Obama won’t ‘walk the talk’ on outsourcing jobs to India: Presidential biographer

WASHINGTON - Presidential biographer William Chafe has said that the US President Barack Obama may talk tough about clamping down on outsourcing jobs to India, but his international upbringing and perspective would make it difficult for him to take literal steps in this regard.

According to the Wall Streets Journal, Chafe has said that Obama’s background makes him unique in the history of American presidents as not only he is the only president who spent his childhood years in an Asian country, Indonesia, but also is the only one known to be of a mixed racial background and whose seminal political experience involved working as a community organizer in a slum.

“So unlike Ronald Regan who saw Russia as the ‘evil empire,’ or George Bush, who spoke of the ‘axis of evil,’ Obama doesn’t deal in binary terms. Obama wants to engage the rest of the world on its own terms, in a dialogue of respect,” Chafe, a longtime American history professor at Duke University who is now vice provost for undergraduates at the school, added.

It is speculated that during his visit to India later this week, talks between him and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would include sensitive topics like U.S. companies’ outsourcing jobs to India.

With the American economy still struggling with high unemployment, the exporting of jobs to India, a hot topic during Obama’s election campaign, remains a sensitive subject, the paper said.

Chafe, who is finishing a biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton has said that where President Clinton “grew into an international role” in his second term, becoming obsessive about trying to win peace in the Middle East, Obama started his presidency with a strong international understanding, and added that because of his background, Obama will likely be even more pro-India than Clinton.

“Obama recognizes the 21st century is in India and China-not in Europe, he is going to be more open in recognizing the power of India and the power of the Indian economy,” he added. (ANI)