Please read this

A good blog post (but a blog post none-the-less, so make sure, if you'd like, to take it with a grain of salt)

Regardless of whether everything in it is true or not, read here a summary of the conclusion:

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

[...]

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

[...]

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

[..]

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

Regardless of whether Obama actually said this (or something like this) or not, isn't that a really good point?

I would have gone further, though I wouldn't have to be as worried of being branded an elitist. I've said this before - the new perspective that traveling abroad gives you is forceful enough to fundamentally alter your understanding of the world and its inhabitants. It is an incredibly powerful experience and I don't yet have the skill to convey it into words. Actually living abroad for an extended period of time is a similar type of experience but intensified a thousand times. I could go on and on trying to describe how immersing yourself in a foreign culture affects you as a person (mostly positively) by keening your intellect regarding how people think and how the world operates. I know some people believe that you can gain that same understanding by flipping through the pages of national geographic, or reading a biography of a famous foreigner like, say, Nelson Mendela. Those things help, but they are not the same.

I would say that it's a critical perspective to have when you are in charge with dealing with the world as president of the US. I don't know which of our previous presidents have ever had such an experience, but I'd really like to find out how that might correlate with their foreign policy.