“Gulp.”

That must have been Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s reaction as he sat in the stands of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium watching the $100-million, triumphantly staged Olympic opening ceremonies.

Daley’s vision of a 2016 Olympics in Chicago pales in comparison to China’s mind-bending pyrotechnics and its cast of ten thousands, the stupefying grandiosity of the stadium, clean-as-a-whistle new subway lines, the glittering infrastructure, the ebullient but always respective Chinese masses, the permanent new competitive venues and a list of other superlatives as long as the Great Wall.

If Daley wasn’t thinking to himself, “My God, what I have gotten us into?” he’s delusional, or worse. He’s got to be wondering, for example, how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is going to accept the idea of a temporary Olympic stadium squeezed into a South Side neighborhood, more than a mile from a crumbling L line, after seeing the accessible, centrally located Bird’s Nest. China’s massive fireworks, staged in Washington Park, would have set nearby slums afire.

After riding a portion of Beijing’s new $7-billion-plus subway line, even Daley couldn’t hide his admiration and publicly admit that Chicago has, well, “a ways to go.” But he did get in a brag about Chicago being the only American city with transit lines to its two major airports, which should bring about a big so-what from folks who regularly put up with the rigors of the CTA’s Blue Line. Funding for a Chicago upgrade to merely a shadow of Beijing’s service is nowhere in sight, ever.

That’s what happens when you’ve got a dictatorial regime in charge, which can toss thousands of people out of their homes, assign troublemakers to a distant territory and command the resources of an entire country to stage Olympics Ultima. Some might say that description fits Daley to a T, but not really, when it comes to an ability to line up an entire nation’s resources for an Olympic extravagance. For lack of massive subsidies from the rest of the nation for Chicago’s Games, Daley’s sights are set somewhat less, of necessity. Daley also is hamstrung by his pledge that the Olympics wont’ cost taxpayers anything, although no one really expects him to keep the promise.

Daley, unintentionally I’m sure, proposes returning a certain degree of proportionately to future Olympics—something a little less than a nation of 1.3 billion people can muster—a proportionately that would suggest that the Olympics is supposed to be an athletic competition among individual athletes, instead of a multi-billion-dollar brawl among nations on a global scale and an obscene commercial enterprise.

Daley, for example, boasts that Chicago’s advantage is its ability to stage a “compact” Olympics, squeezed mostly onto the downtown lakefront. There are two reasons for this, neither accruing to Chicago’s credit: Daley doesn’t want to share the Olympics with those damn suburbs; just like airports, it’s his and he’s not going to give up any jobs or contracts that should “rightfully” be Chicago’s. The other reason is that considering Chicago’s transportation deficiencies, there is no other choice but to make the venue here “compact,” which is a nice way of saying our transportation system stinks. Imagine Olympian swimmers fighting rush hour traffic on the Kennedy Expressway to get to their pool venue out in Schaumburg. By some estimates, $27 billion is needed to bring Chicago’s highways and transit system up to snuff, a figure already raising some doubts with Olympic officials, not to mention howls of laughter from locals. This, of course, doesn’t include the billions that it’ll take to realize Daley’s dream (and our nightmare) of a 21st Century O’Hare Airport.

The truth is that Chicago is offering the poor man’s version of the Olympics to an IOC that is increasingly enthralled with its own importance, the international spotlight, lickspittles that come begging to host the games and the depraved amounts of money that the Games generate.

Maybe Chicago should take a page from the pitch being made by Rio de Janeiro, one of the four finalists, along with Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo of the 2016 Games. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “…the Olympic Games were not created to take place only in rich countries….Humanistic people don’t believe the Olympics should be held in rich countries only, but in other continents that are not so affluent.” In other words, Brazil is playing up a weakness as a not-so-rich country to evoke a sympathetic response. In principle, Lula da Silva might well be right.

My own guess is that Rio will get the Games, and not just for pity’s sake. It will have a solid record of hosting mega-sports events, including the 2007 Pan American Games, the 2011 military Olympic Games and the 2014 Football World Cup.

Furthermore, Europe, the United States and Asia have had their share of the Games. South America is sitting out there, a virtually overlooked continent with vast and untapped potential, waiting to blossom into a major world force economically, culturally and politically. The IOC could do worse than be at the forefront of a fashionable realization that South America is the coming thing.

Besides, playing up Chicago’s shortcomings isn’t really a great strategy; imagine the world’s spotlight playing on America’s most corrupt city and state. Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, Chicago’s bid partner, already is probably suffering cultural shock at seeing first hand how things are done in Chicago.

I’m not against Chicago hosting the games, if it can be pulled off smoothly, without traumatizing the city and hurling it into bankruptcy. But I fear that the city’s bid will only serve to illuminate how Daley’s judgment can be terribly flawed, for the entire world to see. And for us to experience and suffer.