Our First Pacific President

Another recent comment, this time by President Barack Obama while speaking in Japan: "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.”

One wonders what the qualifications might be to be a "Pacific President." Southern Man nominates the following:

Before he was President, William H. Taft was Governor-General of the Phillipines for four years. That makes him a Pacific Governor-General, doesn't it?

Herbert Hoover worked extensively as a mining engineer in Australia and learned Mandarin while posted to China (he and his wife chatted in Mandarin to foil eavesdroppers in the White House).

Richard M. Nixon was born in California and spent far more time in the Pacific region than has Glorious Leader.

Ronald W. Reagan moved to the West Coast as a young man and spent most of his lengthy and successful career there.

Numerous former presidents - Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and George H. W. Bush - served in the Pacific during WWII. And Southern Man thought that DDE was merely an Atlantic President.

The One was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia for a few years as a child, and went back to Hawaii for prep school before launching his law career in the Pacific state of Illinois.

You make the call.