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President Barack Obama

Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

When WIRED asked me to guest-edit the November issue, I didn’t hesitate. I know it’s the height of election season, and I happen to have a day job that keeps me pretty busy. But given the chance to immerse myself in the possibility of interplanetary travel or join a deep-dive conversation on artificial intelligence, I’m going to say yes. I love this stuff. Always have. It’s why my favorite movie of last year was The Martian . Of course, I’m predisposed to love any movie where Americans defy the odds and inspire the world. But what really grabbed me about the film is that it shows how humans—through our ingenuity, our commitment to fact and reason, and ultimately our faith in each other—can science the heck out of just about any problem.

I’m a guy who grew up watching Star Trek —and I’d be lying if I said that show didn’t have at least some small influence on my worldview. What I loved about it was its optimism, the fundamental belief at its core that the people on this planet, for all our varied backgrounds and outward differ­ences, could come together to build a better tomorrow.

I still believe that. I believe we can work together to do big things that raise the fortunes of people here at home and all over the world. And even if we’ve got some work left to do on faster-than-light travel, I still believe science and technology is the warp drive that accelerates that kind of change for everybody.

Here’s another thing I believe: We are far better equipped to take on the challenges we face than ever before. I know that might sound at odds with what we see and hear these days in the cacophony of cable news and social media. But the next time you’re bombarded with over-the-top claims about how our country is doomed or the world is coming apart at the seams, brush off the cynics and fearmongers. Because the truth is, if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now.

By Paresh Dave

By Jonathan O'Callaghan

By Boone Ashworth

By Aarian Marshall

Let’s start with the big picture. By almost every measure, this country is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, 30 years ago, or even eight years ago. Leave aside the sepia tones of the 1950s, a time when women, minorities, and ­people with disabilities were shut out of huge parts of American life. Just since 1983, when I finished college, things like crime rates, teen pregnancy rates, and poverty rates are all down. Life expectancy is up. The share of Americans with a college education is up too. Tens of mil­lions of Americans recently gained the security of health insurance. Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks to lead our businesses and communities. Women are a larger part of our workforce and are earning more money. Once-quiet factories are alive again, with assembly lines churning out the components of a clean-energy age.

And just as America has gotten better, so has the world. More countries know democracy. More kids are going to school. A smaller share of humans know chronic hunger or live in extreme poverty. In nearly two dozen countries—including our own—­people now have the freedom to marry whomever they love. And last year the nations of the world joined together to forge the most comprehen­sive agreement to battle climate change in human history.

This kind of progress hasn’t happened on its own. It happened because people organized and voted for better prospects; because leaders enacted smart, forward-­looking policies; because people’s perspectives opened up, and with them, societies did too. But this progress also happened because we scienced the heck out of our challenges. Science is how we were able to combat acid rain and the AIDS epidemic. Technology is what allowed us to communicate across oceans and empathize with one another when a wall came down in Berlin or a TV personality came out. Without Norman Borlaug’s wheat, we could not feed the world’s hungry. Without Grace Hopper’s code, we might still be analyzing data with pencil and paper.

That’s one reason why I’m so optimistic about the future: the constant churn of scientific progress. Think about the changes we’ve seen just during my presidency. When I came into office, I broke new ground by pecking away at a Black­Berry. Today I read my briefings on an iPad and explore national parks through a virtual-­reality headset. Who knows what kind of changes are in store for our next president and the ones who follow?

That’s why I centered this issue on the idea of frontiers—stories and ideas about what’s over the next horizon, about what lies on the other side of the barriers we haven’t broken through yet. I wanted to explore how we get past where we are today to build a world that’s even better for us all—as individuals, as communities, as a country, and as a planet.

Because the truth is, while we’ve made great progress, there’s no shortage of challenges ahead: Climate change. Economic inequality. Cybersecurity. Terrorism and gun violence. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and ­antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Just as in the past, to clear these hurdles we’re going to need everyone—policy makers and commu­nity leaders, teachers and workers and grassroots activists, presidents and soon-to-be-former presidents. And to accelerate that change, we need science. We need researchers and academics and engineers; programmers, surgeons, and botanists. And most important, we need not only the folks at MIT or Stanford or the NIH but also the mom in West Virginia tinkering with a 3-D printer, the girl on the South Side of Chicago learning to code, the dreamer in San Antonio seeking investors for his new app, the dad in North Dakota learning new skills so he can help lead the green revolution.

That’s how we will overcome the challenges we face: by unleashing the power of all of us for all of us. Not just for those of us who are fortunate, but for everybody. That means creating not just a quicker way to deliver takeout downtown but also a system that distributes excess produce to communities where too many kids go to bed hungry. Not just inventing a service that fills your car with gas but also creating cars that don’t need fossil fuels at all. Not just making our social networks more fun for sharing memes but also harnessing their power to counter terrorist ideologies and online hate speech.

The point is, we need today’s big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget . Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a ­simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair. Since then, I’ve met young people who are tackling everything from destroying cancer cells to using algae to produce clean energy to distributing vaccines to remote areas of the world—all before most of them can even vote.

And as I meet with these young ­people, I can’t help but wonder what might be next—what might happen at a White House Science Fair in five years or 20 years or 50 years? I imagine a student who grows an artificial pancreas right in front of the president—an idea that eventually eliminates waiting lists for lifesaving organs. I imagine the girls who discover a new fuel based on only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide; the teenager who makes voting and civic activism as addictive as scrolling through your Twitter feed; the boy from Idaho who grows potatoes from a plot of soil brought back from our colony on Mars. And I imagine some future president strolling out on the South Lawn with a student who invented a new kind of telescope. As the president looks through the lens, the girl turns the telescope to a planet she just discovered, orbiting a faraway star at the very edge of our galaxy. Then she says she’s hard at work on another invention—one that will take us there someday.

These kinds of moments are closer than you think. My hope is that these kids—maybe some of your kids or grandkids—will be even more curious and creative and confident than we are today. But that depends on us. We must continue to nurture our children’s curiosity. We must keep funding scientific, technological, and medical research. And above all, we must embrace that quintes­sentially American compulsion to race for new frontiers and push the bound­aries of what’s possible. If we do, I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s Americans will be able to look back at what we did—the diseases we conquered, the social problems we solved, the planet we protected for them—and when they see all that, they’ll plainly see that theirs is the best time to be alive. And then they’ll take a page from our book and write the next great chapter in our American story, emboldened to keep going where no one has gone before.

This article appears in the November 2016 issue. Subscribe now .

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How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency

Barack Obama campaigned for the U.S. presidency on a platform of change. As he prepares to leave office, the country he led for eight years is undeniably different. Profound social, demographic and technological changes have swept across the United States during Obama’s tenure, as have important shifts in government policy and public opinion.

Apple released its first iPhone during Obama’s 2007 campaign, and he announced his vice presidential pick – Joe Biden – on a two-year-old platform called Twitter. Today, use of smartphones and social media has become the norm in U.S. society, not the exception.

The election of the nation’s first black president raised hopes that race relations in the U.S. would improve, especially among black voters. But by 2016, following a spate of high-profile deaths of black Americans during encounters with police and protests by the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups, many Americans – especially blacks – described race relations as generally bad .

