Michelle Obama

When people ask First Lady Michelle Obama to describe herself, she doesn't hesitate to say that first and foremost, she is Malia and Sasha's mom.

But before she was a mother -- or a wife, lawyer or public servant -- she was Fraser and Marian Robinson's daughter.

The Robinsons lived in a brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago. Fraser was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department, and despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at a young age, he hardly ever missed a day of work. Marian stayed home to raise Michelle and her older brother Craig, skillfully managing a busy household filled with love, laughter, and important life lessons.

A product of Chicago public schools, Mrs. Obama studied sociology and African-American studies at Princeton University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, she joined the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she later met the man who would become the love of her life.

After a few years, Mrs. Obama decided her true calling was working with people to serve their communities and their neighbors. She served as assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago's City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares youth for public service.

In 1996, Mrs. Obama joined the University of Chicago with a vision of bringing campus and community together. As Associate Dean of Student Services, she developed the university's first community service program, and under her leadership as Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center, volunteerism skyrocketed.

Promoting Service and working with young people has remained a staple of her career and her interest. Continuing this effort now as First Lady, Mrs. Obama recently launched the Let’s Move! campaign  to bring together community leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses, moms and dads in a nationwide effort to tackle the challenge of childhood obesity. Let’s Move! has an ambitious but important goal: to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.

Let’s Move! will give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.

In 2011, Mrs. Obama and Dr. Jill Biden together launched Joining Forces, a nationwide initiative that mobilizes all sectors of society to give our service members and their families the opportunities and support they have earned, and to raise awareness of military families' unique needs as pertains to employment, education and wellness. Joining Forces has been working hand in hand with American businesses who are committed to answering the President's challenge to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans and military spouses by 2013.

As First Lady, Mrs. Obama looks forward to continuing her work on the issues close to her heart — supporting military families, helping working women balance career and family,  encouraging national service, promoting the arts and arts education, and fostering healthy eating and healthy living for children and families across the country.

Michelle and Barack Obama have two daughters: Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11. Like their mother, the girls were born on the South Side of Chicago.

Learn more about Michelle Obama's spouse, Barack Obama .

Life Before the Presidency Barack Hussein Obama

American President

A Reference Resource

Life Before the Presidency

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."

Concerned for his education, Obama's mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, and to attend Hawaii's prestigious Punahou School from fifth grade through graduation from high school. While Obama was in school, she divorced Soetoro, returned to Hawaii to study cultural anthropology at the university, and then went back to Indonesia to do field research. Living with his grandparents, Obama was a good but not outstanding student at Punahou, played varsity basketball and, as he later admitted, "dabbled in drugs and alcohol," including marijuana and cocaine. As for religion, Obama later wrote, because his parents and grandparents were nonbelievers, "I was not raised in a religious household."

Obama's mother, who "to the end of her life [in 1995] would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal," deeply admired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and taught her son, he later wrote, that "To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear." But, as culturally diverse as Hawaii was, its African American population was miniscule. With no father or other family members to serve as role models (his relationship with his white grandfather was difficult), Obama later reflected, "I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant."

Obama left Hawaii for college, enrolling first at Occidental College in Los Angeles for his freshman and sophomore years, and then at Columbia University in New York City. He read deeply and widely about political and international affairs, graduating from Columbia with a political science major in 1983. After spending an additional year in New York as a researcher with Business International Group, a global business consulting firm, Obama accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's largely poor and black South Side. As biographer David Mendell notes in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise to Power, the job gave Obama "his first deep immersion into the African American community he had longed to both understand and belong to."

Obama's main assignment as an organizer was to launch the church-funded Developing Communities Project and, in particular, to organize residents of Altgeld Gardens to pressure Chicago's city hall to improve conditions in the poorly maintained public housing project. His efforts met with some success, but he concluded that, faced with a complex city bureaucracy, "I just can't get things done here without a law degree." In 1988, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student, graduating magna cum laude and winning election as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review for the academic year 1990-1991. Although Obama was a liberal, he won the election by persuading the journal's outnumbered conservative staffers that he would treat their views fairly, which he is widely acknowledged to have done. As the first African American president in the long history of the law review, Obama drew widespread media attention and a contract from Random House to write a book about race relations. The book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), turned out to be mostly a personal memoir, focusing in particular on his struggle to come to terms with his identity as a black man raised by whites in the absence of his African father.

