By Dinesh Sharma

£32.46

Little-known senator Barack Obama toppled American political heavyweights to become the first biracial and first African-American Presi-dent of the United States after sweeping the 2008 presidential election. However, now his bid for a second term as the President this year is being stymied by weak economy and almost non-existent job creation.

American cultural psychologist of Indian-origin Dinesh Sharma, who has analysed how Obama’s childhood and upbringing shaped his persona in his book Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President, feels he can win a second term if the economic indicators stay positive.
The second term, if Obama wins, will be less hampered by Opposition, Sharma says, and Obama could even rule by decree, by using his executive powers. “He is too cautious and calculating to do that but certainly could push his big initiatives in that manner.”
“His supporters feel that given the opposition he has faced, he has done his best,” Princeton-based Sharma says, adding that Obama moved the ball ahead on multiple fronts like education, health, women, same-sex marriages, cultural and reproductive issues.
The challenges that the US now faces are now different, are of different magnitude and order. He grew up in the Pacific and interestingly the economic challenges that the US faces are all from the Asia Pacific region — from China, from India, from Southeast Asia, Sharma explains.
“He spent time in Indonesia, he lived in Hawaii through the 1960s and 1970s when Japan was rising and Tiger economies were rising economically. I feel that President Obama really understands that the US needs to remain a Pacific power to remain relevant in the 21st century,” he adds.
“The reason that Americans voted for Obama first time was that he raised their hopes high, he was a change-maker and was seen as a change-maker. The challenges he faced in his first term were in some way very deep and insurmountable. Given the large challenges he had, he has done well in his first term,” Sharma, who is a psychologist and an anthropologist, says, adding that Obama would definitely get a passing grade for his first term achievements.
Sharma, who has a doctorate from Harvard University, describes his book as biographical, cultural and psychological study of Obama for which he interviewed his half­Indonesian sister Maya Soetoro­Ng, and his teachers, classmates and friends at Islamic Public and Catholic schools in Jakarta and also the Punahou School in Honolulu.
“I know from research and from medical, sociological, cultural, neurological and psychological studies that the environment, the culture, and the society have a significant impact on a person’s outlook. Early environment shapes human mind to think, feel and act in a particular way and with that in mind, I decided to research the interesting childhood of Obama,” Sharma says, explaining why he decided to analyse Obama’s childhood and upbringing to trace his development as a globally­minded person and a politician. Sharma, who researched his book for almost two years and took eight months to write,
“Obama’s unique parentage — his father was an African, who lived in the United States for a brief interlude and then returned to Africa and his mother spent most of her time in Hawaii or Indonesia — fascinated me. For the first time in the US, we had a candidate running for the highest office whose parents were internationalists and very global in their thinking,” he explains.