The U.S. economy is in much better shape now than it was in the aftermath of the Great Recession, which cost millions of Americans their homes and jobs and led Obama to push through a roughly $800 billion stimulus package as one of his first orders of business. Unemployment has plummeted from 10% in late 2009 to below 5% today; the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled.

But by some measures, the country faces serious economic challenges: A steady hollowing of the middle class, for example, continued during Obama’s presidency , and income inequality reached its highest point since 1928.

Obama’s election quickly elevated America’s image abroad, especially in Europe, where George W. Bush was deeply unpopular following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2009, shortly after Obama took office, residents in many countries expressed a sharp increase in confidence in the ability of the U.S. president to do the right thing in international affairs. While Obama remained largely popular internationally throughout his tenure, there were exceptions, including in Russia and key Muslim nations. And Americans themselves became more wary of international engagement.

Views on some high-profile social issues shifted rapidly. Eight states and the District of Columbia legalized marijuana for recreational purposes, a legal shift accompanied by a striking reversal in public opinion: For the first time on record, a majority of Americans now support legalization of the drug .

As it often does, the Supreme Court settled momentous legal battles during Obama’s tenure, and in 2015, it overturned long-standing bans on same-sex marriage, effectively legalizing such unions nationwide. Even before the court issued its landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges , a majority of Americans said for the first time that they favored same-sex marriage.

As the Obama era draws to a close, Pew Research Center looks back on these and other important social, demographic and political shifts that have occurred at home and abroad during the tenure of the 44th president. And we look ahead to some of the trends that could define the tenure of the 45th, Donald Trump.

Related: How America Changed During Donald Trump’s Presidency

Demographic changes don’t happen quickly. Obama’s presidency is only a chapter in a story that began long before his arrival and will continue long after his departure. Even so, the U.S. of today differs in some significant ways from the U.S. of 2008.

Millennials are approaching Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation and as the largest generation of eligible voters .

The nation’s growing diversity has become more evident, too. In 2013, for the first time, the majority of newborn babies in the U.S. were racial or ethnic minorities. The same year, a record-high 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race.

The November electorate was the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse ever . Nearly one-in-three eligible voters on Election Day were Hispanic, black, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, reflecting a steady rise since 2008. Strong growth in the number of Hispanic eligible voters , in particular U.S.-born youth, drove much of this change. Indeed, for the first time, the Hispanic share of the electorate is now on par with the black share.

While illegal immigration served as a flashpoint in the tumultuous campaign to succeed Obama, there has been little change in the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. since 2009. And for the first time since the 1940s, more Mexican immigrants – both legal and unauthorized – have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have entered.

When it comes to the nation’s religious identity, the biggest trend during Obama’s presidency is the rise of those who claim no religion at all. Those who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” now make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. adult population, up from 16% in 2007.

Christians, meanwhile, have fallen from 78% to 71% of the U.S. adult population, owing mainly to modest declines in the share of adults who identify with mainline Protestantism and Catholicism. The share of Americans identifying with evangelical Protestantism, historically black Protestant denominations and other smaller Christian groups, by contrast, have remained fairly stable.

Due largely to the growth of those who don’t identify with any religion, the shares of Americans who say they believe in God, consider religion to be very important in their lives, say they pray daily and say they attend religious services at least monthly have all ticked downward in recent years . At the same time, the large majority of Americans who do identify with a faith are, on average, as religiously observant as they were a few years ago, and by some measures even more so.

The tide of demographic changes in the U.S. has affected both major parties , but in different ways. Democratic voters are becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than that of the country, while Republicans are aging more quickly than the country as a whole. Education, in particular, has emerged as an important dividing line in recent years, with college graduates becoming more likely to identify as Democrats and those without a college degree becoming more likely to identify as Republicans.

What we believe

More politically divided

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November’s bitterly contested election, becoming the first person ever to win the White House with no prior political or military experience. But the divisions that emerged during the campaign and in its aftermath had been building long before Trump announced his candidacy, and despite Obama’s stated aim of reducing partisanship.

Partisan divisions in assessments of presidential performance, for example, are wider now than at any point going back more than six decades, and this growing gap is largely the result of increasing disapproval of the chief executive from the opposition party. An average of just 14% of Republicans have approved of Obama over the course of his presidency, compared with an average of 81% of Democrats.

Obama’s signature legislative achievement – the 2010 health care law that informally bears his name – has prompted some of the sharpest divisions between Democrats and Republicans. About three-quarters of Democrats approve of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” while 85% of Republicans disapprove of it.

But the partisanship so evident during Obama’s years is perhaps most notable because it extended far beyond disagreements over specific leaders, parties or proposals. Today, more issues cleave along partisan lines than at any point since surveys began to track public opinion.

Between 1994 and 2005, for example, Republicans’ and Democrats’ attitudes toward immigrants in the U.S. tracked one another closely. Beginning around 2006, however, they began to diverge. And the gap has only grown wider since then: Democrats today are more than twice as likely as Republicans to say that immigrants strengthen the country.

Gun control has long been a partisan issue, with Democrats considerably more likely than Republicans to say it is more important to control gun ownership than protect gun rights. But what was a 27-percentage-point gap between supporters of Obama and John McCain on this question in 2008 surged to a historic 70-point gap between Clinton and Trump supporters in 2016.

Climate change marks another area where the parties are deeply divided . Wide partisan divides stretch from the causes and cures for climate change to trust in climate scientists and their research. Only about a fifth of Republicans and independents who lean Republican say they trust climate scientists “a lot” to give full and accurate information about the causes of climate change. This compares with more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Skeptical of government, other institutions

If views of some issues changed markedly during Obama’s time in office, views of the government did not. Americans’ trust in the federal government remained mired at historic lows. Elected officials were held in such low regard, in fact, that more than half of the public said in a fall 2015 survey that “ordinary Americans” would do a better job of solving national problems.

Americans felt disillusioned with the way Washington responded to the financial meltdown of 2008. In 2015, seven-in-ten Americans said that the government’s policies following the recession generally did little or nothing to help middle-class people. A roughly equal share said the government’s post-recession policies did a great deal or a fair amount to help large banks and financial institutions.

Against a backdrop of global terrorism – including several attacks on American soil – Americans also became less confident in the ability of their government to handle threats. In 2015, following major attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, the public’s concerns about terrorism surged and positive ratings of the government’s handling of terrorism plummeted to a post-9/11 low .

Americans also had serious concerns about privacy, though the government was not the sole focus of skepticism in this respect. During the Obama years, Americans were highly skeptical their personal information would remain private and secure, regardless of whether it was the government or the private sector that collected it. In a 2014 survey, fewer than one-in-ten Americans said they were very confident that each of 11 separate entities – ranging from credit card companies to email providers – would keep their records private and secure.

Our place in the world

Obama’s election provided an almost immediate boost to America’s global image following the Bush administration and its entanglements in the Middle East. Americans themselves, however, grew more wary of international engagement during Obama’s presidency.

In Germany, favorability of the U.S. more than doubled following Obama’s election. In the United Kingdom, confidence in the U.S. president surged from 16% for Bush in 2008 to 86% for Obama in 2009. The Obama bump was most dramatic in Western Europe, but was also evident in virtually every country surveyed between 2007 and 2009.