During a summer internship at Chicago's Sidley and Austin law firm after his first year at Harvard, Obama met Michelle Robinson, a South Side native and Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate who supervised his work at the firm. He wooed her ardently and, after a four-year courtship, they married in 1992. The Obamas settled in Chicago's racially integrated, middle-class Hyde Park neighborhood, where their first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998 and their second daughter, Natasha (called Sasha), was born in 2001.

After directing Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive aimed at increasing black turnout in the 1992 election, Obama accepted positions as an attorney with the civil rights law firm of Miner, Barnhill and Galland and as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He launched his first campaign for political office in 1996 after his district's state senator, Alice Palmer, decided to run for Congress. With Palmer's support, Obama announced his candidacy to replace her in the Illinois legislature. When Palmer's congressional campaign faltered, she decided to run for reelection instead. But Obama refused to withdraw from the race, successfully challenged the validity of Palmer's voter petitions, and was easily elected after her name was kept off the ballot.

Obama's time in the legislature initially was frustrating. Republicans controlled the state senate, and many of his black Democratic colleagues resented the hardball tactics he had employed against Palmer. But he adapted, developing cordial personal relations with legislators of both parties and cultivating Senate Democratic leader Emil Jones, Jr., another African American senator from Chicago, as a mentor. Obama was able to get campaign finance reform and crime legislation enacted even when his party was in the minority, and after 2002, when the Democrats won control of the Senate, he became a leading legislator on a wide range of issues, passing nearly 300 bills aimed at helping children, old people, labor unions, and the poor.

Obama's one serious misstep during his early political career (he later called it "an ill-considered race" in which he got "spanked" by the voters) was a 2000 Democratic primary challenge to U.S. Representative Bobby Rush. Rush is a former Illinois Black Panther leader who subsequently entered mainstream politics as a Chicago alderman and was elected to Congress from the South Side's first congressional district in 1992. Obama was not nearly as well known as the popular Rush, and the combination of his unusual upbringing and his association with predominantly white elite universities such as Columbia, Harvard, and Chicago aroused doubts about his authenticity as a black man among the district's overwhelmingly African American voters. Obama suffered what he labeled "a drubbing," losing to Rush by a 30 percentage point margin.

Returning to the state senate, Obama began eyeing a 2004 race for the U.S. Senate seat held by Peter Fitzgerald, an unpopular first-term Republican who decided not to run for reelection. In October 2002, as Congress was considering a resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to launch a war to depose the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Obama spoke at an antiwar rally in Chicago. "I don't oppose all wars," he declared. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war." By speaking out against Bush's war policies, Obama set himself apart from the other leading candidates for the Democratic Senate nomination, as well as from most Senate Democrats with presidential ambitions, including Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, John Kerry of Massachusetts, and John Edwards of North Carolina. Obama's initially unpopular antiwar stance eventually worked to his political advantage as the war became increasingly unpopular with the passage of time.

Advised by political consultant David Axelrod, who had a strong record of helping black candidates win in majority-white constituencies, Obama assembled a coalition of African Americans and white liberals to win the Democratic Senate primary with 53 percent of the vote, more than all five of his opponents combined. He then moved toward the political center to wage his general election campaign against Republican nominee Jack Ryan, an attractive candidate who, after making hundreds of millions of dollars as an investor, had left the business world to teach in an inner-city Chicago school. But Ryan was forced to drop out of the race when scandalous details about his divorce were made public, and Obama coasted to an easy victory against Ryan's replacement on the ballot, black conservative Republican Alan Keyes. Obama won by the largest margin in the history of Senate elections in Illinois, 70 percent to 27 percent.

In addition to his election, the other highlight of 2004 for Obama was his wildly successful keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America," he declared. "There's a United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's a United States of America." Obama encapsulated his speech's themes of optimism and unity with the phrase, "the audacity of hope," which he borrowed from Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright was the pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, a large and influential black congregation where Obama was baptized when he became a Christian in 1988. Obama also used the phrase as the title of his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), which became a national bestseller in the wake of his newfound national popularity. Describing his religious conversion, Obama wrote, "I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."

Biographies Barack Obama

Biographies

Barack Obama 

Born:  04/08/1961 Birthplace:  Hawaii, USA

The first Hawaiian born, mixed race, African American President: Barack Obama is the Nobel Prize winning, top terrorist killing, same sex marriage supporting, two terms Republican nightmare.

