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Indyk, Fullilove, Obama and Corleone

Indyk, Fullilove, Obama and Corleone
Published 6 May 2013   Follow @SamRoggeveen

[vimeo:65359844]

'80 percent of life is showing up', said Woody Allen. But did he have any advice about leaving?

As my post from last Thursday made clear, I was more than pleased I showed up to Martin Indyk's speech on the Middle East and the Obama pivot, the full video for which is now available above and on our Vimeo channel.

What I should not have done was leave the room to fetch a pad and pencil at the beginning of the Q&A session. For it was at that exact moment (32.00 in the video) that Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove, chairing the Q&A, made reference to Obama's 'Michael Corleone moment' in the Middle East. In fact, it's not even the first time he's invoked the famous quote from The Godfather III: 'just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in'.

For those who were there and who later read my analysis, which invoked the same quote, it must have looked like I was claiming Michael's pop culture framing as my own. Not so. Clearly we have similar taste in movies, but in this case, Michael got there well before me.




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