The U.S. retained its popularity in Africa and parts of Latin America during Obama’s second term. But the U.S. wasn’t seen favorably everywhere. Russian views of the U.S. veered sharply negative in 2014 while the image of the U.S. remained dour in key Muslim countries. Meanwhile, certain U.S. actions under Obama, such as drone strikes , eavesdropping on foreign leaders and revelations of torture in the post-9/11 period, were globally unpopular.

Americans, meanwhile, have become less certain of their place in the world . The share of Americans who say it would be better if the U.S. just dealt with its own problems and let other countries deal with their own as best they can has risen 11 points since the spring of 2010.

The public’s wariness toward global engagement extends to U.S. participation in the global economy and international trade agreements. Roughly half of Americans say U.S. involvement in the global economy is a bad thing because it lowers wages and costs jobs; fewer see it as a good thing because it provides the U.S. with new markets and opportunities for growth. Americans’ views of trade agreements have also soured, a shift driven almost entirely by increasingly negative views among Republicans , especially during the campaign of Trump, who has been highly critical of free trade agreements.

About half of Americans say the U.S. is a less powerful and important world leader than it was a decade ago, though most still believe the U.S. is the world’s leading economic and military power .

How we interact

Smartphones and social media

If demographic changes are slow, technological changes can be swift. In the new millennium, major technology revolutions have occurred in broadband connectivity, social media use and mobile adoption. All three of them continued, and in some cases accelerated, during Obama’s presidency.

More than two-thirds of Americans owned a smartphone by 2015, six times the ownership levels at the dawn of Obama’s tenure. When Apple released the iPad halfway through Obama’s first term, a mere 3% of Americans owned tablets ; nearly half had tablets by the end of 2015.

Although social media use was a signature aspect of Obama’s 2008 campaign, only one-third of Americans used social media that year. With the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other apps, social media use climbed to about three-quarters of online adults by 2015.

Obama also helped usher in the rise of digital video in politics, sharing his weekly address through the White House YouTube channel. By the end of his second term, YouTube had become a media behemoth with over a billion users .

How we get our news

The rise of digital tools and social platforms has also helped bring about profound changes in the U.S. media landscape. Americans today access information, get news and engage with politicians in new and different ways than in 2008 – a trend underscored by the political success of Trump, whose frequent use of Twitter to communicate directly with supporters (and detractors) was one of the defining narratives of his campaign to succeed Obama.

In 2016, more U.S. adults learned about the presidential election through social media than through print newspapers. Younger Americans, in particular, were more likely to turn to social media rather than more traditional platforms, with those ages 18 to 29 listing it as their “most helpful” source for election information in a January 2016 survey. (Cable TV, by contrast, remained among the most helpful sources for all other adults.)

The overall American news experience changed significantly during Obama’s years in office. In 2008, relatively few Americans said they got their news through social media or via a smartphone or other mobile device. By 2016, six-in-ten Americans said they got their news through social media and seven-in-ten said they accessed it through a mobile device .

Print newspapers continued a long-term decline, with sharp cuts in newspaper staffing and a severe dip in average circulation. Newspaper editorial staff in the U.S. went from nearly 47,000 in 2008 to about 33,000 in 2014 – a 30% drop, according to data from the American Society of News Editors.

While television remains a major source of news for Americans, there are signs of change . Viewership of local TV newscasts has been flat or declining for years, depending on the time of day. Between 2007 and 2015, average viewership for late-night newscasts declined 22%, according to analysis of Nielsen Media Research data.

Overall, Americans remained extremely wary of the news media. In a 2016 survey, seven-in-ten adults said the media has a “negative effect” on the way things are going in the U.S. today – the highest share of any nongovernmental institution polled. Nearly three-quarters said in a separate survey that the news media are biased.

But for all the skepticism facing the media, Americans continued to value the watchdog functions of the press. About eight-in-ten registered voters, for example, said it is the news media’s responsibility to fact-check political candidates and campaigns. Three-in-four said that news organizations keep political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t .

The future of the media is likely to be an even more salient question following the 2016 presidential campaign, which saw the emergence of a trend of “ fake news ” that has caused some observers to say that America has entered a period of “ post-truth politics .”

Looking ahead

While the 2016 election may be one for the history books, looking ahead requires equal measures of caution and humility, particularly when it comes to politics and public policy.

It remains to be seen, for example, whether Donald Trump will push forward on some of his highest-profile campaign priorities, such as constructing a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, lowering federal taxes and reducing government regulation. On some of his priorities, Trump appears to have the support of the public; on others, he appears to be out of step with public sentiment. Either way, history suggests that opinion can change significantly as general proposals move to concrete legislation.

Still, there are certain bigger trends we know are going to continue and others that show no signs of reversing.

The technological changes that were such a hallmark of Obama’s eight years will go on, constantly reshaping the way we communicate, the way we travel, the way we shop and the way we work, among many other facets of everyday life. Americans seem to expect major changes: More than six-in-ten, for example, believe that within 50 years, robots or computers will do much of the work that is currently done by humans.

The demographic changes that have taken hold across the U.S. will continue their transformation of America, too. The nation as a whole will turn grayer and its racial and ethnic diversification is expected to continue: In less than 40 years, the U.S. will not have a single racial or ethnic majority group, according to Pew Research Center projections.

The U.S. has also long been home to more immigrants than any other country in the world, and by 2065, one-in-three Americans will be an immigrant or have immigrant parents, compared with about one-in-four today.

The nation’s stark partisan fissures are likely to persist and may deepen. Just as Obama’s job approval ratings are deeply divided along partisan lines, the public’s ratings for how Trump has handled his transition to the White House are more divided by party than they were for recent presidents-elect. A reality of American politics today is that one of the only things large numbers of Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that they can’t agree on basic facts .

The foreign policy challenges facing this politically fractured nation seem endless, from Russia and China to terrorism and the environment. At home, financial prosperity – even stability – feels increasingly out of reach to many Americans: Today, far more people are pessimistic than optimistic about life for the next generation of Americans.

Yet the United States enters this uncertain new era with undeniable, if often overlooked, strengths. Republicans and Democrats, for example, differ dramatically over whether the nation has gotten more or less powerful as a global leader over the past decade, but majorities in both parties say the U.S. is still the world’s leading military – and yes, economic – power. And most Americans say that one of the hallmarks of U.S. society – its racial and ethnic diversity – makes the country a better place to live .

It is tempting to believe that the pace of change in the U.S. has never been greater, or that 2016’s election is of greater consequence than others. As significant as the current moment of transition is, however, only the passage of time can reveal the trends that will truly have lasting importance.

Note: The second paragraph of the “Who we are” section of this essay and its accompanying graphic were updated on May 21, 2018. The changes reflect the Center’s revised definition of the Millennial generation and the updated year in which Millennials become the largest generation in the U.S. and in the American electorate .

