Cairo not the venue I wanted, but still...

I enjoyed Anthony Bubalo's post on Obama's Cairo address, and in the new Australian online magazine The Punch, I've contributed my own analysis of the speech.

In The New York Times last year, I argued that the best location for this speech would be Indonesia. I hold to the view that Indonesia offered particular advantages as a venue, including the opportunity to throw light on the diversity and richness of Islam and to demonstrate that Obama takes democracy seriously, given that Indonesia is a bustling democracy and Egypt is not. I do concede, however, that Obama's speech yesterday derived some of its emotional power from being delivered in the heart of the Arab Middle East.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Obama's visit to Cairo has revealed something else beside his views on America's relations with the Muslim world. It's also shown that even presidents get bad hair dye jobs: see the fourth photo in this SMH collection.