KENYA MEETS KANSAS
Barack Hussein Obama was born in the two year old US state of Hawaii to a white American mother and a black Kenyan father. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in a small Kenyan village where school was a tin-roof shack. Obama Sr. married and had one son. But in 1959, Obama Sr. left his newborn son and his again pregnant wife for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. This would not be the last time ambition came before family. It was there that the University’s first black student met the Kansas born, Ann Dunham. Despite the differences in their personalities, Obama Sr. was an assured intellectual whereas Ann was awkward and shy, the couple married. At the time, Ann was three months pregnant. Obama Sr. lied to her that he’d divorced his African wife and mother of four of his children. Six months later, in Honolulu, on 4 August 1961, Barack Obama was born.

But Obama Sr. again put academia before his second family by leaving for a Harvard scholarship. Ann was just 20 when he left. Barack was just two. Obama Sr. and Ann soon separated and in 1964, she filed for divorce.

MUSLIM STEPFATHER
Ann met another student, Lolo Soetoro. They married and after two years moved to Soetoro’s native Indonesia in 1967. From the relative affluence of Hawaii, the six year old Barack was now confronted every day on his doorstep with the extreme poverty of a Third World country. Within six months, Barack was fluent in the local language. Each day started at 4am with his mother waking him to give him additional English lessons before Catholic school. His Muslim stepfather taught him everything from how to change a flat tyre to opening in chess. He imbued Barack with the values of Islam but didn’t convert him. His mother Ann was raised Christian but taught her son to be sceptical of religion.

In 1970, his mother had a daughter. When he was ten, Barack returned to Hawaii with his mother where he secured a scholarship. There was just one other black student at his school.
Barack’s father visited him just once.

DRUGS, DRINK & MALCOLM X
When Barack’s mother returned to Indonesia, her parents raised him. His grandparents tried their best during his basketball playing teenage years which often saw drinking and drug use, including marijuana and ‘blow’, American slang for cocaine. Politically, he was attracted more to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King. In 1979, Barack enrolled at college in Los Angeles. His mother divorced Soetoro.

THE STUDENT YEARS
Finally based in America, Obama transferred to New York to study political science at Columbia University. In 1982, he received news of his father’s death in a car accident in Africa. After over a year in the corporate sector, in 1985, Obama moved to Chicago and did three years as a community organiser. In a place devastated by steel plant closures, he represented the unemployed and homeless. And every year there, he saw how gun violence cost the lives of scores of children and hundreds of others.

It was there that he attended a sermon by the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It caused him to weep. (Entitled ‘The Audacity to Hope’, he adapted it for his breakthrough speech at the Democratic Convention and for his second book.) At the time, Obama seriously considered becoming a preacher.

Instead, he went to Harvard Law School. He hoped it would enable him to achieve the things that grass roots activism couldn’t. Before beginning his studies, he went to Kenya to meet his father’s family and better understand his African heritage. Back in America, in 1988 he met his future wife Michelle Robinson, at that time an attorney. A descendent of slaves, she was immersed in the issue of race. And as her best friend was the daughter of the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, she could introduce Barack to the Democratic political classes.

FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT
In 1990, Obama became President. Albeit the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. For the first time, Obama made the news nationally. In 1992, he ran a voter registration campaign which secured 100,000 new voters, mostly from the African American community. It helped elect the first female African American Senator. That same year he married Michelle. They would later have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

In 1994, his mother Ann was diagnosed with cancer. Ann moved back to Hawaii to live near Obama’s now widowed grandmother. His grandmother buried her daughter in 1995. Ann’s difficulty in paying for her medical bills as she died directly informed her son’s later attempts to reform the American health care system. That year, on the back of his rising profile, Obama published his first book, ‘Dreams from My Father’.

RISE AND DEFEAT
In 1996, Obama was elected as State Senator for Illinois from the 13th district, which encompassed mostly impoverished areas of Chicago's south side. To secure the position, he had to defeat a former ally. Such actions showed he had the political muscle to take power. In 1999, unlike his father had done, Obama put his family first when his daughter became ill. In staying with her, he missed a crucial vote on gun control. Partly as a result of his absence, the gun control measure failed. It would cost him, and others, dearly.

In 2000, Obama took on former Black Panther, Bobby Rush, a well known fourth term incumbent, in the Democratic primaries for the US House of Representatives. Rush destroyed him. Obama later said his earlier gun vote absence had eliminated any slim chance he had of victory. Rush’s son had been shot the year before by a drug dealer. Some, however, believed Obama’s absence was career motivated. Back then, few professional American politicians progressed very far with a hard line on gun ownership. Rush would be the last politician to beat Obama in an election.