Michael Dimock is the president of Pew Research Center, where he leads a domestic and international research agenda to explain public attitudes, demographic changes and other trends over time. A political scientist by training, Dimock has been at the Center since 2000 and has co-authored several of its landmark research reports, including studies of trends in American political and social values and a groundbreaking examination of political polarization within the American public.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Presidents of the United States — Barack Obama

Essays on Barack Obama

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, has had a significant impact on American history and politics. As a result, there are a plethora of essay topics that can be explored in relation to his presidency, policies, and legacy. Choosing the right topic is important to ensure that the essay is engaging, informative, and relevant to current discussions. In this article, we will discuss the importance of the topic, provide advice on choosing a topic, and then offer a detailed list of recommended essay topics, divided by category.

Barack Obama's presidency was historic for many reasons, including being the first African American president of the United States. His policies, such as the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, and climate change initiatives, have had lasting effects on the country. Additionally, his leadership style, communication skills, and international relations have been subjects of analysis and debate. Therefore, choosing a relevant and impactful topic is crucial to effectively examine and discuss the legacy of Barack Obama's presidency.

When selecting a topic for an essay on Barack Obama, it is important to consider personal interests, current events, and the potential impact of the topic. Topics that have not been extensively covered or offer a unique perspective are particularly valuable. Additionally, it is beneficial to consider the audience and the purpose of the essay, whether it aims to inform, persuade, or analyze. Lastly, conducting thorough research on the chosen topic is essential to ensure a comprehensive and well-supported essay.

Recommended Barack Obama Essay Topics

Domestic policies.

• The Affordable Care Act: Successes and Challenges
• Impact of Economic Policies on Middle-Class Americans
• Criminal Justice Reform: Obama's Initiatives
• Education Reform and its Effects
• Gun Control Legislation and Advocacy
• Environmental Protection and Climate Change Policies

International Relations

• Obama's Approach to Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
• The Iran Nuclear Deal: Analysis and Implications
• Relations with Russia during Obama's Presidency
• The Impact of the Obama Administration on the Middle East
• Asia-Pacific Rebalance Strategy

Leadership and Communication

• Analyzing Obama's Leadership Style and Effectiveness
• The Role of Rhetoric in Obama's Communication Strategies
• The Use of Social Media in Obama's Campaigns and Presidency
• Obama's Approach to Uniting a Divided Nation
• Public Perception of Obama's Presidency

Legacy and Impact

• Assessing Obama's Impact on Race Relations in America
• Obama's Legacy and Historical Significance
• Comparing Obama's Presidency with Previous Presidents
• Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Obama's Policies
• Obama's Influence on Subsequent Political Movements

These are just a few examples of the many potential essay topics related to Barack Obama. Each category provides a different perspective on his presidency, policies, and legacy, allowing for a diverse range of essays to be written. By carefully considering the importance of the topic and following the advice on choosing a topic, students and writers can create impactful and meaningful essays on the legacy of Barack Obama.

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August 4, 1961 (age 60)

Barack Obama is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.

Signed the Affordable Care Act. Ended the War In Iraq. Signed The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Signed The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act. Repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act.

“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.” “In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” “If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.” “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”

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‘Better Is Good’: Obama on Reparations, Civil Rights, and the Art of the Possible

The second in a series of interviews between Ta-Nehisi Coates and the president

In “ My President Was Black ,” The Atlantic ’s Ta-Nehisi Coates examined Barack Obama’s tenure in office, and his legacy. The story was built, in part, around a series of conversations he had with the president. This is a transcript of the second of those four encounters, which took place on October 19, 2016. Valerie Jarrett, the senior adviser to the president, was also present. You can find the other interviews, as well as responses to the story and to these conversations, here .

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I’ve talked to Marty [Nesbitt], I talked to Mama Kaye [Wilson], I talked to Eric Holder, so I’ve been making the rounds. I’ve got all the goods.

Barack Obama: You’ve got all the goods.

Coates: I’ve got all the goods. Talked to [David] Axelrod, talked to [David] Plouffe.

Obama: I’m ready to just fill in the gaps.

Coates: I thought we’d talk about policy today. I wanted to start by getting a sense of your mind-set coming into the job, and as I’ve understood you—and you can reject this—your perspective is that a mixture of universalist policies, in combination with an increased level of personal responsibility and communal responsibility among African Americans, when we talk about these gaps that we see between black and white America, that that really is the way forward. Is that a correct summation?

Obama: I think it’s a three-legged stool and you left out one, which is vigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. So the way we thought about it when we came in is that—and obviously we came in during crisis, so how we might have structured our policy sequencing if, when we came in, the economy was okay, and we weren’t potentially going into a great recession, and folks weren’t all losing their homes, might have been different. But as a general matter, my view would be that if you want to get at African American poverty, the income gap, wealth gap, achievement gap, that the most important thing is to make sure that the society as a whole does right by people who are poor, are working class, are aspiring to a better life for their kids. Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.

Step No. 2, and this is where I think policies do need to be somewhat race-specific, is making sure that institutions are not discriminatory. So you’ve got something like the FHA [Federal Housing Administration], which was on its face a universal program that involved a huge mechanism for wealth accumulation and people entering into the middle class. But if, in its application, black folks were excluded from it, then you have to override that by going after those discriminatory practices. The same would be true for something like Social Security, where historically, if you just read the law and the fact that it excluded domestic workers or agricultural workers, you might not see race in it, unless you knew that that covered a huge chunk of African Americans, particularly in the South. So reinvigorating the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, making sure that in our Department of Education, where we see evidence of black boys being suspended at substantially higher rates than white boys for the same behavior, in the absence of that kind of rigorous enforcement of the nondiscrimination principle, then the long-standing biases that I believe have weakened, but are still clearly present in our society, assert themselves in ways that usually disadvantage African Americans.

If you’ve got those two things right—if those two things are happening—then a third leg of the stool is, how do we in the African American community build a culture in which we are saying to our kids, “Here’s what it takes to succeed. Here’s the sacrifices you need to make to be able to get ahead. Here’s how we support each other. Here’s how we look out for each other.” And it is my view that if society was doing the right thing with respect to you, [and there were] programs targeted at helping people rise into the middle class and have a good income and be able to save and send their kids to school, and you’ve got a vigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, then I have confidence in the black community’s capabilities to then move forward.

Now, does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we’ve had before when you talk about something like reparations. Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument. But as a practical matter, it is hard to think of any society in human history in which a majority population has said that as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now going to take a big chunk of the nation’s resources over a long period of time to make that right. You can look at examples like postwar Germany, where reparations were paid to Holocaust victims and families, but—

Coates: They lost the war.

Obama: They lost the war. Small population, finite amount of money that it was going to cost. Not multiple generations but people, in some cases, who are still alive, who can point to, “That was my house. Those were my paintings. Those were my mother’s family jewels.” If you look at countries like South Africa, where you had a black majority, there have been efforts to tax and help that black majority, but it hasn’t come in the form of a formal reparations program. You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed the structure of their societies.

So the bottom line is that it’s hard to find a model in which you can practically administer and sustain political support for those kinds of efforts. And what makes America complicated as well is the degree to which this is not just a black/white society, and it is becoming less so every year. So how do Latinos feel if there’s a big investment just in the African American community, and they’re looking around and saying, “We’re poor as well. What kind of help are we getting?” Or Asian Americans who say, “Look, I’m a first-generation immigrant, and clearly I didn’t have anything to do with what was taking place.” And now you start getting into trying to calibrate—

Coates: Isn’t there just—not to cut you off—isn’t there, and this is out of the role of U.S. president, I’m almost speaking to you as a law professor now, an intellectual, in fact—

Obama: Well, that’s how I was answering the question, because if you want me to talk about politics, I’ll be much more blunt about it.

