Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and the man tasked with finding a winning strategy for the war there, has talked with President Obama exactly once in more than two months. Federal officials have made one arrest in what they describe as the most dangerous terrorist plot in the U.S. since 9/11, and they have only started unraveling the conspiracy. Years before previously expected, Social Security is about to run out of money to cover the monthly checks that millions of senior and disabled Americans depend on to make ends meet. Unemployment is nearing 10 percent nationwide and has reached its highest mark since World War II among younger Americans, 52 percent. As many as 80,000 people in California’s Central Valley are out of work in part because of federal environmental policies that make fish more important than people. These are only a few of the most important crises facing the nation today. And where is our president? He is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to deliver a sales pitch for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics.

Curiously, Obama had different priorities on Sept. 17 when he said First Lady Michelle Obama would go to Copenhagen in his stead: “I would make the case in Copenhagen personally, if I weren’t so firmly committed to making real the promise of quality affordable health care for every American.” What has changed since Sept. 17? Why is the president now taking it upon himself to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award an event with global prestige and worth untold billions of dollars to a city whose governing establishment virtually defines political corruption? This is no one-time distraction for the president, either. As senior presidential counselor and fellow Chicagoan Valerie Jarrett recently told Chicago Business: “The president has been an ardent supporter from the beginning … We talk about it every day.”