"Below Par"

I've heard from a couple of Indian friends that they think Obama's performance has been below par. Their objections mostly center on either the fact that he hasn't bombed Pakistan into the stone age yet, or the coming trouble with H1B visas. With all due respect, Obama wasn't elected President of the United States to pursue Indian interests, he was elected to pursue America's self-interest. It's a little pathetic to expect the US to do our dirty work for us, and then curse them when they don't.

Having said that, for the record, Obama has been much more clear-eyed about the probem presented by our neighbour than Bush was, or Mac or Hillary would've been. And the H1B restrictions have broad support in the Congress; they would've been pushed through regardless of who the president was.

I appreciate that Obama has made mistakes, but the right metric to judge him on is not how well he's fulfilling the Indian wishlist, but how well he's doing the job he was elected to do. More on that in the next post.