Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Different Years

Obama spent ages 6-10 in Indonesia. Had he spent ages 16-20, or 26-30, he would have been a different president.

I'm thinking a better president, but admitting it's a roll of the dice.

4 comments:

Kitten said...

My guess is that the reason he thinks of doctors the way he does is because he lived in a third world country at a very impressionable age. It doesn't seem like he's been able to make the mental leap beyond whatever it was that he saw as a child.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Different for sure. As for better, what's your professional view on the importance of "early child development"? Or, does the answer depend on the degree to which Obama is an autodidact (as I suspect)?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I really don't know, Carl. Things can go either way in a culture, depending on who you want to identify with. But economically, third-world countries have a lot more people who believe the rule is "hustle or die," and this affects their politics.

Gringo said...

The age at which Obama lived in the Third World definitely made a difference. My working in third-world countries changed me from a progressive of the left into an evil right winger. I compared what my experience of the Third World was, with the prog litany regarding the Third World and the US, compared with my knowledge of the US. An elementary school age child doesn't have that experience base or knowledge base to make such a comparison.

A further point about the age difference is that a child will modify himself more to fit into an environment than will an adult. An adult isn't as malleable.

Obama got mixed messages from his mother regarding the US. On the one hand, she didn't want to associate with the oil company Americans that her Indonesian husband worked with. On the other hand, she tutored him early in the morning to make sure his schooling was up to date compared to his age group in the US.