Marc Andreessen on Barack Obama

04 March 2008 in Notes, Politics by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

Netscape founder Marc Andreessen spent 90 minutes with Barack Obama in early 2007. His report on that conversation is fascinating: “He said — and I’m going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am — my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it’s going to mean in many parts of the world — parts of the world that we really care about — when I show up as the President of the United States. I’ll be fundamentally changing the world’s perception of what the United States is all about.”

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  1. jason’s avatar

    jason on 05 March 2008 at 11:17 am

    Sadly, it’s exactly that angle that could dampen his campaign.

    Americans want to focus on their own. With Iraq refusing to be a democracy *ahem*, the constant buzz about recession, some fat guy making movies about their rotting healthcare system, house prices not tripling in value like they’d hoped, and Asian states powering ahead, who can really blame them.

    Who’d of thought that in this modern age so many countries would be so uncosmopolitan. If only Dubya had spent that $1.2 trillion dollars on making America the super power that the world really needs it to be.

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  2. Stilgherrian’s avatar

    Stilgherrian on 05 March 2008 at 12:36 pm

    @jason: Nail hit square on the had there, sir! While many Americans could probably well spend a bit more time thinking about more than just their own little deep-fried patch of the earth, they do have plenty of domestic issues to worry about. And while Marc Andreessen, well-travelled chap that he is, thinks about America’s image abroad, most couldn’t care less.

    Indeed, most seem to be upset by the fact that the man wore the traditional clothing of the place he was visiting, instead of a loud Hawaiian shirt and a loud, offensive attitude.

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  3. Sweet Sister Morphine’s avatar

    Sweet Sister Morphine on 05 March 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Kind of funny that a country with so many internal issues is seemingly so focused on imposing its values on the rest of the world. And kind of sad that many Americans probably won’t see the value in a leader who is willing to learn from other societies.

    Reply

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