Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In the US, you can’t be President for more than two terms. And so, towards the end of the second term, every US President starts focusing on his “legacy”, or what posterity will remember him for (if at all). Thus, they try and do something grand, and something visible globally. Obama, of course, won the Nobel Peace Prize right after becoming President simply because for not being George W. Bush. Obama knew how ridiculous that prize was and so rightly doesn’t that count that as his legacy. Instead, his attempt at leaving a legacy seems to be to change the US’s equation with its long term enemies. First Cuba, and now Iran. And in Iran’s case, if he has indeed succeeded in setting a system in place to prevent them from going nuclear, that would be a huge bonus (at least from an American perspective). Such attempts at creating a legacy makes sense for a US President. After all, it’s not like he will do much else after his second term, right? Except if he is Jimmy Carter. Carter ...

Michael Lewis, author of books like Liar’s Poker , profiled Obama recently and I found the part about Obama’s comments on making decisions all the time was interesting. So many people complain about having too many choices, too many decisions to make, so how does Obama deal with it? After all, his decisions have far bigger impact than what most people do. One of the things Obama does is to cut down on personal decisions. Like what to wear or what to eat. Why does he do that? “Because I have too many other decisions to make”! So if he’s making that many other decisions, then why not also decide what to eat or how to dress? Apparently, Obama believes in research that found the act of making a decision degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. So he felt he should conserve his decision making for the important things only. Now combine the fact that his job is to make decisions, and he doesn’t want to “waste” that on trivial things: how does he achieve it? By routinizing himself...