President Without Borders

[babylonsister]

President Without Borders

by Ruth E. Van Reken


Ruth E. Van Reken is a second generation adult TCK and mother of 3 ATCKs. She speaks nationally and internationally on issues related to global family living. She is co-founder of Families in Globlal Transition. In addition to other writing, Ruth is co-editor of Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds.

Obama brings the expat experience to the White House


John Quincy Adams lived in France, and young Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Europe often enough to master French and German, but Barack Obama is the first modern American president to have spent some of his formative years outside the United States. It is a trait he shares with several appointees to the new administration: White House advisor Valerie Jarrett was a child in Tehran and London, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was raised in east Africa, India, Thailand, China and Japan as the son of a Ford Foundation executive, and National Security Advisor James L. Jones was raised in Paris. (Also, Bill Richardson, tipped as Secretary of Commerce, grew up in Mexico City.)

This is more than a trivial coincidence. So-called “Third Culture Kids” -- and the adults they become – share certain emotional and psychological traits that may exert great influence in the new administration. According to a body of sociological literature devoted to children who spend a portion of their developmental years outside their “passport country,” the classic profile of a “TCK” is someone with a global perspective who is socially adaptable and intellectually flexible. He or she is quick to think outside the box and can appreciate and reconcile different points of view. Beyond whatever diversity in background or appearance a TCK may bring to the party, there is a diversity of thought as well.

But TCKs can also feel rootless and detached. The great challenge for maturing Third Culture Kids is to forge a sense of personal and cultural identity from the various environments to which they been exposed. Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, could serve as a textbook in the TCK syllabus, a classic search for self-definition, described in living color. Obama’s colleagues on the Harvard Law Review were among the first to note both his exceptional skill at mediating among competing arguments and the aloofness that made his own views hard to discern. That cool manner of seeming “above it all” is also a classic feature of the Third Culture Kid.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/obamas-third-culture-team/

[Clio the Leo]

1. One of the many reasons I voted for him twice is....

.... while he understands that America is the BEST country, he knows, unlike any other candidate could, that we are not the ONLY country.

It will be so awesome to have a President who isn't going to act like he's the bully at the top of the hill, daring any other kid on the playground to come knock him off.

[Bitter_Clinger]

2. Well, the President of World

is never anything that I would my President to assume he is. The interests of the country who elected him should be first, even to the detriment of others if need be. I do not elect my President for the good of China, Zimbabwe or Chad and more than they elect their own (if they do) for our benefit.

[Clio the Leo]

3. We're all in this together kid. ;-) NT

[Bobbieo]

4. My hope is that Obama rescinds Bush's Global Gag Order

to restore US funding for International Planned Parenthood. Signing that order was Bush's first official Act in 2001.

The only reason I could see for the order, in the first place, was to ensure an endless supply of slave labor for his international corporate buddies.

[Bitter_Clinger]

5. I certainly hope not.

Countries all over the world can sink without it affecting my job and livelyhood and I would be okay with it. Someone else being poor does not mean I should be poor right along with them.

[Clio the Leo]

6. Well, I cant say it better than this...

"It’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people ... It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family." ~ Barack Obama, July 2004

Sure, he's talking about Americans there but since Our President has never been accused of being a protectionist, and since to deny that philosophy to the citizens of the world would mean denying it to his own family, I would venture to guess that's something he believes to be true for the entire planet.

[Starry Messenger]

7. That's nice. n/t

[Vickers]

8. "livelyhood"

Heh...dead giveaway.

:rofl:

Welcome to DU! Mai kitteh sez lol!