New book underlines Obama’s global view

A new biography of President Barack Obama contends that his early years in multicultural Hawaii and Muslim Indonesia prepared him to be the nation’s first global president.

Dinesh Sharma, a cultural psychologist and marketing consultant, portrays the Hawaii-born president as a transformational figure who was elected to ease the nation into a new global age.

The author, a senior fellow at the Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Psychology at St. Francis College in New York, believes Obama’s multicultural upbringing in Honolulu and his exposure to Muslims in Jakarta influenced his character and values.

"I think the fact that he’s a hybrid president speaks to the changing times and the global challenges that we’re facing today," Sharma, who lives in New Jersey, said in a telephone interview.

The biography — "Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President" — takes a psychological and sociological approach to Obama’s life story. The author interviewed several people familiar with the president and his parents, including Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president’s sister, and Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who was at the University of Hawaii with Obama’s parents. He did not speak with the president.

Sharma describes Obama as a man who based his racial identity on a mythic view of his absentee Kenyan father — Barack Obama Sr. — but was shaped by his white, progressive, free-spirited mother — Ann Dunham — and the middle-class pragmatism of his maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.

Obama was born in Honolulu, spent several years with his mother and Indonesian stepfather in Jakarta, then returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend Punahou School.

Sharma contends that Obama’s childhood in ethnically diverse Hawaii provided a formative experience that gives the president an understanding of the importance of the Pacific in the shift in global power from West to East. He writes that Obama’s time in Jakarta provided him with "the real-life experiences of living on the Muslim street" and informed his vision of peace with the Islamic world.

"I think he’s on to something in this sense: that Obama is unlike anyone else we’ve ever had running for president," said Jerry Burris, a former political columnist who co-wrote a book on Obama’s early years in Hawaii.

"So whether you’re happy with him or not happy with him, he’s transformational. He’s different," said Burris, who was interviewed for Sharma’s book.

Many of Obama’s most active supporters in Hawaii during the presidential campaign in 2008 described Obama’s potential for transformational leadership. While many still hold that view, at least publicly, there have been some private reassessments that the "hope and change" rhetoric may have been overheated and fueled unrealistic expectations.

Sharma himself, in an op-ed piece in 2008, drew parallels between Obama and the Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi that were widely mocked by conservatives. "Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama," he wrote at the time. "Clearly, people are hungry for a change and want an inspirational leader who can serve up some hearty ‘chicken soup for the soul.’"

Obama has not, as he promised, been able to change the political culture in Washington, D.C., which is more partisan than when he was elected. His domestic policy achievements — health care reform, economic stimulus — have divided the country. The United States’ image abroad has improved under Obama, but his foreign policy highlights — tracking down and killing terrorist Osama bin Laden, troop withdrawal from Iraq — have not revived his low job approval ratings.

State Sen. Sam Slom (R, Diamond Head-Hawaii Kai) said he believes some of the early glow around Obama was because the news media did a poor job of vetting his background. He also thinks Obama benefited from the anger directed at President George W. Bush.

"So you had that with a new face, with a lack of information, with the idea that people really did believe in him — with the pictures of him gaining so much popularity, not only across the country with tremendous rallies, but also around the world," he said. "So I think it was a special time and a special moment."

Sharma, however, remains optimistic about Obama’s presidency. "Clearly, the hype about transformation was very high-pitched. And a lot of promises were made in the sort of high-fevered pitch of the campaign," he said. "But I think I would say at the same time, though, that President Obama did repeatedly say that it was not going to be easy, that the change was going to be hard."