From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

Six years after he was first elected President of the United States, Barack Obama remains something of an enigma to the public he presides over.

Ironically, this isn’t due to the President being particularly reticent about himself. After all, judging from his two books, the subject Obama finds most enthralling is Obama. …

One reason for this obscurity is that aspects of Obama’s personal background are genuinely exotic to almost all Americans, which limits the quality of questions. For example, Obama’s Indonesian connections – as a child he lived in Jakarta from 1967-1971, shortly after the notorious massacre of Communists and Chinese; then in the 1980s Obama came fairly close to marrying a wealthy Australian woman with striking and shadowy family ties to the highest circles of power in Indonesia—are perplexing to even the best-informed Americans.