Obama recalled how he’d finished Dreams from My Father in Bali, writing in longhand because it helped him think. I looked around at this terrace, with its endless view of the Pacific, and it occurred to me how far away this suite was from some backpacking destination in Bali. This part of the world, which had shaped Obama, was going to be more important to the future than the familiar battlefields of the Middle East, but it was distant from the debates that dominated in Washington. “This really is a great view,” he said. Obama got up to go to bed, and I walked down a flight of stairs to my
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