Coates: I figured that. I thought that was what I was getting.

Obama: I was giving the benefit of playing out, theoretically, how you could think about that.

Coates: And I appreciate that. And the question I would ask is in that situation, to the immigrant who comes here, first generation, and says, “I didn’t do any of this,” but the country is largely here because of that. In other words, many of the benefits that you will actually enjoy are, in fact, in part—I won’t say largely—in part here because of the past. So when you want the benefits, when you invoke the past, that thus you inherit the debt, too—

Obama: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess, here’s the way—probably the best way of saying it is that you can make a theoretical, abstract argument in favor of something like reparations. And maybe I’m just not being sufficiently optimistic or imaginative enough—

Coates: You’re supposed to be optimistic!

Obama: Well, I thought I was, but I’m not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people. So to restate it: I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader’s ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow. Now, we can debate the justness of that. But I feel pretty confident in that assessment politically. And, you know, I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now, and—

Coates: You think we could catch up?

Obama: We were able to make sure that it stayed fair for a long time and that children going forward were not encumbered by some of that same bias of the past, I think it would not take long at all, because we are a talented, resourceful people. Just play this out as a thought experiment: Imagine if you had genuine, high-quality early-childhood education for every child, and suddenly every black child in America—but also every poor white child or Latino [child], but just stick with every black child in America—is getting a really good education. And they’re graduating from high school at the same rates that whites are, and they are going to college at the same rates that whites are, and they are able to afford college at the same rates because the government has universal programs that say that you’re not going to be barred from school just because of how much money your parents have. So now they’re all graduating. And let’s also say that the Justice Department and the courts are making sure, as I’ve said in a speech before, that when Jamal sends his résumé in, he’s getting treated the same as when Johnny sends his résumé in.

Now, are we going to have suddenly the same number of CEOs, billionaires, etc., as the white community? In 10 years? Probably not, maybe not even in 20 years. But I guarantee you that we would be thriving, we would be succeeding. We wouldn’t have huge numbers of young African American men in jail. We’d have more family formation as college-graduated girls are meeting boys who are their peers, which then in turn means the next generation of kids are growing up that much better. And suddenly you’ve got a whole generation that’s in a position to start using the incredible creativity that we see in music, and sports, and frankly even on the streets, channeled into starting all kinds of businesses. I feel pretty good about our odds in that situation.

And my point has always been: We’re so far from that. Why are we even having the abstract conversation when we’ve got a big fight on our hands just to get strong, universal antipoverty programs and social programs in place, and we’re still fighting to make sure that basic antidiscrimination laws are enforced, not just at the federal level, by the way, but throughout government and throughout the private sector? And those are fights that we can win because—and this is where I do believe America has changed—the majority, not by any means 100 percent, but the majority of Americans believe in the idea of nondiscrimination. They believe in the idea that Jamal and Johnny should be treated equally. They believe in the idea that a child shouldn’t be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth. Now, in practice, in daily social interactions, etc., there may be all kinds of biases and prejudices that are unspoken, that people aren’t aware of, that affect who’s hired, and who gets loans, and how kids are treated in school. But it’s a powerful thing if you have on your side an idea that the overwhelming majority of people believe in because that’s how you can build a consensus that’s lasting. And that’s how you avoid an argument that “I’m being treated unfairly because you are treating somebody differently than me.” Everybody potentially can make the claim that we should all be treated fairly. As opposed to getting into arguments about, well, these folks have been treated fairly so now we’re going to be doing things that, very easily in the minds of a lot Americans feel like, “Now I’m being treated unfairly.”

Coates: One of the things I would say—the first thing I want to say is—I don’t want to draw this into an either-or argument, that if you make the reparations argument, you therefore don’t support everything else that you said.

Obama: I’m well aware of that.

Coates: Okay. The second part, you’re talking about how the country has changed, and the consciousness, and I think we both agree that 150 years ago that wasn’t true. And I wonder, is it the work, perhaps maybe not of presidents but certainly of people outside of government, to change that mind-set? And if one can come to see, for instance, that, yeah, it is true that nondiscrimination should be a basic value that we share, that, as I would put it, responsibility for our history is one, too?

Obama: Right. And I think that it is. I want my children—I want Malia and Sasha—to understand that they’ve got responsibilities beyond just what they themselves have done. That they have a responsibility to the larger community and the larger nation, that they should be sensitive to and extra thoughtful about the plight of people who have been oppressed in the past, are oppressed currently. So that’s a wisdom that I want to transmit to my kids. And it may be that we found an area where you’re more optimistic than me. But I would say that’s a high level of enlightenment that you’re looking to have from a majority of the society. And it may be something that future generations are more open to, but I am pretty confident that for the foreseeable future, using the argument of nondiscrimination, and “Let’s get it right for the kids who are here right now,” and giving them the best chance possible, is going to be a more persuasive argument.

One of the things you learn as president is, as powerful as this office is, you have limited bandwidth. And the time goes by really quickly and you’re constantly making choices, and there are pressures on you from all different directions—pressures on your attention, not just pressures from different constituencies. And so you have to be pretty focused about where can you have the biggest, quickest impact. And I always tell my staff, “Better is good.” I’ll take better every time, because better is hard. Better may not be as good as the best, but better is surprisingly hard to obtain. And better is actually harder than worse. [Laughter]

It requires enormous energy for us to cut the African American uninsured rate by a third. A lot of scars. Bernie Sanders would say, “You still have millions of African Americans who aren’t insured, and if we had a single-payer system, that wouldn’t be the case.” And that’s true. But it is my judgment that had I spent the first two years trying to get a single-payer system, all those folks who now have health insurance that didn’t have it would still be uninsured. And those are millions of people whose lives are impacted right now. I get letters from them right now. “You saved my child’s life.” “I did not have to sell my home when my wife got sick.” And that is what, as a policy maker, I’m trying to achieve during the short period of time that I’m here.

Now, you as a thinker, you as a writer, you as a philosopher, you want to stretch the boundaries of thinking, because you’re not constrained by trying to move the levers of power right now. And so I think that these are all worthy topics of conversation. Sometimes I wonder how much of these debates have to do with the desire, the legitimate desire, for that history to be recognized. Because there is a psychic power to the recognition that is not satisfied with a universal program, it’s not satisfied by the Affordable Care Act, or an expansion of Pell grants, or an expansion of the earned-income tax credit. It doesn’t speak to the hurt, and the sense of injustice, and the self-doubt that arises out of the fact that we’re behind now, and it makes us sometimes feel as if there must be something wrong with us, unless you’re able to see the history and say, “It’s amazing we got this far given what we went through.” So part of, I think, the argument sometimes that I’ve had with folks who are much more interested in sort of race-specific programs is less an argument about what is practically achievable and sometimes maybe more an argument of “We want society to see what’s happened, and internalize it, and answer it in demonstrable ways.” And those impulses I very much understand, but my hope would be that, as we’re moving through the world right now, we’re able to get that psychological or emotional peace by seeing very concretely our kids doing better and being more hopeful and having greater opportunities. And your son thriving at some United Nations model conference, and me seeing Malia and Sasha doing amazing things. And some of the mentees that I was talking to at A and T overcome incredible disadvantages and starting to gain confidence in what they can do in the world. And I’ll stop there.

