NEW YORK, Nov 13 (APP): Former US President Barack Obama, in his forthcoming memoir, has made some sharp comments about foreign leaders and politicians, including Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, with whom he interacted during his eight years in the White House.
Obama described Gandhi, the 50-year-old Congress leader, as having a “nervous, unformed quality” about him, “like a student eager to impress the teacher but lacking aptitude and passion to master the subject.”
The comments came in his memoir ‘A Promised Land’, according to a review published in The New York Times on Thursday.
The 768-page book, expected to hit the stands on November 17, chronicles Obama’s childhood and political rise, before diving deeply into his historic 2008 presidential campaign that brought him to power.
“The Promised Land” is the first a two-part memoir written by the 59-year-old former US President.
Apart from Rahul Gandhi, the memoire contains Obama’s impressions of several American and world leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Vladimir Putin.
He offered a more positive assessment of another Congress figure, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a mild-mannered economist whom Obama has also praised publicly.
The review said about Rahul Gandhi’s mother, “We are told of the handsomeness of men like Charlie Crist and Rahm Emanuel, but not the beauty of women, except for one or two instances, as in the case of Sonia Gandhi.”
It added that Russian President Vladimir Putin reminds Obama of the tough, street-smart ward bosses who used to run the Chicago machine. “Physically, he was unremarkable,” Obama writes of Putin.
Obama and Putin had a tense relationship during former’s presidency.
About the recent winner of the US presidential elections and fellow Democrat Joe Biden, Obama says, “He is a decent man who might get prickly if he thought he wasn’t given his due –– a quality that might flare up when dealing with a much younger boss”.
No Pakistani leader has been mentioned in the first part of Obama’s memoire in the Times’ review.
