"Worlds Apart"

Terrific piece in Newsweek, comparing the development of McCain and Obama. I find that the more I learn about Obama's worldview, the more sure I am that he's the right person to the the president. Here's the first 2 paragraphs:

Books have been written about 1968—"The Year That Made Us Who We Are," as NEWSWEEK proclaimed in a cover story 40 years later. The nation was gripped by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, Nixon's election. Far from the headlines, it was also a year that helped make John McCain and Barack Obama who they are. Both future senators had arrived in Southeast Asia around that time. Obama was a happy-go-lucky kid in Jakarta, thrilling to his exotic new surroundings—which included a pet crocodile—yet also savoring visits to the place he came to see as a symbol of hope and opportunity, the U.S. Embassy's American Club. McCain wasn't that far away from Obama geographically—Hanoi lies about 1,800 miles north of Jakarta—but as a 31-year-old naval aviator who had recently been shot down, he was beginning the five years of brutal imprisonment that would come to define his life and public persona.

Despite the 25-year gap in McCain's and Obama's ages, their Asian sojourns began to awaken parallel passions in each man: a love for his distant country, a keen appreciation of the unique values America stands for and a strong sense that it is America's destiny to keep the world an orderly place. Yet they also mark the beginning of journeys that would lead them to very different judgments about how the United States should fulfill that mission.