President Barack Obama is traveling to Copenhagen this week to speak in support of Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid.

The International Olympic Committee votes Friday on where the Summer Games will go for 2016. Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo also are in the running for what is expected to be a tight vote of IOC members.

Obama has caught more than a little flak for his decision, however. How can a sitting president fly to Denmark when he ought to be concentrating on global issues, or military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the national economy? (Check the third comment under the linked story, above; it pretty much sums up the objections.)

But he is doing the right thing. For several reasons.

1. The IOC now expects heads of state to show up. It had been done a time or two in the past, but the watershed moment for presidents/prime ministers/premieres showing up for was four years ago, when Tony Blair, Great Britain’s prime minister, showed up in Singapore (which is farther from London than Copenhagen is from Washington) to support London’s bid for 2012 … and French president Jacques Chirac stayed home. Paris was expected to win the vote, but London won in an upset — and Blair was credited for turning the tide. Two years later, Russian president Vladimir Putin personally intervened on behalf of Sochi’s bid for the 2014 Winter Games, and Sochi won.

You get the drift. Obama makes the trip, or Chicago is out.

2. The Olympics almost always are a 17-day chamber of commerce/board of tourism fantasy come true. You get to show your country in a positive light, in settings of your choosing. And the Olympics is all one big giant warm fuzzy. OK, Atlanta did itself no favors by not figuring out its bus situation, before the 1996 Games (and there was that Terror Thing, too) … but ask Beijing or Athens or Sydney what the Olympics did for their bottom line … and reputation … and tourism. Even if the income/expensesdon’t quite pencil out, I believe they will tell you they are better for having hosted the Games. Heck, even Atlanta would say that.

3. Obama is a Chicago guy. It’s bigger than “just” the U.S. trying to host the Games. It’s his hometown, trying to host the Games. Can you blame him for showing up? If Dallas had been up for the 2012 Games, odds are good George W. Bush would have been in Singapore with Tony Blair.

4. When it comes to world issues … you really do need a president who can, oh, delegate to cover the hour or two that Obama will spend in front of the IOC. Plus, it’s not as if it’s 1909 and going to Denmark means the president is out of touch with his country for a couple of weeks. Satellite communications and all. The guy could run the country out of that five-star Copenhagen hotel.

The Olympics are a big deal. I’ve been to 13 of them, and the locals were psyched out of their minds by the time the show began. Every. Time. They built and upgraded and overhauled like crazy, and those improvements were a gain for the whole community. (Consider Los Angeles: If the 1984 Olympics hadn’t been held here, the Bradley Terminal doesn’t get built, and LAX is even more pathetic than it is now. And that $220 million in profit isn’t plowed back into the community)

Obama going to Copenhagen … Yes. Good call. Otherwise, Chicago may as well stay home.