Kathryn, you write: “As Bill Bennett said on his show this morning: How can the same president who gave the idealistic second inaugural address he gave about freedom not be livid about what we’re overlooking because of sports?”
The answer is that foreign policy must not be about idealism (or at least not very much). Foreign policy should be about the national interest. I yield to no one in my disgust for the crimes of the Chinese dictatorship. In my view, the Olympic Games should not have been awarded to Peking (despite the fact that, as a corrupt, totalitarian spectacle the Olympics are in many ways perfectly suited to Mao’s old bastion), however once the games were given to China, the dynamics changed. Is it really in America’s interests for Bush to snub the Chinese government and, for that matter, many of its people, in this way? No. Cui bono? If the U.S. is to compete with China (as it should) politically and ideologically, as well as commercially, there are many more productive ways of doing so than by refusing to attend the dreary sub-Nuremberg of an Olympics opening ceremony.
In the meantime, private protests (so long as they are legal, of course) against these games, their sponsors (Coca Cola comes to mind), and the repellent IOC should continue.