Coates: You know, Mr. President, I think largely what a lot of us fear, everything you described—Pell grants, health care, all the programs—that’s the world—let me speak for myself, not for anybody—that’s a world I’d want to live in whether black or not. That just speaks to society’s commitment to its citizens. What we fear is that the gap will never close. Or let me rephrase that: The gap will close, but it will never actually be equal. There will always be carrying this. That without some sort of specific acknowledgment—you know, when I was working on this piece about race, the theory—fine. Going to a 90-year-old’s house in Lawndale in Chicago, and I’m not supposing you don’t have more experience with this, because you read letters and travel and you see, but as a journalist to sit there and see somebody who fought in World War II, and to hear him talk about how they had done everything right—basically obeyed their side of the social contract—and to hear them basically say, “And what I got was ripped off.” And then to have in my city in Baltimore, right now about 10 years ago during the housing crisis, to see Wells Fargo going to these black folks who just want to buy homes, who just want to be part of the basic American dream, social contract, and to see them being ripped off, not in the same fashion but the same idea—taking from them. We fear without any sort of direct engagement of that question, it won’t stop.

Obama: Well, this is why the antidiscrimination principle being enforced is important. Because it won’t stop if some of the underlying biases aren’t challenged and surfaced. And that in and of itself creates backlash and denial. This is what I mean when I say better is hard. Just making sure that right now folks aren’t being ripped off—that’s a challenge. I remember when I was in Chicago and data started coming out that when black folks walk into an auto dealership, and women, too, to some degree, they are automatically given higher quotes, worse deals. And this was just documented extensively across auto dealerships around the country. There was a tax being imposed on black folks. By collecting that data, you can construct policies to combat that. And that’s potentially thousands of dollars in people’s pockets that are being taken away right now. But it’s hard to do. It requires an effective government agency, and data collection, and pushing, and shoving, and litigation until finally you start getting new norms and new practices.

And my argument—it’s not even an argument—my conviction is that those fights need to be fought right now and can be won. And if in fact we have finite political capital, energy, resources, we need to win those fights. And if we win all those fights, and now let’s say the income gap, and the wealth gap, and the education gap have for the most part been closed—let’s say hypothetically, knowing what we know now about public policy, that we could close the education gap so that it was only a couple percentage points, and we could make sure that hiring barriers and educational barriers had been leveled down, and unemployment among African Americans right now instead of being double was only 10 percent higher than white unemployment—if we got to that point, first of all, America as a whole would be a lot richer. Second of all, the African American community would not just be wealthier, but it would actually also be more politically empowered by virtue of having more resources. Third, I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it’s my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don’t inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you—but if they started having more middle-class black kids who are friends with their kids, eating Cheerios in their kitchen, their attitudes start changing. If we achieve all that and there’s still a gap, at worst we’re much better positioned to pursue strategies to close that final gap. And at best we might surprise ourselves in terms of how well we’re doing.

So there’s going to—as I said before, it’s a generational project just to get America to live up fully to its ideals and to have the kind of society where everybody has a shot, and every kid is getting a good education, and people are getting living wages, and they have decent retirement. And if we got there and we looked up and we said, “You know what? Black folks are still doing a little bit worse off than whites, but it’s not like it was 20 years ago,” then we can have a discussion about how do we get that last little bit. But that’s a high-class problem to have. And to me the question right now is: How do I close that first three-quarters of the achievement gap, education gap, wealth gap? What gives me the best chance to do that? And I’m pretty darn sure that if America is a just society and treating people well right now, irrespective of past wrongs, that I’m going to close a big chunk of that gap . I’ve seen it.

This is what I always take away from something like My Brother’s Keeper—it’s almost an analogy. I look at some of the kids that I interact with, and they were born with so many disadvantages. And you could start off in your first interaction with them saying, “Unless they get a lot of compensatory help, they’re not going to be able to compete; they’re just so far behind, and they’re wounded and they’re hurt.” Think about that young man we were talking to: His mother was a drug addict, and his dad is in prison, and he has no sense of direction. And there’s no doubt that the more you did for him, probably the better he would do, but what’s always striking to me is he just got a little bit. He just had a few adults paying attention and telling him he was worth something while he’s in juvee, he’s just got somebody who is willing to pay his community-college fees, and suddenly you’ve got this young man sitting there who is so self-aware that to the president of the United States he can say, “Look even though I look like I’ve got my act together, I’ve still got pains, wounds, there’re issues I still have, and yet I’m going to be a teacher and I can tell my story, and here’s how I’m thinking about social change in the community.” And I’m thinking to myself, Wow . I believe he can close that gap, and my conclusion is that five years from now, if you ask me who has a better shot of being a great teacher in a school, that guy or some kid who grew up in an upper-middle-class community who out of all kinds of good-hearted impulses wants to be a teacher, I’m betting he ends up being the better teacher. That gap has been closed, even though you would think it wouldn’t be.

Now, I don’t want to exaggerate; having as many African American men as we’ve had in the criminal-justice system, and the amount of time it takes for the damage done by that to wash through our society and our communities, the disadvantages born out of kids being undiagnosed with mental-health problems early, or not getting the kind of exposure to reading and math when they’re 4 or 5 or 6 years old, that carries a cost. But I know that those gaps can be closed. And they can be closed substantially, more than I think we believe. So I guess maybe we can agree that in some ways you’re more optimistic than me, and in some ways I’m more optimistic than you. You’re maybe more optimistic than me in terms of the ability to persuade a society to make up for past injustices; but maybe I’m more optimistic than you about the ability to persuade a society to make up for current injustices and the capacity of the victims of those injustices to catch up pretty quickly.

Coates: Were you surprised relatively early on in your presidency when people criticized you for not having a quote-unquote “black agenda”?

Obama: No. I mean, I think if you worked at the community level in Chicago and then a politician on the South Side of Chicago, and worked at the state level, then you’re pretty familiar with all the variations of politics in the African American community and criticisms you may get. If you’re not familiar with those or you don’t have a thick enough skin to take it, then you probably wouldn’t have gotten here.

Coates: So it didn’t surprise you at all?

Obama: No. I think, and look, Ta-Nehisi, I don’t want to discount those criticisms, but offsetting those criticisms is that I have 90 percent or 95 percent support in the African American community and it’s not sort of “Well, he’s black, so it’s okay. We’re not going to say anything even though we’re seething.” And I hang out with a lot of middle-aged black women, and they’re not casual in their support of me. There’s a lot of love forthcoming. Partly because they understand the constraints of this society. They know that this is hard. And they also, I think, see me and Michelle trying. It’s one thing if they were watching and we were not working on poverty issues, and we weren’t working on education issues, and we weren’t working on health-care issues. You know, they’re pretty sophisticated; they understand that I’m trying to move an aircraft carrier here, I’m not just steering the speedboat. And so part of it is, I think, intellectual, and part of it is obviously emotional as well. But that support has been so constant and gracious and loving. Michelle and I have never felt as if, at any stage, folks didn’t have our backs. And as a consequence, I think that just spurred us on that much more to make us want to do the right thing, and do our best in the positions that we have.

