Shouldering the world

[jonathansfox]

The Fox News immediate spin on Obama's election was to talk about all the expectations and promises and question whether he'll live up to them. It seems with all that disappointing to do, Obama has been pragmatic, and gotten started early

Comments

[zaimoni]

And, considering that Obama did spend some of his childhood attending a madrassas for lack of other public education in Indonesia: I doubt these headlines are surprising to him.

[jonathansfox]

Hmm. While I don't wish to diminish Obama's foreign policy judgment, I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning for it. There are several reasons:

- Obama only spent two years in a muslim school, the other two years in Indonesia were at a catholic school.
- The public schools in Indonesia are mostly secular, and he'd have attended about two hours a week of Koran study.
- Indonesia is outside the middle east and its people are mostly east asian in ethnicity.
- Obama was quite young at the time, and unlikely to be studying international politics.

While I'm sure the time was a valuable broadening experience for him, I'm inclined to think the experience of Koran study as a kid grants relatively little insight into middle east headlines, even if they are about him appointing a prominent former Israeli to chief of staff.

[zaimoni]

Unfortunately (since about 10% of what he knows politically and what his preferred stances are, are actually knowable via normal-media), there isn't that much to make informed guesses from. A gut reaction for how Southeast Asian Muslims would react is still going to be not completely wrong when overgeneralized to the Middle East.

While Obama obviously has the sense to choose Biden as a foreign policy adviser, much of Obama's base was openly choosing him because they thought he supported their foreign policy cluelessness.

(I don't think this is true at all, as Obama and McCain are not materially different on foreign policy. The main policy plank on which Obama and McCain were different, that I find Obama scary on, is his ideal plans for health insurance. They are about the worst possible thing that could happen to the standard of medical care for the completely uninsured.)