‘THERE IS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’
In 2003, Obama launched his campaign to be elected to the US Senate. An early opponent of the Iraq war, he impressed potential President John Kerry enough to be invited to give the keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. In it, the 42 year old Obama explicitly rejected the division of America into blue liberal and red conservative states. Instead of an America divided into Democrat and Republican states, he said he believed only that ‘there is the United States of America’. Obama went on to win his Senate seat by a landslide of 70 per cent against his Republican rival. Obama was sworn in as senator in 2005.

As a senator, Obama served on the Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee. One of the first laws he helps pass allows voters to go online and see where their taxes are spent.

As a candidate in the Democratic Primaries in 2007, Obama went head to head with Hillary Clinton. In 2008, he won. The Republican he then had to beat was the elderly war vet John McCain. McCain countered the novelty appeal of Obama by for the first time ever, making the Republican Vice President nominee a woman. But Sarah Palin was even more inexperienced than Obama. And Obama’s mere two years in the Senate wasn’t an issue for a young electorate weary of two terms of George W Bush.

As McCain withered, and Palin imploded, Obama gained ground. Significant victories included Ohio, a virtually all white state. The day before the Presidency was announced, Obama’s grandmother, the woman who had raised him during his difficult teenage years, died from cancer.

BYE-BYE PRESIDENT BUSH
On 4 November 2008, Obama made history. He secured 52.9 per cent of the popular vote. The new President assembled his team making his old adversary, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state.

Within days he ordered the military to start preparing to withdraw from Iraq, a war started by Bush. He also reversed Bush’s ban on federal funding to foreign establishments allowing abortion. He would also later reverse Bush’s limitations on funding stem cell research and repeal a two decade old law of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' that banned openly gay people from the military. And in a country where many deny climate change, Obama championed alternative energy. But ever the politician, he saved the troubled car industry, securing jobs: And future votes.

‘GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR...’
...is an extract from the poem engraved in the Statue of Liberty. But in the world’s wealthiest nation 49 million live below the poverty line. Nearly 1.5 million children are homeless. And almost one in seven Americans are without health insurance. Health reform, including the reduction in ballooning costs, was one of Obama’s key election promises.
In 2009, despite huge opposition, he covered an additional four million uninsured children with healthcare provisions. But in 2010 the Republicans retook the House of Representatives - where federal legislation is passed- ensuring other reforms could either be blocked or neutered.

OBAMA V OSAMA
In his first Presidential year, Obama had been named as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And he did indeed end the American mission in Iraq. This, however, was no pacifist President.
In 2011, he ordered the revenge killing of the architect of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden. And partly through the controversial use of drone attacks, Obama would come close to strategically defeating al-Qaeda. His intervention in Libya, unlike Bush’s, had international support, and again unlike Bush, relied on air power rather than ‘boots on the ground’. It directly led to the fall of Gaddafi.

But American elections are largely decided on domestic issues, not foreign. His support of gay marriage won over many of his supporters but further alienated many Republicans. And despite inheriting the worst economic crisis since the 1929 Depression, many thought it would be the stagnating economy that would lose him the 2012 election.

ROMNEY WHO?
Obama’s Republican rival was the business millionaire, and ex Mormon missionary, Mitt Romney. It was expected to be close. It wasn’t.

Romney’s business past proved to be a liability rather than an asset. Obama’s team painted him as part of the elite that had put the country into decline and then profited from the recession. Then there were further questions over Romney’s tax returns. And Romney was further damaged when it was alleged that he’d been connected to the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries. And whereas Obama sought to unite, Romney was revealed to believe in divisions with his comments that he believed nearly half the country were dependent on state aid.
In November 2012, Obama again won.

I’LL GIVE YOU MY GUN WHEN...
...you pry it from my cold, dead hands’ was a saying popularised by the hugely influential National Rifle Association. The NRA lobbies for the Second Amendments right to ‘bear arms’. In December 2012, the saying again became a grim reality after Adam Lanza shot dead 20 children, six staff, and then himself, at the suburban Sandy Hook Elementary School. The atrocity joined a long list of school spree killings.

When Obama called for gun reform the NRA responded with a call to arm teachers. Then in January 2013, Hadiya Pendleton, a 15 year old girl was shot dead near Obama’s home. The week before she’d performed at his second inauguration. Her killing highlighted the huge urban death toll from guns even in a state with some of America’s strictest gun laws. His reforms called for a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks on gun license applications.

Obama is the first President in well over a century to come from an urban background and to see gun reform through the prism of the city, rather than the countryside. But the hugely popular gun lobby argues that America protected its first families, established its independence and helped free the Western world from Nazism and totalitarian Communism, all at the point of a gun.

