President Barack Obama

43^rd and 44^th President of the United States of America

A Brief Biography

It took the election of the “Yes We Can” candidacy for the world to reassess the way we saw our environment. Something punctuated the air on the day of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. One of those mornings where the sun beamed on the horizon with the promise of a new era. His presidency infected the country with a sense of optimism, hope, and potential.

In him, we saw the leader of the new-world. We must must strive for the things we do not have — things that once and still do remain forbidden from most us.

We, too, can break glass ceilings.
We, too, are America.

Early Life

"Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii. His parents, who met as students at the University of Hawaii, were Ann Dunham, a white American from Kansas, and Barack Obama Sr., a black Kenyan studying in the United States.Obama's father left the family when Obama was two and, after further studies at Harvard University, returned to Kenya, where he died in an automobile accident nineteen years later. After his parents divorced, Obama's mother married another foreign student at the University of Hawaii, Lolo Soetoro of Indonesia.From age six through ten, Obama lived with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia, where he attended Catholic and Muslim schools. “I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child and as a black child and as a white child,” Obama later recalled. “And so what I benefited from is a multiplicity of cultures that all fed me.”

Education

Barack Obama attended Columbia University graduating with esteem. It was here Obama first was exposed to Black Liberation Theology and community organizing and made the career choice to leave the field of foreign relations and nuclear disarmament to pursue community organizing.After working as a community organizer in New York City and Chicago, Illinois, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School. He became a member of the Harvard Law Review, which uses racial quotas, in 1989. He was then elected by popular vote as its first African American president in 1990, a story that was immediately promoted in The New York Times.

Road to Presidency

"In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, winning election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat from the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control during his years in the state senate, Obama was able to build support among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics and health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs and worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases."

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States. A victory in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the early frontrunner, the former first lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June 2008.

Obama’s campaign worked to build support at the grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life story and inspiring message of hope and change to draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in the U.S. and on a campaign trip abroad. They worked to bring new voters–many of them young or black, both demographics they believed favored Obama–to become involved in the election.

Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with Michelle and their two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, Obama acknowledged the historic nature of his win while reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

Presidency

President Barack Obama will be remembered as the first black president of the United States. Barack Obama's administration is responsible for killing Bin Laden. Obama's policies in the Middle East, in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran has discussed ad nauseam by foreign policy scholars. Barack Obama's is responsible for stabilizing the economy.