In going back to do a favor for his adopted hometown by personally lobbying for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics, the president brought the weight of his new office to bear. It would be impossible for him to make such a plug with a light touch, which is why he shouldn’t have bothered showing up at all.

While we shouldn’t obsess over definitions, it’s still worth nothing that a president is meant to “preside” rather than get involved in whatever he fancies. For a head of state to go charging full-bore with his entourage into something minor like the Olympic city selection and come out empty handed is both embarrassing and unnecessary.

The whole episode would be entirely forgettable if it didn’t fit into a pattern. Barack Obama is turning into a “helicopter president” who hovers over the nation, sticking his nose in things that are none of his business. Throwing around presidential influence gratuitously will inevitably cheapen it and set a bad precedent for the governance of this country.

Particularly disturbing is the president’s attempt to shove New York Gov. David Paterson out of office. Paterson, a respected lieutenant governor who succeeded the obnoxious Eliot Spitzer after the latter resigned during a prostitution scandal, came to office with much bipartisan good will. However, his popularity has sunk on both sides, and his approval rating is around 20 percent. Obama recently told the Democratic governor (via a “political operative,” according to NPR) to drop his plans to run for election next year.

At this point, Paterson is in deep electoral trouble: He would probably lose to a ham and cheese sandwich, never mind Rudy Giuliani, who is rumored to be contemplating a run. Obama’s greatest fear, however, is that the unpopular Paterson would deal collateral damage to Democratic candidates farther down the ticket. In order to shore up congressional support for its agenda, the administration prefers the popular state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as the Democratic nominee.

Cuomo would almost certainly beat Paterson in the Democratic primary if he does run, but Obama should let it be a fair fight, instead of butting his head into a strictly state-level matter. The problem can’t even be described as subverting the “chain of command” because a president is nothing like a campaign manager or a CEO. Each of the fifty governors sits at the apex of a separate hierarchy to that of the president, who has no right to interfere with who runs and who doesn’t.

The Paterson episode, combined with more trivial matters such as Obama’s bumbling intervention in the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, suggests that the president doesn’t know his place in the structure of a federal system. Presidents, regardless of party, need to respect the autonomy of state and local officials who aren’t part of the federal executive branch.

Instead of trying to act as some kind of philosopher-king capable of wiping away problems big and small by giving speeches, Obama would do better for himself and the nation by focusing on stopping the mullahs of Iran from getting nukes and putting down the Taliban uprising in Afghanistan. While campaigning, Obama often emphasized he would resolve these matters; if he fails to even try, history’s verdict may be that we had a pompous nanny when we needed a commander in chief.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.