Obama took on healthcare reform in his first term in one of the world’s worst recessions and gun control in his second when Republicans had rarely felt so defensive. Few believed he could achieve his goals.

But it wouldn’t be the first time that America’s first African American President achieves the seemingly impossible. 

Fast Facts: 

Obama was sworn in as president on the bibles of Martin Luther King and of Abraham Lincoln, both key figures in the freeing of African Americans.

Obama once claimed to have been proud to have campaigned in all 57 states. There are only 50.

After Obama suggested gun reform, many gun sellers sold out of the assault rifle used in the Sandy Hook killings, the AR-15.

In 2008 and 2011 Obama had to produce two separate copies of his birth certificate to prove he was born in the US state of Hawaii and was therefore eligible to be the President of America.

He has admitted to struggling with his attempts at quitting smoking, having to "strenuously" chew nicotine chewing gum.

Barack was known as ‘Barry’ when he was a child.

His Swahili first name means ‘blessed’.

His maternal grandfather fought for Patton in the Second World War while his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line .

Barack Obama supports the ‘Hammers’, the English Premier League Football team, West Ham.

Barack Obama Biography

Lawyer, U.S. Representative, U.S. President (1961–)

Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States, and the first African American to serve as U.S. president. First elected to the presidency in 2008, he won a second term in 2012.

Synopsis

Born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. He was a civil-rights lawyer and teacher before pursuing a political career. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, serving from 1997 to 2004. He was elected to the U.S. presidency in 2008, and won re-election in 2012 against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. President Obama continues to enact policy changes in response to the issues of health care and economic crisis.

Obama did not have a relationship with his father as a child. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D. Barack's parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. In 1965, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya.

In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East–West Center student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son's safety and education so, at the age of 10, Barack was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and sister later joined them.

Education

While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self: "I began to notice there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog ... and that Santa was a white man," he said. "I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking the way I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."

Obama also struggled with the absence of his father, who he saw only once more after his parents divorced, when Obama Sr. visited Hawaii for a short time in 1971. "[My father] had left paradise, and nothing that my mother or grandparents told me could obviate that single, unassailable fact," he later reflected. "They couldn't describe what it might have been like had he stayed."

Ten years later, in 1981, tragedy struck Obama Sr. He was involved in a serious car accident, losing both of his legs as a result. Confined to a wheelchair, he also lost his job. In 1982, Obama Sr. was involved in yet another car accident while traveling in Nairobi. This time, however, the crash was fatal. Obama Sr. died on November 24, 1982, when Barack was 21 years old. "At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me," Obama later said, "both more and less than a man."

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science. After working in the business sector for two years, Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked on the South Side as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities.

Law Career

It was during this time that Barack Obama, who said he "was not raised in a religious household," joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya, which included an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father and paternal grandfather. "For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept," Obama said. "I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away."

Obama returned from Kenya with a sense of renewal, entering Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met Michelle Robinson, an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. She was assigned to be Obama's adviser during a summer internship at the firm, and not long after, the couple began dating. Their first kiss took place outside of a Chicago shopping center—where a plaque featuring a photo of the couple kissing was installed more than two decades later, in August 2012. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1991.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, joining the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught part time at the University of Chicago Law School (1992-2004)—first as a lecturer and then as a professor—and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago's South Side, and welcomed two daughters several years later: Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).

Entry Into Illinois Politics

Obama published an autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 1995. The work received high praise from literary figures like Toni Morrison and has since been printed in 10 languages, including Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew. The book had a second printing in 2004, and was adapted for a children's version. The 2006 audiobook version of Dreams, narrated by Obama, received a Grammy Award (best spoken word album).

Obama's advocacy work led him to run for a seat in the Illinois State Senate. He ran as a Democrat, and won election in 1996. During these years, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to draft legislation on ethics, and expand health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. He also created a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee as well, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, he worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Undeterred, he created a campaign committee in 2002, and began raising funds to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004. With the help of political consultant David Axelrod, Obama began assessing his prospects of a Senate win.

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush's push to go to war with Iraq. Obama was still a state senator when he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq during a rally at Chicago's Federal Plaza in October 2002. "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars," he said. "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." Despite his protests, the Iraq War began in 2003.

U.S. Senate Career

Obama, encouraged by poll numbers, decided to run for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. In the 2004 Democratic primary, he won 52 percent of the vote, defeating multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. That summer, he was invited to deliver the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama emphasized the importance of unity, and made veiled jabs at the Bush Administration and the diversionary use of wedge issues.