Coates: So perhaps more substantive than that early-on critique, for instance—and Valerie [Jarrett] and I talked a little bit about this—when you attempted to bring in some of the Black Lives Matter activists and folks refused. And I heard you address this at Howard, too. What I would say—did you understand why some of them refused? Could you comprehend it?

Obama: Oh, I absolutely could comprehend it. A couple of them refused because they’re 20, or 21. I mean, that’s why they refused. It’s the same as when we were working on immigration reform and there was a young Latino man, young immigration activist here who, in the Roosevelt Room, refused to shake my hand.

Coates: Are you serious?

Obama: Absolutely. And I’m going around the table shaking everybody’s hand. And he made a point of saying, “I can’t shake your hand; you’re deporting too many people.” And I just said to him, “Young man, I’m glad that you feel so passionately about this issue, but you’re with the president right now in the White House. You’ve got to think about what’s going to be most effective in getting what you need, what you’re trying to accomplish. Because this may not be your best strategy.”

Coates: How did he respond?

Obama: Like a 21-year-old would, which is sort of a mixture of defiance and uncertainty and embarrassment. Which is fine. Look, so I guess I don’t—one of the things you understand, and it’s hard to do, but you—and I’m not saying I’m impervious to criticism—but one of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there’s Barack Obama the person and there’s Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they’re responding to this character that they’re seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents. And so you don’t take it personally. You understand that if people are angry that somehow the government is failing, then they are going to look to the guy who represents government. And that applies, by the way, even to some of the folks who are now Trump supporters. They’re responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.

Coates: What I’m trying to get at is a theory—you’re very unique in the sense that you are the president but you’ve also been an activist. You’ve actually occupied both roles. So what I’m getting at is, can you see how—

Obama: Is there utility—

Coates: In not being so close to power?

Obama: Yeah. And my argument would be: Yes, and it’s the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I’m always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands. And that was true during the civil-rights movement, that was true during the union movement, that’s always been true. And so the only time I get frustrated with activist criticism is if I have recognized them, and invited them to work with me to figure out how we solve this problem that they’re concerned about, and either they don’t engage out of the sense of purity—“I’m not going to shake his hand”—or you’re not sufficiently prepared so you don’t even know what to ask for, or you’re not being strategic as an activist and trying to figure out how the process has to work in order for you to get what you want.

So I’ll give you some specific examples just so that this isn’t too abstract: I thought Brittany Packnett, who was one of the Ferguson activists, really interesting, smart young lady, really impressive—you might want to talk with her. So she was one of the organizers of the Ferguson movement, ended up joining our task force. She came in here and she just knew her stuff. And I don’t think at any point backed off, even in our first meeting, saying, “Here’s what we’re concerned about; here’s where we’re disappointed in the Justice Department’s response; here’s what we need.” But she was sufficiently well-informed and engaged that it was very easy then to say, “You are right about this, you’re wrong I think about that, but I’m not sure, let’s sit down and see if we can hammer out a strategy that we agree with. And by the way, I want you talking to that police chief over there and that sheriff, because I think you might be able to persuade them if we break this down into its component parts.”

Now, in contrast, there have been times where, let’s say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness. And I had laid out this strategy because if I could get the Pentagon’s imprimatur on this thing, then I knew that we could end up getting legislation passed to reverse the policy, and we could get the branches of all the military to implement it. But during the course of that year, probably every speech I gave, I’d have gay activists just screaming at me during rallies. And you just say, “Come on, man. Not only do I agree with you, but I’ve actually got a strategy to execute, we are executing it, and in what sense do you think that you yelling at me here is going to advance your cause?”

Coates: They don’t want you to forget.

Obama: Well, the theory was they didn’t want us to forget. But the problem was, and we saw some of this in the immigration-reform issues as well, was they hadn’t done sufficient homework to know that I didn’t have all the capacity they thought I did in order to just execute this through the stroke of a pen. So I think that where I’ve gotten frustrated during the course of my presidency has never been because I was getting pushed too hard by activists to see the justness of a cause or the essence of an issue; I think where I get frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it. And that sort of lack of awareness on the part of an activist about the constraints of our political system and the constraints on this office, I think, sometimes would leave me to mutter under my breath. Very rarely did I lose it publicly. Yeah, usually I’d just smile. [Laughter] No, and the reason I say that is because those are the times where sometimes you feel actually a little bit hurt. Because you feel like saying to these folks, “[Don’t] you think if I could do it, I [would] have just done it. Do you think that the only problem is that I don’t care enough about the plight of poor people, or gay people, or immigrants, or …?”

Coates: But don’t they have some level of distrust towards you? I mean, that’s what I’m hearing: They don’t trust you to ultimately follow through. And isn’t that kind of the mind-set that the activist has to have?

Obama: Well, I think, yes. Which is why I don’t get too hurt. I mean, I think there is a benefit to wanting to hold power’s feet to the fire until you actually see the goods. I get that. And I think it is important. And frankly, sometimes it’s useful for activists just to be out there to keep you mindful and not get complacent, even if ultimately you think some of their criticism is misguided.

I’ll give you an example that’s outside the issues of social justice, but the criticism that some on the left consistently have given us around drone strikes. The truth is that this technology really began to take off right at the beginning of my presidency. And it wasn’t until about a year, year and a half in where I began to realize that the Pentagon and our national-security apparatus and the CIA were all getting too comfortable with the technology as a tool to fight terrorism, and not being mindful enough about how that technology is being used and the dangers of a form of warfare that is so detached from what is actually happening on the ground. And so we initiated this big process to try to get it in a box, and checks and balances, and much higher standards about when they’re used. But the truth is that, in trying to get at terrorists who are in countries that either are unwilling or unable to capture those terrorists or disable them themselves, there are a lot of situations where the use of a drone is going to result in much fewer civilian casualties and much less collateral damage than if I send in a battalion of marines. And I think right now we probably have the balance about right.

Now, you wouldn’t know that if you talked to Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International or some of the international activist organizations. Certainly you wouldn’t know that if you were talking to some of the writers who criticize our drone policy. But I’ve actually told my staff it’s probably good that they stay critical of this policy, even though I think right now we’re doing the best that we can in a dangerous world with terrorists who would gladly blow up a school bus full of American kids if they could. We probably have got it about right. But if suddenly all those organizations said, “Okay, the Obama administration’s got it right, and we don’t have a problem here,” the instinct towards starting to use it more, and then some of those checks and balances that we’ve built up starting to decay—that’s probably what would happen. So there’s an example of where I think, even if the criticism is not always perfectly informed and in some cases I would deem unfair, just the noise, attention, fuss probably keeps powerful officials or agencies on their toes. And they should be on their toes when it comes to the use of deadly force.

Coates: This actually ties right back in. I wanted to ask you about it, so I’m glad you brought that up. You know, you’re a great—and I don’t want this to come of as a “gotcha” question, I want to have a discussion here about this to the extent that we have time, a discussion about this—

Obama: Oh we better, I mean, we have time, we’ve spent a lot of time—

Valerie Jarrett (senior adviser to Obama) : We have around 15.

