President Barack Obama was the 44th and current President of the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden won the election of 2008 by soundly defeating GOP candidate John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He was the first African-American President of the United States and the first president to be born in Hawaii.
At the age of 47, he is also one of the youngest presidents to take office. He had previously served as a Senator for the state of Illinois until his resignation in 2008 when he won the Presidency.
He was thrust into the national spotlight after speaking at the 2004 DNC convention for John Kerry. Many believe it was that speech that launched his Presidential Campaign, which would succeed in 2008.
Early Life
President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father and mother met in 1960 while attending a Russian Class at the University of Hawai'i of Manoa. His father and mother separated when he left for Harvard University. His father, Barack Obama Sr, came back to see his son one more time.
He died in Kenya in a car accident. In the years following, young Obama moved to Jakarta, where he attended an Indonesian school from ages 6 - 10. He would then move back to Hawai'i to live with his maternal grandparents.
His mother returned in 1972 and stayed for five years until heading back to Indonesia. She returned to Hawai'i in 1995 and passed away from ovarian cancer.
After graduating from college, he was hired as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. Here, he would create a job-training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.
In 1988, he entered the Harvard Law School and was selected as editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year. This would be one of the first occasions that Barack Obama would gain national recognition. He hosted a Black History Minute segment on TBS.
From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration drive 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 and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.
In 1993, 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, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.
Political Accomplishments
Barack Obama's political career began when he became an Illinois State Senator. He would serve in this position until 2004, when he was elected State Senator of Illinois. This victory in 2004 came after he lost a bid to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000.
During his term as a State Senator, Barack Obama sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.
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.
In 2004, Barack Obama was a keynote speaker at the DNC convention for John Kerry. While John Kerry would go on to decisively lose the election to the incumbent, George W. Bush, it would be the speech that Obama gave at the DNC convention that would propel him onto the national spotlight. Two years later, he would run for President of the United States.
Senate Legislations
Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. He introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.
On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.
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. Regarding tort reform, Obama voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.
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. 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.
Obama also introduced the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, neither of which has been signed into law.
Later, in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act, adding safeguards for personality-disorder military discharges. This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008. He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.
Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.
Election of 2008
In February of 2007, Barack Obama announced his campaign for the presidency of the United States. At the beginning of the race, there were many nominees vying for the position of President. The field quickly narrowed to three: John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Soon, the field narrowed to just Obama and Clinton.
At the beginning of the race, many believed Hillary Clinton would easily win the nomination. However, Obama proved to be very skilled in running a campaign. He set records for donations and was the first presidential nominee to reject public financing since 1976. The Obama campaign continued to pick up delegates and began growing in momentum.
His ability to speak in front of people, encourage minority voters, gain media support, and better long-range planning led to him securing the nomination. He would then deliver his DNC acceptance speech in front of 75,000 people at Denver's Mile High Stadium.
On August 23, Obama selected Joe Biden as his Vice President. The GOP had nominated John McCain, who had selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.
The choice of Sarah Palin was electrifying and gave McCain a boost in support to the point that he managed to pass Barack Obama in polls. Palin made a few missteps that allowed Obama to gain momentum.
Coupled with a few blunders from Sarah Palin and John McCain's overall appeal to independent voters, they were easily defeated. In November, Barack Obama won the election of 2008 easily. He took 365 electoral votes, while McCain took 173.