During the 2008 campaign, Sarah Palin suggested that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her some insight into national security. The media lampooned her.

A bit of a double standard is at work. President Obama’s mother took him to Indonesia for a few years, and he has repeatedly cited that experience as giving him some grounding in Islam and Pacific Rim affairs. Think about it:  he was all of ten years old when his Indonesian stay ended. He was probably a bright little kid, but does anybody really think could have absorbed anything significant at that age? Yet the media take his claims seriously, even reporting without commentary his dubious self-description as the “first Pacific president.” 

Note:  a hundred years ago, we already had a president who had lived in a Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft had been governor-general of the Philippines. Might he have had a more significant experience than the 10-year-old Barack Obama?

 

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