After the convention, Obama returned to his U.S. Senate bid in Illinois. His opponent in the general election was supposed to be Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, a wealthy former investment banker. However, Ryan withdrew from the race in June 2004, following public disclosure of unsubstantiated sexual deviancy allegations by Ryan's ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan.

In August 2004, diplomat and former presidential candidate Alan Keyesaccepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan. In three televised debates, Obama and Keyes expressed opposing views on stem cell research, abortion, gun control, school vouchers and tax cuts. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70 percent of the vote to Keyes' 27 percent, the largest electoral victory in Illinois history. With his win, Barack Obama became only the third African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since the Reconstruction.

Sworn into office January 4, 2005, Obama partnered with Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. Then, with Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a website to track all federal spending. Obama also spoke out for victims of Hurricane Katrina, pushed for alternative energy development, and championed improved veterans' benefits.

His second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, was published in October 2006. The work discussed Obama's visions for the future of America, many of which became talking points for his eventual presidential campaign. Shortly after its release, it hit No. 1 on both the New York Times and Amazon.com best-seller lists.

2008 Presidential Election

In February 2007, Obama made headlines when he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He was locked in a tight battle with former first lady and then-U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton. On June 3, 2008, however, Obama became the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, and Senator Clinton delivered her full support to Obama for the duration of his campaign. On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain, 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent, winning election as the 44th president of the United States—and the first African-American to hold this office. His running mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, became vice president. Obama's inauguration took place on January 20, 2009.

When Obama took office, he inherited a global economic recession, two ongoing foreign wars and the lowest international favorability rating for the United States ever. He campaigned on an ambitious agenda of financial reform, alternative energy, and reinventing education and health care—all while bringing down the national debt. Because these issues were intertwined with the economic well-being of the nation, he believed all would have to be undertaken simultaneously. During his inauguration speech, Obama summarized the situation by saying, "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met."

First 100 Days

Between Inauguration Day and April 29, 2009, the Obama Administration took to the field on many fronts. Obama coaxed Congress to expand health care insurance for children and provide legal protection for women seeking equal pay. A $787 billion stimulus bill was passed to promote short-term economic growth. Housing and credit markets were put on life support, with a market-based plan to buy U.S. banks' toxic assets. Loans were made to the auto industry, and new regulations were proposed for Wall Street. He also cut taxes for working families, small businesses and first-time home buyers. The president also loosened the ban on embryonic stem cell research and moved ahead with a $3.5 trillion budget plan.

Over his first 100 days in office, President Obama also undertook a complete overhaul of America's foreign policy. He reached out to improve relations with Europe, China and Russia and to open dialogue with Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. He lobbied allies to support a global economic stimulus package. He committed an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and set an August 2010 date for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. In more dramatic incidents, he took on pirates off the coast of Somalia and prepared the nation for a swine flu attack. For his efforts, he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize by the Nobel Committee in Norway.

2010 State of the Union

On January 27, 2010, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union speech. During his oration, Obama addressed the challenges of the economy, proposing a fee for larger banks, announcing a possible freeze on government spending in 2010 and speaking against the Supreme Court's reversal of a law capping campaign finance spending. He also challenged politicians to stop thinking of re-election and start making positive changes, criticizing Republicans for their refusal to support any legislation, and chastizing Democrats for not pushing hard enough to get legislation passed. He also insisted that, despite obstacles, he was determined to help American citizens through the nation's current domestic difficulties. "We don't quit. I don't quit," he said. "Let's seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and strengthen our union once more."

Challenges and Successes

In the second part of his term as president, Obama has faced a number of obstacles and scored some victories as well. He signed his health-care reform plan, known as the Affordable Care Act, into law in March 2010. Obama's plan is intended to strengthen consumers' rights and to provide affordable insurance coverage and greater access to medical care. His opponents, however, claim that "Obamacare," as they have called it, added new costs to the country's overblown budget and may violate the Constitution with its requirement for individuals to obtain insurance.

On the economic front, Obama has worked hard to steer the country through difficult financial times. He signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 in effort to rein in government spending and prevent the government from defaulting on its financial obligations. The act also called for the creation of a bipartisan committee to seek solutions to the country's fiscal issues, but the group failed to reach any agreement on how to solve these problems.

Obama has also handled a number of military and security issues during his presidency. In 2011, he helped repeal the military policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which prevented openly gay troops from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. He also gave the green light to a 2011 covert operation in Pakistan, which led to the killing of infamous al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs.

