sell anything. You don’t have to believe in anything. It is fine to be self-focused. You simply have to apply the power of the applicable political machinery and you win…

The Obamas’ sales pitch was awful by any definition. Of course. How can our President, who has made his political fortune at the expense of the reputation of the country, sell our country to the IOC with a straight face?

The answer is he could not. And although it would have been an out of body experience, I still thought he would at least attempt to sell America and some notion of our logistical competence and love of sports and so on. I didn’t think he would believe it, but certainly thought the teleprompter would sneak in something good about the country for him to read.

Nope.

He and the First Lady did not even pretend to be proud of us. They went on an unseemly, surreal begging campaign that mixed in uncomfortable bits and pieces of their personal histories with platitudes about what the Olympic Games could do for the children of Chicago. Oh, BTW, the Obama family would personally find it kind of a cool thing for the neighborhood…

The bottom line is this: this was an Obama epic fail. Period. They were the sales force, they were the focus of the sales presentation and they were the product. The Obamas were there to sell the Obamas with the Obamas. All Obama all the time.

And the world said, “No thanks.”

Now if the American Lame Stream Media just wasn’t such a sucker for a snake-oil salesman and his solipsistic wife the rest of us wouldn’t have to try to figure out what to do with all the crap these two are peddling.