Barack Hussein
Obama II born August 4, 1961) is an
American politician who is the 44th President of the United States.
He is the first African American to hold the office and the
first president born outside the continental United States. Born in Honolulu,
Hawaii,
Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of
the Harvard Law Review. Obama was born on
August 4, 1961, at Kapiʻolani
Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical
Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu,
Hawaii; he is the first President to have been born in Hawaii. His mother, Ann Dunham,
born in Wichita, Kansas, was of mostly English
ancestry. 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 the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his
father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple
married in Wailuku on Maui on February 2, 1961,
and separated when, in late August 1961, Obama's mother moved with their
newborn son to attend the University 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. There he
earned an M.A. in economics. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964. Obama Sr.
returned to Kenya in 1964 where he remarried; he visited Barack in Hawaii only
once, in 1971. When he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982, his son
was 21 years old. He was a community organizer in Chicago
before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School
between 1992 and 2004. While serving three terms
representing the 13th District in the Illinois
Senate from 1997 to 2004, he ran
unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of
Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush.
His
mother spent most of the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo in 1980
and earning a PhD degree in 1992, before dying in 1995
in Hawaii following treatment for ovarian
cancer and uterine cancer. 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." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social
perceptions of his multiracial heritage.
In 2004, Obama
received national attention during his campaign to represent
Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in
the March Democratic 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, after a close
primary campaign against Hillary
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 was inaugurated as president
on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was
controversially named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
During his first
two years in office, Obama signed into law economic stimulus legislation in response
to the Great Recession in the form of the American 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 the Patient 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 in Afghanistan, signed the New START
arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.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 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.
Obama was reelected president in
November 2012, Obama will be succeeded by President-elect Donald Trump.