Obama made headlines again in June 2012, when a mandate included in his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (initiated in 2010) was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, thus allowing other important pieces of the law to stay intact. The law includes free health screenings for certain citizens, restrictions to stringent insurance company policies and permission for citizens under age 26 to be insured under parental plans, among several other provisions. In a 5-4 decision, the Court voted to uphold the mandate under which citizens are required to purchase health insurance or pay a tax—a main provision of Obama's health-care law—stating that while the mandate is unconstitutional, according to the Constitution's commerce clause, it falls within Congress' constitutional power to tax.

Re-Election and Second Term

As he did in 2008, during his campaign for a second presidential term, Obama focused on grassroots initiatives. Celebrities such as Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker aided the president's campaign by hosting fund-raising events.

"I guarantee you, we will move this country forward," Obama stated in June 2012, at a campaign event in Maryland. "We will finish what we started. And we'll remind the world just why it is the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth."

In the 2012 election, Obama faced Republican opponent Mitt Romney and Romney's vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan. On the evening of November 6, 2012, Obama was announced the winner of the election, gaining a second four-year term as president. Early election results indicated a close race. By midnight on Election Day, however, Obama had received more than 270 electoral votes—the number of votes required to win a U.S. presidential election; later results showed that the president had won nearly 60 percent of the electoral vote, as well as the popular vote by more than 1 million ballots.

Nearly one month after President Obama's re-election, the nation endured one of its most tragic school shootings to date: On December 14, 2012, 20 children and six adult workers were shot to death at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Two days after the attack, Obama delivered a speech at an interfaith vigil for the victims in Newtown, discussing a need for change in order to make schools safer, and alluding to implementing stricter gun control. "These tragedies must end," Obama stated. "We can't accept events like these as routine. In the coming weeks, I'll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental-health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? . . . Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?"

Obama achieved a major legislative victory on January 1, 2013, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a bipartisan agreement on tax increases and spending cuts, in an effort to avoid the looming fiscal cliff crisis (the Senate voted in favor of the bill earlier that day). The agreement marked a productive first step toward the president's re-election promise of reducing the federal defecit by raising taxes on the extremely wealthy—individuals earning more than $400,000 per year and couples earning more than $450,000, according to the bill. Prior to the the bill's passage, in late 2012, tense negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over spending cuts and tax increases became a bitter political battle. Vice President Joe Biden managed to hammer out a deal with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Obama pledged to sign the bill into law.

Barack Obama officially began his second term on January 21, 2013. The inauguration was held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Civil rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, gave the invocation. James Taylor, Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Clarkson sang at the ceremony and poet Richard Blanco read his poem "One Today." U.S. Supreme Court Chief John Roberts conducted Obama's presidential oath of office. After completing his oath, Obama was congratulated by his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha.

In his inaugural address, Obama called the nation to action on such issues as climate change, health care and marriage equality. "We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today's victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall," Obama told the crowd gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol building.

Celebrations continued that day. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended two official inauguration balls, including one held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. There the first couple danced the Al Green classic "Let's Stay Together," sung by Jennifer Hudson. Alicia Keys and Jamie Foxx also performed.

After the inauguration, Obama led the nation through many challenges. None more difficult perhaps, the bombing of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and more than 200 people were injured in this terror attack. Obama traveled to Boston to speak at a memorial service three days after the bombings. To the wounded, he said "Your country is with you. We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again. Of that I have no doubt. You will run again." And he applaused the city's citizens response to this tragedy. "You’ve shown us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good. In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion."

By June, Obama had suffered a significant drop in his approval ratings in a CNN/ORC International poll. He declined to an approval rating of only 45 percent—his lowest rating in more than 18 months. The poll results meant that more than half of Americans disapproved of how Obama was doing as president. Experts attribute the ratings slide to several factors, including the controversy surrounding the NSA surveillance program.

Obama defended the NSA's program, which includes email monitoring and telephone wiretapping, during a visit to Germany that June. "We are not rifling through the emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anyone else,” he said, according to the Financial Times."The encroachment on privacy has been strictly limited." Obama stated that the program has helped stop roughly 50 threats.

In early July 2013, President Obama made history when he joined former President George W. Bush in Africa to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Osama bin Laden's first U.S. attack. The event marked the first meeting between two U.S. presidents on foreign soil in commemoration of an act of terrorism.

Later that month, Obama spoke out about the Trayvon Martin murder trial and the outrage that followed the jury's verdict. His shooter George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing the African American teen in Florida. In a White House press conference, the president said that "when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago." Obama explained that this particular case was a state matter, but he discussed how the federal government could address some of the legislative and racial issues brought up by this situation.

