History of Barack Obama

 

History of Barack Obama

Barack Obama, born Barack Hussein Obama II on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Obama served in the Senate from 2005 until he was elected president, during which time he was the senator for Illinois. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1877, he was only the third African American to be elected to that legislature. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Early life

Barack Obama, Sr., the president's father, started as a goatherd in rural Kenya when he was a teenager. He finally earned a scholarship to study in the United States and rose through the ranks to become a senior economist for the Kenyan government. S. Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, was born in Kansas and raised in Texas and Washington before moving to Honolulu with her family. They wed a little over a year after meeting in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in 1960 when she was a student and he was a professor.

Obama's father, Barack Sr., left the family when he was two years old to attend Harvard University, and a year later, in 1964, he and Obama's mother, Ann, had a divorce. (Obama's last contact with his father was a quick visit when he was ten.) Ann later remarried an Indonesian student named Lolo Soetoro, and the two produced another daughter named Maya. Obama and his half-sister, mother, and stepfather spent several years in Jakarta. Obama had some Islamic education at a public institution and went to a Catholic private school where he learned about Christianity.

In 1971, he moved back to Hawaii, where he shared a small apartment with his grandparents and occasionally his mother (who had stayed in Indonesia for a while, returned to Hawaii, and then gone abroad again, in part to pursue work on a PhD, until divorcing Soetoro in 1980). His mother received food stamps for a short time, but otherwise, his family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Obama completed his high school education at Honolulu's prestigious Punahou School in 1979.

Politics and ascent to the presidency of Barack Obama

After being elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, he played a key role in reforming criminal justice and welfare policies and tightening limits on campaign money. In 2004, he became the first African American to face off against a Republican incumbent for a Senate seat in the United States, and he won. Obama's keynote talk at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 brought him widespread attention as he ran for the U.S. Senate. Obama's life story was intertwined with a universal message of unity among Americans, regardless of where they live or their political beliefs. The speech propelled Obama's previously unknown memoir to the top of the bestseller lists, and he soon rose to prominence within his party after taking office the following year. In August 2006, Obama made headlines worldwide when he travelled to Kenya to meet his father's family. The Audacity of Hope (2006), his second book, was a mainstream diatribe of his vision for the United States and became an instant bestseller after its release. In February of 2007, he declared his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln had served as a state senator. (See the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election for more information on that election

Many Democrats, especially those who identified as young or minority, were moved by Obama's charm and oratory and vowed to shake up the political system. Obama defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favourite to earn the nomination, in a stunning upset at Iowa caucused on January 3, 2008. However, Obama came in second to Clinton in the New Hampshire primary five days later, and the battle from then on out was rough and occasionally vicious. Obama won over a dozen states on Super Tuesday, February 5. These included his home state of Illinois and the electoral bellwether of Missouri. Clinton won numerous populous states like California and New York but was not the clear frontrunner. After Super Tuesday, Obama went on a streak that saw him easily win the 11 primaries and caucuses that followed, giving him a commanding lead in pledged delegates. The early March victory by Clinton in key states like Ohio and Texas stalled his momentum. Obama lost the crucial Pennsylvania vote on April 22 but still leads in delegates. Two weeks later, he narrowly lost in Indiana but widened his delegate lead over Clinton by winning the North Carolina primary. While she started with a sizable advantage in superdelegates, many unaffiliated with state primary results flipped to Obama as he won more states and genuine delegates at the convention. Obama secured the Democratic candidacy on June 3 after receiving more committed delegates than was required during the last elections in Montana and South Dakota.

Obama challenged Republican Sen. John McCain for the presidency on November 2, 2008, becoming the first African American to do so after receiving the nomination of a major political party. McCain claimed that Obama lacked the experience to be president because he was only a first-term senator. Obama countered by choosing Joe Biden, a senator with extensive experience in foreign policy, as his running partner. Obama and McCain fought an intense and costly campaign. Still riding high on a wave of public enthusiasm, Obama rejected federal funding for his campaign in favour of raising hundreds of millions of dollars through a massive number of small donations made possible by the Internet. Obama was able to buy extensive television advertising and develop robust grassroots organizations in crucial battleground areas and states that had voted Republican in prior presidential campaigns because of his fundraising advantage.

Voters had a clear ideological choice between the two candidates. McCain said the United States must wait for full victory in Iraq and charged that Obama's rhetoric was long on eloquence but short on substance. At the same time, Obama called for a swift withdrawal of most combat forces and a restructuring of tax policy that would bring more relief to lower and middle-class voters. The Republican free-market-driven policies of George W. Bush's eight-year administration were blamed by Obama's campaign in the election's final weeks. This meltdown was caused by the catastrophic failure of U.S. banks and financial institutions in September.

Obama was declared the winner with 53% of the popular and 365 electoral votes. Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia were among the states Obama won that had gone to John Kerry in 2004. Obama also won back several more states the Republicans had won in the two previous presidential elections. Thousands gathered in Grant Park in Chicago on election night to watch Obama win. Obama left the Senate soon after his victory. Many people flocked to Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2009, to see Barack Obama sworn in as president.