To D.C., Olympics Loss Is Another Hard-Luck Tale

This is a city that just can’t catch a break.

Terrorists attack the United States--and bellhops and waitresses in Washington go unemployed as tourism in the nation’s capital collapses to its lowest levels since the Depression.

Someone fires a gun at the White House--and the Secret Service closes Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular travel, snarling traffic and imprisoning the city’s Beaux Arts architecture behind barricades.

Now, the U.S. Olympic Committee has rejected Washington’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics because, Washington organizers of the effort say, the European-dominated International Olympic Committee would not smile on an application from a city planning an unpopular war against Iraq.

Once again, it seems, the foreign policy of the federal city has torpedoed the well-meaning, painstaking efforts of Washington to act like a normal town.

Stunned by the reversal, local officials Wednesday bravely talked of the good that had already been accomplished, the “legacy” of cooperation between Washington and Baltimore, which was the co-applicant in the bid, and the spirit of camaraderie and goodwill.

“I can’t remember Washington and Baltimore working together this closely since the War of 1812,” said Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who is 39.

Through the civic smiles, it was hard to hide the disappointment.

“It’s difficult to reconcile the fact that we had such a strong technical bid with the decision not to move us forward,” said Dan Knise, one of the torch carriers for Washington’s six-year, $10-million Olympic campaign. “We always knew that Washington had a unique position, pro and con. But we were somewhat blindsided at the end by this amorphous sense that Washington might not be the right place.”

Tough Opponents Seen

In making its decision Tuesday, the U.S. Olympic Committee eliminated bids from Houston and the Washington-Baltimore region, leaving alive the hopes of San Francisco and New York to be the U.S. choice to host the 2012 event. Even at that, the U.S. choice faces stiff opposition from several European cities, among them Paris, Rome and Moscow.

The U.S. committee will announce its final selection Nov. 3.

Officially, the U.S. committee said only that the narrowing of the U.S. field was a consensus choice. Unofficially, according to leaders of the Washington-Baltimore team, there was sentiment among committee members that offering Washington as the U.S. choice might inflame the anti-American bias of Europeans distrustful of President Bush’s drumbeating for ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

And, the committee was still smarting at the treatment Congress meted out to then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch three years ago over the lavish excesses of the international Olympic movement.

“I guess if being honest and truthful and calling them as you see them gives them a bad taste, then it gives them a bad taste,” said Joe Barton, the feisty Republican congressman from Texas who grilled Samaranch particularly hard during congressional testimony.

Some Washington observers were not surprised that the city--with its diverse neighborhoods, its cultural wealth, its international flavor and its economic vibrancy--was once again confused with the governmental policies of the “other” Washington, the seat of federal power.

“This is a case where the evaluation of the Washington area as an appropriate venue was clouded by its role as the focal point for the federal government and U.S. policy in the world,” said Stephen S. Fuller, an economist at George Mason University in Virginia who has made the region’s fiscal health a centerpiece of his scholarship. “San Francisco or New York are viewed more as world-class cities. They are in the United States, but it doesn’t taint them in the same way Washington is tainted.”

Parallels to Baseball

Fuller likens the rejection to the repeated cold shoulder Washington has received from organized baseball, which has expanded its roster of teams to places such as Tampa Bay and Denver but won’t give the time of day to Washington, which boasts the fourth-strongest economy in the nation after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“This is a $250-billion economy, with 3.5 million jobs and 5 million people,” Fuller said of the Washington region, which takes in the wealthy and housing-market-hot areas of suburban Virginia and Maryland. “But advertisers discount us too. Maybe it’s because the buildings don’t stick up above the trees.”

The buildings may indeed be part of the problem. Ever since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, security has defined Washington. Guards are on round-the-clock patrol, metal detectors block entrances.

Tours at the Capitol and the White House, among the most popular of Washington’s attractions, are now restricted. The Smithsonian--that national jewel of museums from the National Zoo to the Air and Space Museum--is suffering a 30% decline in visitors. And the broad avenues envisioned by Pierre L’Enfant as a tribute to the capital’s majesty are all but encased in stone.

Still, city officials--who periodically petition Congress to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, with voting rights and powers of taxation--are not ungrateful for the shared history.

“We understand that we are the nation’s capital, and we’re delighted,” said John Koskinen, deputy mayor and city administrator. Acknowledging that city officials were surprised by the Olympic Committee’s decisions--”we thought all our embassies gave us a leg up”--Koskinen put the relationship in perspective. “There are challenges,” he said, “but we wouldn’t trade with anybody.”