A Man at Home in the World

Obama strikes this theme in speech after speech. In San Francisco last week he derided the typical "codel" (congressional delegation) trip in which "you go from the airport to the embassy … then you go home." Obama will often refer sarcastically to the view a U.S. senator gets from a helicopter zooming over another benighted country. "You see thousands of desperate faces, but you only see them from a distance," he said in a speech last August. Al Qaeda's new recruits come from just those communities, and the key to success for America in the global sphere, he added, is to win over "that child looking up at the helicopter [who] must see America and feel hope." He knows this because he was that child once, Obama says.

This supposedly unique sense of empathy, however, could easily remind some people of Bill Clinton's propensity for "feeling their pain"—and it opens Obama up to charges of naiveté. "It is a danger," says biographer David Mendell, the Chicago Tribune reporter who wrote "Obama: From Promise to Power." "He believes that he can turn anybody to his side. His former Senate campaign manager says Obama thinks he can go into a room full of skinheads and come out with all their votes. But some people just aren't going to be won over." Obama was harshly criticized after he declared, during a debate last year, that he would sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without setting preconditions. The Bush administration and McCain have declared they would not do so at least until Tehran stops enriching uranium, and even Clinton has criticized Obama's stance. The candidate still insists that a major power like Iran must be engaged. But he's now careful to inject a note of realism into his position, telling NEWSWEEK last week that "it wouldn't make sense for us to negotiate or even have discussions with Iran probably when they are in the midst of a political season." (Iran's presidential elections are in 2009.)

Even some Dems who'd favor him in any contest against McCain also worry that Obama is overplaying his experience. "I don't know whether he's drinking his own Kool-Aid," says a former senior member of the Clinton administration who is not backing either Democratic candidate but would talk only on condition of anonymity because of his private-sector job. "I'm all for talking to the Cubans, or to the Iranians. I'm just not sure he's the guy to do it. The biggest administrative job he ever had was collecting articles for the Harvard Law Review."

It's true that one thing Obama's multicultural upbringing has left him with is enormous self-confidence. He seems to feel at home everywhere, in every kind of crowd.

Obama advisers say that background has given him a feel for what the other side in a negotiation will accept, which helps him to bridge divides. One aide recalls that during a discussion with Palestinian university students in 2006, he told them they have "legitimate aspirations" for statehood, but had to set aside dreams of destroying Israel or splitting the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Obama also shows a pragmatic willingness to find a modus vivendi—as he demonstrated when he asked Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker at hearings last week how much of an Iranian and Qaeda presence in Iraq was acceptable. Former representative Lee Hamilton, another supporter, says Obama's ability to engage with opposing points of view is critical at a time of declining American influence. "We're the world's biggest power, we have all this economic, military and technological power, but we cannot bend the world to our will. This means you have to have a president who's going to be a good listener."

Yet both Clinton and McCain have offered similar bromides about approaching the world more humbly post-Bush. Obama's camp may be on more solid ground when they argue that his fresh global perspective allows him to question traditional foreign-policy thinking. They note that when he joined the Senate in early 2005, one of the first things he did was call Republican Richard Lugar out of the blue and ask to work with him on preventing the spread of loose nukes. (The two combined on the Lugar-Obama law, which seeks to destroy and intercept conventional and nuclear weapons and WMD materials.) In last week's interview, Obama attacked the central premise of McCain's campaign, that "Islamic extremism" is the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century. "I think he's missing the forest for the trees," Obama said. "I think the defining challenge for us is to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of those who might be tempted to use them … Then we can handle the terrorists."