“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.”
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “There was a second incident here which was I thought interesting — when the president declared himself the ‘first Pacific president.’ That’s because, presumably, he grew up and spent some of his childhood in Hawaii and in Indonesia, and his mom took him on a visit to Japan, although all he remembers of that, as he says, was the ice cream.
The first Pacific president? Well, Teddy Roosevelt, he built the Panama Canal in order to make the United States a Pacific power, and he did.
Howard Taft, his successor, was the governor of the Philippines. And John Kennedy and George Bush Sr. were in the Pacific theater in the second World War, and, in fact, spent sometime in the Pacific ocean itself — Bush after having been shot down from his airplane, and Kennedy after having his ship cut in half by a Japanese patrol boat. So, these people actually spent time in the Pacific. But in Obama’s mind, it doesn’t any way match the experience of the baby Jesus, excuse me, the baby Obama growing up on some Pacific island.
The narcissism of the man is rather unbounded. But you see, everything in Obama’s life makes him world historical.”