Heartfelt Moments on an Up-and-Down Global Trip
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 13, 2010
YOKOHAMA, Japan — It was billed as a diplomatic and economic tour of Asia, but President Obama will have literally circled the globe by the time he returns to Washington on Sunday evening.
He left the White House two Fridays ago, heading east to Mumbai, India, then continued to New Delhi; Jakarta, Indonesia; Seoul, South Korea; and Yokohama, with plans for Air Force One to refuel in Alaska on the way home. It was a grueling 10-day excursion, Mr. Obama's longest overseas journey as president.
He won hearts in India with his forthright answers to college students and awkward dance moves with disadvantaged children, and in Indonesia, where his personal biography resonated. In both countries, he got a boost from his popular wife, Michelle.
And he took knocks, especially in Seoul, where he could not seem to shake the word "failure" — as in, failure to bring home a promised trade pact with South Korea.
Yet amid the president's diplomatic highs and lows, there were personal moments, insignificant in the grand scheme of international relations, yet revealing just the same. Here are three:
"Namaste," Mr. Obama said as he walked into a classroom at Holy Name High School on a hot Sunday morning in Mumbai.
The school was also the scene of Mr. Obama's much-publicized dancing. But before he got his groove on, the president did something that appealed to his wonkish side: he toured student presentations on the importance of wind and solar energy, rain-water harvesting and a model "eco-village" with a windmill. Standing before the diorama, he drew his hands together, as if in prayer, and greeted the children with a slight bow.
The expo was heavy with warnings about the destruction of the planet. A cardboard sea was shown swallowing up a blue globe, with the label "Sinking Earth." Oversize cigarettes were bound and wired, marked "RDX of Cancer," apparently a reference to an explosive. The children had clearly prepared, but there was something they did not know about the president: he is an occasional smoker.
"Today," a teenage boy said earnestly, "about 1.3 billion people all over the world smoke. And when a person smokes he exhales harmful pollutants into the air. And these pollutants add to the gases, and they also harm the smoker." If that continued, the boy said, the world would "look like this — black burnt carbon earth." He pointed to a papier-mâché rock with a crying face.
"Hmmm," Mr. Obama said. "You don't want to live on that."
Childhood Memories
Mr. Obama was so focused on India, aides say, that he barely had time to think about his next stop, Indonesia, where he had spent four years as a boy. But aboard Air Force One from New Delhi to Jakarta, he began thinking about the speech he was to deliver, and his childhood memories came flooding back.
"I think it really hit him: 'I'm going back to Jakarta as president,' " said Ben Rhodes, a top foreign policy adviser. "That's a powerful thing."
Mr. Rhodes ordinarily writes Mr. Obama's speeches when the president is overseas, but Mr. Obama wanted a big hand in this one. So he began jotting notes on Air Force One stationery about the sights and sounds of his childhood: the street vendors hawking skewered beef and spicy meatballs, the bicycle rickshaws on unpaved roads, the mango tree in front of the house where he lived with his mother and stepfather. He gave Mr. Rhodes the notes, in his left-handed curlicue scrawl. The adviser could barely read them.
At the state dinner in his honor that night. Mr. Obama — after an elaborate arrival ceremony, a business meeting with the Indonesian president and a joint news conference — struggled to stay awake during the toasts. When the meal was over, he retired to his room at the Shangri-La Hotel and began writing once again.
Presidential trips are always fraught with logistical challenges, but the Indonesia visit was more complex than most. A cloud of volcanic ash was headed toward Jakarta, and most of the reporters on the trip were going to have to leave early — before Mr. Obama delivered the speech. Mr. Rhodes, aware of the time crunch, had promised an advance copy as soon as the president put his pen down. It arrived by e-mail, at 12:30 a.m.
Weary Band Soldiers On
By the time Mr. Obama arrived in this port city, pretty much everyone in his entourage, weary reporters included, was cranky and ready to go home. His national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, opened a news briefing on Saturday afternoon by teasing that the White House had decided to add three or four more stops. But with a string of "bilats" — diplomatic jargon for bilateral, or one-on-one, meetings between world leaders — facing the president at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Mr. Obama and his irritable press pool had little choice but to soldier on.
Such sessions follow a well-worn format. First comes the "pool spray," where the two leaders exchange pleasantries before the cameras. Mr. Obama's meeting with Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia — their first face-to-face encounter — on Saturday began typically enough. The pool crammed into a small room, and Mr. Obama opened by declaring that "the United States does not have a closer or better ally than Australia." Ms. Gillard returned the favor, proclaiming the United States and her country "great mates."
As aides to the leaders ushered the reporters out, a voice piped up from the back, "Thank you, Mr. President!" Mr. Obama seemed puzzled; someone told him it was an Australian. "I knew it must have been an Australian," Mr. Obama replied, "because my folks never say thank you."
With that, the American press corps broke out in a unified show of exaggerated good manners: "Thaaaannk you, Mr. President."
Obama's whirlwind Tour of Asia
