Bruce L.R. Smith: The Barack Obama Sr. I Knew
[The writer is a retired senior staff member of the Brookings Institution and now a visiting professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy.]
I suspect I am one of the few Americans still alive and modestly in possession of his faculties who knew President Obama's father, and I see nothing of the man I knew in Dinesh D'Souza's Oct. 8 Washington Forum commentary, "The dreams from his father."
Barack Obama Sr. was a graduate student in the economics department at Harvard while I was in the government department as a PhD student....
He was, in fact, an urbane, Western-oriented intellectual -- of a modestly leftist bent, to be sure, but much like many Indian, Pakistani and other Third World exchange students who studied economic development. Obama was playful, jested a lot and had histrionic gifts that he frequently displayed in his deep voice.
He was overall, though, a serious man (even if it wasn't always easy to tell when he was joking and when he was serious), extremely private and something of a mystery to his classmates. He disappeared at times, apparently on travel connected with his fellowship, then would reappear in good spirits and give the appearance of having accomplished some mission. It was known that he was close to Tom Mboya, a leading Kenyan politician who many thought would be a great friend of the West. Some of his fellow economics students speculated that Obama Sr. was on some sort of mission for Mboya, but no one really knew....
Read entire article at WaPo
I suspect I am one of the few Americans still alive and modestly in possession of his faculties who knew President Obama's father, and I see nothing of the man I knew in Dinesh D'Souza's Oct. 8 Washington Forum commentary, "The dreams from his father."
Barack Obama Sr. was a graduate student in the economics department at Harvard while I was in the government department as a PhD student....
He was, in fact, an urbane, Western-oriented intellectual -- of a modestly leftist bent, to be sure, but much like many Indian, Pakistani and other Third World exchange students who studied economic development. Obama was playful, jested a lot and had histrionic gifts that he frequently displayed in his deep voice.
He was overall, though, a serious man (even if it wasn't always easy to tell when he was joking and when he was serious), extremely private and something of a mystery to his classmates. He disappeared at times, apparently on travel connected with his fellowship, then would reappear in good spirits and give the appearance of having accomplished some mission. It was known that he was close to Tom Mboya, a leading Kenyan politician who many thought would be a great friend of the West. Some of his fellow economics students speculated that Obama Sr. was on some sort of mission for Mboya, but no one really knew....