Daley Back from Beijing

By Margaret Lyons in News on Aug 14, 2008 4:45PM

Mayor Daley's back from Beijing, where it was revealed that all his ideas are orchestrated by a somewhat less adorable mayor, and he seems more determined than ever to secure Chicago's Olympic future.

According to the New York Times, Mayor Daley is a "sanguine-enough politician" to know that Chicago's 2016 possible festivities wouldn't be on the scale of Beijing's. I'm not sure if this paragraph is meant sarcastically, but it certainly could be:

Daley and his wife, Maggie, raved about what they saw, but clearly the Beijing model is different from Chicago’s. Beijing is the capital of a one-party government — no mayor of Chicago ever aspired to something like that, of course — and things tend to get done without referendums and oversight committees and public hearings and cranky questions from the news media.

Daley says he would want Chicago's games to more closely mirror Barcelona's 1992 games, which he says "recognized the identity" of the city. [NYT]