BARACK OBAMA

Barack Hussein Obama II(US i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/;[2][3]born August 4, 1961) is an American politician serving as the 44th Presidentof the United States. He is the firstAfrican American to hold the office, as well as the first president born outside of the continental United States. Born inHonolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was acommunity organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as acivil rights attorney and taughtconstitutional law at University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. He served three termsrepresenting the 13th District in theIllinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, andran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush.

In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the MarchDemocratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, aftera close primary campaign againstHillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and wasinaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was named the2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

During his first two years in office, Obama signed into law economic stimulus legislation in response to theGreat Recession in the form of theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other major domestic initiatives in his first term included thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign policy, Obama ended U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War, increased U.S. troop levels inAfghanistan, signed the New STARTarms control treaty with Russia, orderedU.S. military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In January 2011, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives as the Democratic Party lost a total of 63 seats; and, after a lengthy debate over federal spending and whether or not to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.

Obama was reelected president in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term, Obama has promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and has called for greater inclusiveness forLGBT Americans, while his administration has filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and state level same-sex marriagebans as unconstitutional. In foreign policy, Obama ordered U.S. military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by the Islamic State after the2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, andnormalized U.S. relations with Cuba.

Early life and career

Main articles: Family of Barack Obama and Early life and career of Barack Obama

Obama was born on August 4, 1961,[4]at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii;[5][6][7] he is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.[8] His mother,Stanley Ann Dunham, born in Wichita,Kansas, was of mostly English ancestry.[9] His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at theUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student onscholarship.[10][11] The couple married inWailuku on Maui on February 2, 1961,[12][13] and separated when, in late August 1961, Obama's mother moved with their newborn son to attend theUniversity of Washington in Seattle for a year. During that time, Obama Sr. completed his undergraduate economics degree in Hawaii in June 1962, then left to attend graduate school at Harvard University on a scholarship. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964.[14] Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964 where he remarried; he visited Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971.[15] He died in an automobile accident in 1982, his son being 21 years old at that time.[16]

In 1963, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, anIndonesian East–West Center graduate student in geography at the University of Hawaii, and the couple were married on Molokai on March 15, 1965.[17] After two one-year extensions of his J-1 visa, Lolo returned to Indonesia in 1966, followed sixteen months later by his wife and stepson in 1967, with the family initially living in a Menteng Dalam neighborhood in the Tebetsubdistrict of south Jakarta, then from 1970 in a wealthier neighborhood in theMenteng subdistrict of central Jakarta.[18] From ages six to ten, Obama attended local Indonesian-language schools: Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School for two years and Besuki Public School for one and a half years, supplemented by English-language Calvert Schoolhomeschooling by his mother.[19][20]

Obama with his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham, inHonolulu, Hawaii

Obama returned to Honolulu in 1971 to live with his maternal grandparents,Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attendedPunahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.[21] In his youth, Obama went by the nickname Barry.[22] Obama lived with his mother and sister in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student inanthropology at the University of Hawaii.[23] Obama chose to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents for high school at Punahou when his mother and sister returned to Indonesia in 1975 so his mother could begin anthropology field work.[24] His mother spent most of the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo in 1980 and earning aPhD degree in 1992, before dying in 1995 in Hawaii following treatment forovarian cancer and uterine cancer.[25]

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind."[11] He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[26] Reflecting later on his years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."[27] Obama has also written and talked about using alcohol,marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind".[28] Obama was also a member of the "choom gang", a self-named group of friends that spent time together and occasionally smoked marijuana.[29][30]

After high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, Obama made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to participate in thedisinvestment from South Africa in response to that nation's policy ofapartheid.[31] In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and half-sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks.[31] Later in 1981, he transferred as a junior toColumbia College, Columbia University, in New York City, where he majored inpolitical science with a specialty ininternational relations[32] and lived off-campus on West 109th Street.[33] He graduated with a BA degree in 1983 and worked for a year at the Business International Corporation,[34] then at theNew York Public Interest Research Group.[35][36] In 1985, Obama was among the leaders of May Day efforts to bring attention to the New York City Subway system, which was in a bad condition at the time. Obama traveled to several subway stations to get people to sign letters addressed to local officials and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and was photographed at theCity College subway station holding a sign protesting against the system's condition.[37]

Community organizer and Harvard Law School

Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of theDeveloping Communities Project, a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.[36][38] He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[39]Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[40] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.[41][42]

Obama entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,[43] president of the journal in his second year,[39][44] and research assistant to the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe while at Harvard for two years.[45] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[46] After graduating with a JD degree magna cum laude[47] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.[43] Obama's election as thefirst black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention[39][44] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations,[48] which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.[48]

University of Chicago Law School and civil rights attorney

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book.[48][49] He then taughtconstitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, first as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.[50]

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[51]

He joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004. In 1994, he was listed as one of the lawyers inBuycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 94 C 4094 (N.D. Ill.).[52] This class action lawsuit was filed in 1994 with Selma Buycks-Roberson as lead plaintiff and alleged that Citibank Federal Savings Bank had engaged in practices forbidden under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.[53] The case was settled out of court.[54] Final Judgment was issued on May 13, 1998 with Citibank Federal Savings Bank agreeing to pay attorney fees.[55] His law license became inactive in 2007.[56][57]

From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and of the Joyce Foundation.[36] He served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.[36]

Legislative career, 1997–2008

Illinois State Senator (1997–2004)

Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama and others celebrate the naming of a street in Chicago afterShoreBank co-founder Milton Davis in 1998

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding Democratic State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park–Kenwood south to South Shoreand west to Chicago Lawn.[58] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws.[59] He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[60] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.[61]

He was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002.[62] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary race forIllinois's 1st congressional district in theUnited States House of Representativesto four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.[63]

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.[64] He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.[60][65] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.[66]Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.[67]

2004 U.S. Senate campaign

Main article: United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004

County results of the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Obama won the counties in blue.

In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race. He created a campaign committee, began raising funds, and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. Obama formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.[68]

Obama was an early opponent of theGeorge W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.[69] On October 2, 2002, the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolutionauthorizing the Iraq War,[70] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicagoanti-Iraq War rally,[71] and spoke out against the war.[72] He addressed another anti-war rally in March 2003 and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.[73]

Decisions by Republican incumbentPeter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun to not participate in the election resulted in wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.[74] In the March 2004 primary election, Obama won in an unexpected landslide—which overnight made him a rising star within thenational Democratic Party, started speculation about a presidential future, and led to the reissue of his memoir,Dreams from My Father.[75] In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,[76] seen by 9.1 million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party.[77]

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[78] Six weeks later,Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.[79] In theNovember 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote.[80]

U.S. Senator from Illinois (2005–08)

Main article: United States Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama in his official portrait as a member of the United States Senate

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005,[81] becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.[82] CQ Weeklycharacterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes from 2005 to 2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he wouldresign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-ducksession, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.[83]

Legislation

See also: List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate

Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.[84] He introduced two initiatives that bore his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction concept to conventional weapons;[85] and theFederal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.[86] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama—along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, andJohn McCain—introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.[87]

Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee.[88]Regarding tort reform, Obama voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.[89]

Obama and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar(R-IN) visit a Russian facility for dismantling mobile missiles (August 2005)[90]

In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.[91]In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007.[92]Obama also introduced two unsuccessful bills: the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections,[93] and theIraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.[94]

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act to add safeguards for personality-disorder military discharges.[95] This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008.