Singapore

This phrase, “first Pacific president,” is everywhere here among President Obama’s senior staff. In Tokyo yesterday, Obama used it himself:

As America’s first Pacific President, I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.

It is another feather, the White House seems to suggest, in the identity politics cap that this president wears–the first African American president, first president with a Muslim father, now the first “Pacific President,” having been born in Hawaii and lived as a child in Indonesia.  (White House speechwriter Jon Favreau uses the phrase here.)

But is this first Pacific president thing true? As a native of California, I feel I am obligated to object.