Via The Corner:
"America's first Pacific president" [John J. Pitney Jr.]
“As America's first Pacific president,” said President Obama in Tokyo, “I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”
It is true that the president was born in Hawaii (sorry, birthers), lived from ages six to ten in Indonesia, and attended a Honolulu prep school. But he is not our first Pacific president. Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913, and spent much more of his life in the Pacific region than the current president has. Moreover, while Barack Obama made his career in Chicago and Springfield, Ronald Reagan made his in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
And the incumbent is hardly the first chief executive to have lived in another Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft was governor-general of the Philippines. Dwight Eisenhower had military postings in the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Herbert Hoover worked as a mining engineer in Australia and China; he even learned to speak Mandarin. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 all served in the Pacific during the Second World War. What they did as adults was perhaps more consequential than what Obama did as a child.
— John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Maybe so, but as they were adults, their views were already largely formed. I think there's a valuable enough distinction to be made between growing up in a region and arriving in one as an adult.
ReplyDeleteAnd I realize California is, technically, "Pacific," but it's much, much farther away (geographically and culturally) from the countries Pres. Obama is currently meeting in than either Indonesia or Hawaii.
Not that I particularly care, but fun for historical trivia.
While the whole discussion is of course not particularly significant, I would say that I find it hard to believe that the very few years that Pres. Obama spent as a child would create a larger "Pacific identity" than the years and decades that numerous previous presidents had where they were paid to interact with and understand Pacific cultures and lands (in addition to their merely residing).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I forget where you grew up (I thought it was California, but I must be mistaken), but as a West Coaster who has lived/spent considerable time in all three coastal-contiguous states, I would suggest to you that culturally, the West Coast states are very much "Pacific" in mentality and focus. (One of the reasons I don't particularly like nor get the East Coast mentality).
This is particularly true of California, where major immigration patterns have resulted in wide-spread and culturally significant immigrant groups that bring to the fore Pacific culture, ideas, and mindsets in both immigrants and natives alike. I don't mean to suggest that we all wear Non La's or grass skirts, but Pacific culture is very present in everything from the food we eat to the part of the globe that little boys stare at for hours in wonder. (I might be self-referencing here as an example :)). We are a Pacific-American culture to the stuffy Europhile East Coast.