The next Summer Olympics up for grabs is a long ways away. It’s nine years away, to be precise. But the U.S. Olympic Commission’s announcement last week that it would not pursue nomination of an American city to host the once-in-four-years series of events is disconcerting.

The announcement comes at what is almost a time of national crisis. Trillion-dollar deficits mar the government’s checkbook, and the political discourse surrounding our budget is chock-full of accusations of both treason and an absence of patriotism among the dissenters from party lines.

We’re winding down two decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sure.  But what did we accomplish there? Even if we did establish two constitutional states like ours in the Middle East, how will ordinary Americans benefit? How will their lives be improved? Will we be less fearful? Only one member of the “axis of evil” was removed.  The others remain, but no nuclear attack has come.

Manned space exploration as a public endeavor has died. Apparently if it’s not going to be profitable, acquiring knowledge about the universe around us and the limits of what we can do is not important. Scientific knowledge for scientific knowledge’s sake, as an end in itself, has fallen out of favor.

Instead of going outward in space, we’re staying in. With the discontinuation of the shuttle program, the only way out of the earth’s gravitational pull is strapped to a Russian rocket. We abandoned doing it for ourselves, now relying on another foreign power. But since the Russians are apparently having difficulty getting their rockets out of the atmosphere in one working piece, NASA announced last week that they may have to evacuate the International Space Station.

Economic performance remains sluggish. Earlier this month, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 500 points, then up 500 points, and continued this oscillation for about a week. The expectations for our national debt were downgraded for the first time in history by a major bond ratings agency, and unemployment in the 9 percent range persists. We don’t make things anymore. Basic manufacturing left these shores for more profitable continents decades ago, and even parts of our service industry (think computer support) now serve us from Asia or the Indian subcontinent.

Where am I going with this? Here’s where I’m going with it: The Olympics are a great opportunity to set a fire under our asses and get rid of this malaise. Making sure we do a damn good job of hosting them is nothing less than the kind of challenge the American people need and the kind of challenge to which they can rise — and surmount — with ease, should they put their energy to it.

But the U.S. Olympic Commission rejected even the possibility of hosting the 2020 Summer Games. Their reason, they said, was focusing on preparing for the Games in London next year, and working out a revenue-sharing agreement with the International Olympic Committee, as if we can’t work on multiple projects at once. Sure, these two reasons may be legitimate, and they may both be very daunting. But why not involve so many more sections of the United States in preparations of Olympic proportions by trying to host them?

American athletes are some of the best. From competing in 47 Olympic Games, Americans have brought home 5,365 gold medals, 5,333 silver medals and 5,623 bronze medals. That’s a total of 16,321 medals that American athletes have won since 1896. How much more inspiring would it be to win some of those at home! Americans of all walks of life need to see Americans winning in America.

The Olympics also are an opportunity to put aside the day-in, day-out, nonstop politicking we insist on broadcasting and printing every minute of every day. To our credit, we are a people who insist on practicing politics at every turn.  But it’s tiring; it wears us down. We stop remembering we are all Americans and begin to think Americanism travels with a specific political party and not others.

Having an American city host the Olympic Games also obtains tangible benefits. Infrastructure upgrades, which necessarily entail spending and jobs, accompany any serious bid to host the events. Successful bids continue those infrastructure improvements, whose benefits exceed the two weeks of athletic competitions, and bring jobs and publicity to the area. Costs of attending the games — costs of lodging, entertainment and whatever else the national delegations have a mind to spend their money on — offset the costs of hosting.

Hosting the Olympics also is an opportunity to mend relations with foreign countries that were damaged by our nearly unilateral action in Iraq, as well as our bullying insistence that Saddam Hussein was a loose cannon in the lead-up to that conflict. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” is the mantra of someone who wants to lose his friends and lose them quickly. By demonstrating our good offices to representatives of countries as large as China and as small as Palau (find that one on a map), we can show we take our role as the world’s most powerful country and largest economy seriously. We can show our willingness to lead in even the worst of times.

Next time, hopefully the U.S. Olympic Commission realizes that hosting the Olympics isn’t just about the Olympics. It’s about the United States. It’s about shoring up national integrity and harnessing potential energy into the kinetic variety and bringing us out of malaise.