When you show up as Barack Obama in India or Indonesia, no one there cares about the midterm results. This created a strange discordance between the somber bubble we traveled within and the enthusiasm outside it. I packed the schedule—Barack and Michelle Obama dancing with schoolchildren in Mumbai; Obama holding a town hall meeting with students; the first African American president paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi; Obama, the man who lived in Indonesia as a child, delighting a crowd with phrases in Indonesian. Those were always my favorite moments on trips—moments that connect a
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