Rice, Rhodes, and Love headed to the Olympics
Barack Obama has announced his delegation for the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics on Sunday and it will be led by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice with White House advisor Ben Rhodes and the president’s former body man Reggie Love in tow. The delegation will attend some events, meet with U.S. athletes, and attend ...
Barack Obama has announced his delegation for the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics on Sunday and it will be led by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice with White House advisor Ben Rhodes and the president’s former body man Reggie Love in tow.
The delegation will attend some events, meet with U.S. athletes, and attend the Aug. 12 closing ceremony, the White House said in a Thursday statement. Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for communications, is Obama’s main foreign-policy speechwriter and message crafter. The United States is currently ahead of China in the overall medal count by 82-78, so hopefully Rhodes won’t have to answer wisecracks in London about whether U.S. athletes is "leading from behind."
Rounding out the delegation will be U.S. ambassador to the UK Louis Susman, Michelle Kwan, U.S. public-diplomacy envoy and Olympic figure skater, and Curtis Pride, former Major League Baseball player and head coach at Washington’s Gallaudet University. The U.S. delegation to the opening ceremony was led by First Lady Michelle Obama.
In his Aug. 4 weekly radio address, Obama praised the Olympics as an opportunity for Americans to set politics aside and unite.
"I want to take a break from the back-and-forth of campaign season, and talk about something that’s brought us all together this week — the Summer Olympics," Obama said. "These games remind us that for all our differences, we’re Americans first."
But this week on the campaign trail, Obama has been using the Olympics metaphor to criticize Mitt Romney for questioning the credibility of a Brookings Institution study that predicted the former Massachusetts governor’s economic plan would add trillions in addition tax burdens on the middle class.
"Let’s just say there was a whole different kind of gymnastics being performed by Mr. Romney than what’s been happening in the Olympics," Obama said Wednesday at a campaign stop in Colorado.
"So they were twisting and they were turning and doing backflips, and trying to say, ‘Well, this is a biased report’ — despite the fact that the head of this nonpartisan center used to work for President Bush. But it’s not surprising that he was trying to scramble a little bit, because they’ve tried to sell this old, trickle-down tax cut fairy dust before."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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