Obama found himself grappling with an international crisis in late August and September 2013. It was discovered that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians. According to the White House website, Obama said that "thousands of people, including over 400 children," had been killed in these attacks. Syria's actions present "a serious national security threat to the United States and to the region, and as a consequence, Assad and Syria needs to be held accountable." The president then worked to persuade Congress and the international community at large to take action against Syria.

As the positions of the members of Congress revealed that the majority was in favor of refraining from striking Syria, Obama announced an alternative solution. During an address on forthcoming action against Syria made on September 10, 2013, Obama stated that if al-Assad agreed with the stipulations outlined in a proposal made by Russia to give up its chemical weapons, then a direct strike against the nation could be avoided. Al-Assad acknowledged the possession of chemical weapons and was receptive to the idea of a proposal from Russia, however Obama stated that "It's too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments."

Later that month, Obama made diplomatic strides with Iran. He spoke with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the phone, which marked the first time the leaders of the two countries have had direct contact in decades. This groundbreaking move by Obama is seen by many as a sign of thawing in the relationship between the United States and Iran. According to an NBC News report, Obama said that "The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran's nuclear program." Obama expressed some optimism that a deal on the issue could be reached.

Obama found himself struggling on the domestic front in October 2013. There was a 16-day shutdown of the federal government, which was caused by a dispute over the federal budget. Republicans especially wanted to defund or otherwise derail Obama's Affordable Care Act. After a deal had been reached to end the shutdown, Obama used his weekly address to express his frustration over the situation and his desire for political reform. "The way business is done in Washington has to change. Now that these clouds of crisis and uncertainty have lifted, we need to focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do—grow the economy, create good jobs, strengthen the middle class, lay the foundation for broad-based prosperity, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul."

The Affordable Care Act continued to come under fire in October after the failed launch of HealthCare.gov, which was meant to help people find health insurance. Extra technical support was brought in to work on the troubled website after users encountered difficulty with it in its early days. The act also seemed to impact the existing insurance policies of many Americans, causing them to lose coverage. According to the Chicago Tribune, Obama insisted that his legislation didn't cause the coverage change, the insurance companies did. He said, "Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad-apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received, or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your premiums, or bill you into bankruptcy."

Under mounting pressure, Obama found himself apologizing regarding some health care changes. He told those who lost their insurance plans that "I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," according to a NBC News report. Obama pledged to find a remedy to this problem. "We are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."

Obama had to manage more challenges in the area of foreign relations around this time as well. In October 2013, German chancellor Angela Merkel revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency had been listening in to her cell phone calls. Speaking at a summit of European leaders, Merkel said that "Spying among friends is never acceptable," according to CNN.com.

In the wake of several controversies, Obama saw his approval rating drop to a new low in November 2013. Only 37 percent of Americans polled by CBS News thought he was doing a good job as president. Another 57 percent disapproved of his handling of the nation.

In March 2014, in an effort to provide relief for Ukrainians following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution—which began with civil unrest and protests in Kiev and led to the downfall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's administration, and subsequently, work to establish a new government for the country—it was announced that Obama had ordered a round of sanctions targeting individuals and businesses considered by the U.S. government to be Ukraine agitators or involved in the Crimean crisis—where Russian troops' seizure of control led to a referendum to decide whether the region could separate from the Ukraine and join Russia.

"The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law," Obama stated at the White House. "In 2014 we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders." According to the president, the sanctions give the U.S. "the flexibility to adjust our response going forwarder based on Russia's actions. We took these steps in close coordination with our European allies."

Obama faced more difficulties at home and abroad later that year. In addition to the ongoing troubles in Ukraine, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians erupted into violence during the summer. He also faced a domestic situation regarding the U.S.-Mexico border, with tens of thousands of children making the perilous crossing alone. Many Republicans called for the rapid deportation of these illegal immigrants while others considered the situation to a humanitarian crisis. Another of the president's woes came from the legislative branch. Speaker of the House John Boehner launched an effort to sue Obama for overstepping his executive powers with some of his actions regarding the Affordable Care Act. 

In September 2014, Obama led an attack against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The United States, along with several Arab countries, launched airstrikes on targets related to this extremist Islamic militant group around this time. Obama also appeared at the United Nations to call for more nations to rally together against ISIS. According to The New York Times, he said that "The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death." 

That November, Obama had to cope with new challenges on the home front. Republicans made an impressive showing on election day, changing the balance of power in the Senate. The Democrats lost their majority in the Senate. Obama must now contend with Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate for the final two years of his term. 

President Barack Obama

Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Barack Obama and Narendra Modi