By Bob Secter, Kristen Mack and Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau –
CHICAGO — Chicago’s star turn on the world stage was cut in half Monday after President Barack Obama made a surprise shift of the May G-8 international summit from his hometown to Camp David.
The full complement of downtown security concerns remain, however. Chicago will keep the overlapping NATO meeting, meaning diplomats and protesters still will descend on Chicago by the thousands for a gathering of world leaders May 20-21.
The abrupt change of venue came after Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city’s host committee spent months pumping up the events as an international showcase for the city, important because both the G-8 and NATO gatherings hadn’t been held in the same city in three decades.
Following the announcement Monday, the mayor’s office insisted that nothing had really changed. And no one was talking publicly about the miscalculation that Chicago would make a great place for G-8 leaders to hash out a broad range of economic, political and security issues.
A brief White House announcement suggested that, in hindsight, Chicago would have been too big and distracting a scene to have fruitful talks. “To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the president is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David,” read a statement issued by Press Secretary Jay Carney.
The spotlight that shines on Chicago this spring might not be quite as bright, with the potential to lessen the throngs of protesters who’d circled that weekend as a prime chance to publicly air grievances about economic injustice they say are imposed by the developed world.
Past G-8 meetings have attracted large and violent demonstrations, and the shift to the remote presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains could reduce the chances for an election year embarrassment on the streets of Obama’s hometown.
That said, the early word from protest leaders is that they will not be deterred by the change and still plan to descend on the remaining NATO gathering en masse. That will require little let-up in the same tight safety precautions for what was supposed to have been back-to-back meetings starting a day earlier.
In the past, G-8 summits have mostly been held in remote locales, and National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said there was a desire to keep it that way. “This was really about the president looking for a more informal setting with these close partners,” she said. “It’s not about Chicago being able to handle logistics.”
Aides to Obama said he started contemplating the change in venue a couple of weeks ago.
Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff before returning to Chicago in 2010, lobbied his old boss to set both high-profile meetings in the city. For months, Emanuel has been touting how the sessions would pay off richly for the city in both international stature and economic investment.
Time and again, the mayor stressed how rare it was for any city to play host to both summits, even referring to the coup as his Olympics — a not-so-subtle dig at the failed attempt by former Mayor Richard Daley to land the 2016 world games for Chicago.
Emanuel chose to stay out of the public eye Monday after the White House announced the move. His spokeswoman, however, said nothing had really changed and the NATO meeting alone would reap huge rewards for the city.
That sentiment was echoed by leaders of the summits’ host committee, many of whom were handpicked by Emanuel. “It ultimately will have minimal impact,” predicted Lori Healey, the committee’s executive director.
The two summits feature an overlapping cast of players, though they have different missions. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed in the early days of the Cold War, is a military alliance of 28 Western nations that among other things is involved in the occupation of Afghanistan. The Group of Eight, comprised of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, is focused on economic policy.
After their weekend retreat in the mountains, most or all of the G-8 leaders are expected to head to Chicago for the NATO meeting, one reason why security will have to be just as tight here regardless of the number of summits to be held.
Even so, Alderman Patrick O’Connor, the mayor’s City Council floor leader, said city officials told him the call to move G-8 out of Chicago was made for security reasons. But O’Connor wasn’t sure that was spurred by a specific threat or the desire to avoid the hassle of protests.
“It’s a disappointment for us and frankly for the people who would have visited a world-class city to do their business,” he said.
Alderman Joe Moore, said the loss of G-8 won’t ease security headaches for the city. “NATO is still going to attract demonstrators,” said Moore. “We are still going to need a lot of security for these world leaders, including the president. All it’s doing is lessening a little bit of the international luster.”
