Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama’s father was a Kenyan student at the University of Hawaii at the time of Obama’s birth. Barack Hussein Obama was also the name of Barack Obama’s father. If a father gives his son the same name as him in the United States – and I believe in Kenya as well – it is customary to add “junior” to the name. Although uncommon, it is possible to name your son with the number “two” instead of “junior.” Typically, you would use the number “two” when naming your son after a relative other than yourself – that is, when you are not giving your son your own name.
Regardless, Barack Obama’s father was studying in the United States while married to an American lady – Barack Obama’s mother. His mother was from Kansas, but her family had relocated to Hawaii. Barack Obama is the first president to hail from Hawaii, which is the only island state in the United States. Hawaii joined the U.S. only two years prior to Barack Obama’s birth in 1959, making it the 50th state.
When Obama was just two years old, his father left Hawaii to continue his studies at Harvard University. Obama’s parents split when he was four years old. After his father left, Obama only saw him once before his father was killed in a car accident in Kenya in 1982, when Obama was still a child. When Barack Obama was six years old, his mother remarried an Indonesian man, and they had a daughter named Maya. After Maya’s birth, the family relocated to Jakarta, Indonesia. Barack Obama attended a government-run school there for approximately four years before moving back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. When she completed her doctorate, his mother frequently traveled between Jakarta and Honolulu. I believe she earned her doctorate in anthropology.
Obama graduated high school in 1979 from a very good and expensive private high school in Honolulu. Later, he spent two years in Los Angeles attending Occidental College, a small private institution in the city. After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, one of the best universities in the United States, in 1983.
After completing his degree, he worked in New York for two years before moving to Chicago in 1985 and becoming a community organizer. Obama worked as a community organizer in a poor area of Chicago for several years. In 1987, he left Chicago and chose to become an attorney, enrolling at Harvard Law School. In 1991, he graduated from Harvard Law School, where he excelled academically. In fact, he was the first African-American to serve as editor-in-chief of one of Harvard’s student journals, the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he returned to Chicago and married Michelle Robinson, another lawyer with whom he had worked at a Chicago law firm or law business during the summer of 1989. The couple had two daughters named Sasha and Malia.
Obama began teaching law at the University of Chicago Law School following his return to Chicago. He also worked as a “civil rights attorney,” as we would say. He organized a project to increase voter participation, particularly among African Americans in Chicago. A few years later, in 1996, Barack Obama decided to immediately enter politics and run for office. He became a state senator of Illinois. One of the issues that Obama became engaged in was healthcare for low-income individuals.
Barack Obama’s election to the United States Senate in 2004 made him an even more significant politician in Illinois. Each state in the United States sends two senators to the Congress, our national government. In addition, Barack Obama was elected as a senator from Illinois. In the same year, 2004, Barack Obama was invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention, a gathering of all Democratic Party members at which they select their presidential nominee for the upcoming election. Obama’s speech at the convention was broadcast on television and made him an instant celebrity, not only within his party but also throughout the country. He was described by some as a “rising star.”
Obama’s 1995 book Dreams of My Father became immensely popular following his speech. In 2006, he published another book titled The Audacity of Hope, which also became popular. Obama explained in his first book, Dreams of My Father, what it meant to be a biracial man in the United States. When individuals run for the presidency of the United States, they typically have extensive experience in politics. Barack Obama, however, altered this pattern. In 2007, he declared his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. He decided that, despite the fact that there was already a candidate with a great deal of experience seeking to be the Democratic nominee, a woman named Hillary Clinton, he would attempt to become that candidate.
The slogan he came up with for his campaign was “Yes We Can.” Obama’s campaign was distinct in other ways besides his lack of extensive national political experience. His campaign was also distinct in that he heavily relied on a grass-roots organization. “Barack Obama’s grass-roots campaign consisted of numerous individuals who contributed small amounts of money, frequently via the Internet. This is how the Obama campaign or Obama’s effort to become president began, although eventually other people, particularly wealthy people in California – celebrities, actors, and musicians – contributed tens of millions of dollars to help him get elected. Obama won the nomination by defeating Hillary Clinton and went on to defeat John McCain to win the presidency in 2008.
Obama promised prior to his election that he would work to bring “polarized groups” in the United States and American politics together. Most people would agree that he was not very successful in bringing together the polarized groups in the United States. However, he was successful in passing a law in 2010 that transformed the American healthcare system. In 2010, with the assistance of Democrats in the U.S. Congress, he signed into law the Affordable Care Act.
The purpose of the law was to make healthcare more affordable so that more individuals could obtain coverage. Later, the law became known as “Obamacare” because Obama was primarily responsible for its passage into law. Obama won re-election in 2012, defeating the Republican candidate once again – this time it was Mitt Romney.