Coates: You know you’ve talked quite a bit about your admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which is sincere and heartfelt. Have you thought much about how you reconcile that, not just with you yourself, but actually with the office of being president, which does involve killing—it’s part of it as commander in chief—do you think much about reconciling those two things?

Obama: Yeah. Absolutely. When you take on the position of president, you are committing yourself to, first and foremost, protecting the American people. You are accepting an institutional role that requires you to make hard decisions and hard choices, and as a consequence you have to take your moral sense and not put it aside, but rather take that moral sense and apply it to the particulars of a job that is going to test those ethical and moral precepts differently than if you’re a professor, or a business person, or a dad. And if I were not comfortable with the judicious use of our military to protect the American people, than I shouldn’t have run for president. And having said that, I do think that the wisdom of a King or a Gandhi can inform my decisions. I may not be able to follow their beliefs to their logical conclusions, but I can think about what Gandhi said or King said about violence begetting violence, and still be true to my job by asking myself the question whenever we’re confronted with a situation where some may be arguing for military action: Will this actually result in America being safer, or the most lives being saved?

But these kinds of questions arise not just in the military sphere. Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I’ve had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let’s say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back? And I remember—I think you were sitting in this discussion, Valerie—when I said to one young activist who herself was the daughter of an undocumented worker, and so could speak from a very personal and legitimate perspective—I remember saying to her: I agree with you, from a moral perspective, that a child from Honduras is worth the same as my daughter. God is not a respecter of boundaries; he’s not saying that American kids deserve a better life than Honduran kids. But I’m the president of the United States, and the nation-state by definition means that boundaries mean something and borders mean something. And I have to be able to implement a policy that doesn’t completely erase borders and boundaries. Not because I think that Honduran child who’s gotten here is less worthy of love, attention, opportunity than my child, but because I’m the president of the United States of America and I’m not speaking as a religious leader. I’ve got certain responsibilities that I have to carry out in a very specific institution and in a specific moment in time.

So why don’t you ask one last question? And then we can decide how much more you’ve got.

Coates: Okay. I wonder if part of this is the fact, as we talked about last time, that the idea of a black president was so remote to everybody that if it happened, it must mean that all these other things would be true about the world—the world would change. I don’t want to use the word postracial or anything like that. But the expectation of the idea of a black president was almost abstract to people.

Obama: Right.

Coates: And I wonder—I heard you talk about this very early in your presidency, but there was so much fervor, the crowds that you were getting—at what point did it occur to you: Oh, I’ve got to tamp this down a little bit. People are going to expect me to split the seas ?

Obama: Well, we used to talk about this in the middle of the campaign. It’s interesting when you go back. I told this to Valerie: We had to get out of Chicago so quick. Election night happens, suddenly I’m talking to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson and trying to figure out whether the world’s going to fly apart, and Michelle is trying to figure out where the girls are going to go to school. And we pack up and leave and basically our house in Chicago just became like a time capsule. My desk in my home office still had stacks of articles and bills and stuff from 2008. And probably last year I went back, maybe it was earlier this year, and I just start going through some stuff and there was an article—it was the [ Time magazine “Person of the Year” issue], and this was at the height of Obama Hype, I mean I’d just been elected—

Coates: Were you tired of it? Were you like, “Please stop”?

Obama: Oh yeah. But I read the—there’s an interview of me in there—and I read through it, and what’s interesting was, I was pretty realistic to people about what we could get done, and the situation we were in, and trying to tamp down expectations. If you listen to my stump speeches, if you listen to what I said at Grant Park, I kept on saying, “Look, this is not just about me, this is not going to happen in one year, or one term, or even one presidency.” And we tried to layer into everything we were saying a sense of hope, but also realism. I don’t regret the excitement, because I do think that it helped us accomplish as much as we did. I don’t regret the fervor, because I do believe, in the African American community but also for other communities, and I know from talking to people, for communities around the world, the election of an African American to the most powerful office on Earth meant things had changed, and not just in superficial ways. That in some irreversible way the world was different.

But I can say with confidence that I never bought into the hype, and I made sure that the people around me didn’t buy into the hype, and I did not surround myself with people who fed me the hype. And I’m glad of that as well. Because I think we would have made a lot more mistakes and would have accomplished a lot less had we not been grounded in some basic truths.

And I would say this, I’ll go back to those black ladies I was talking about who love them some Barack and love Michelle even more—and by the way, they are not middle-aged anymore, because I’m now middle-aged. So they’re a little bit older. As fervent as they were, as excited and happy as they were when I was elected, they had to go to work the next morning. They still had trouble paying those bills. They might have still had a son who was in trouble with the law or couldn’t get a job because of a felony record. They didn’t stop being grounded. And in many ways they’re my touchstone, because they are what I meant when I talked about the audacity of hope. If you read that passage, it talks about not blind optimism, but it’s hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty—that’s what makes it audacious. Those are the ladies sitting in church. And in the same way that they might feel a joy and release on Sunday, they are still going to work on Monday. And that’s who I was listening to during this process. And if at the end of my presidency they feel like I did a pretty good job, then I’ll feel pretty good.

Coates: Okay.

Obama: All right.

Barack Obama

The 44 th president of the United States, Barack Obama is the first Black American who has been elected to the Oval Office. He served from 2009 until 2017.

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Quick Facts

Early life and family, marriage to michelle obama and daughters, illinois political career, 2008 presidential election and inauguration, first term as u.s. president, second term as u.s. president, notable speeches, life after the presidency, how tall is obama, books and grammy, movies about obama.

1961-present

Who Is Barack Obama?

Barack Obama was the 44 th president of the United States and the first Black commander-in-chief. He served two terms, from 2009 until 2017. The son of parents from Kenya and Kansas, Obama was born and raised in Hawaii. He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review . After serving on the Illinois State Senate, he was elected a U.S. senator representing Illinois in 2004. In 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . He and his wife, Michelle Obama , have two daughters, Malia and Sasha .

FULL NAME: Barack Hussein Obama II BORN: August 4, 1961 BIRTHPLACE: Honolulu, Hawaii SPOUSE: Michelle Obama (1992-present) CHILDREN: Malia and Sasha ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu to Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham. He has six half-siblings, including half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng who he grew up with.

Obama’s Parents

Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in Africa and eventually earned a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of going to college in Hawaii.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born on an Army base in Wichita, Kansas, during World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham’s father, Stanley, enlisted in the military and marched across Europe in General George Patton ’s army. Dunham’s mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and after several moves, ended up in Hawaii.

While studying at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Obama Sr. met fellow student Ann Dunham. They married on February 2, 1961, and Barack II was born six months later. As a child, Obama did not have a relationship with his father. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University and pursue a doctorate degree. Obama’s parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. Soon after, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya.

In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, a University of Hawaii student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born in 1970. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son’s safety and education, so at the age of 10, Obama was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and half-sister later joined them.

Obama struggled with the absence of his father, whom 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.”

Life in Hawaii

While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou School. He excelled in basketball and graduated with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three Black students at the school, he became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African American.

Obama later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self: “I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog... and that Santa was a white man,” he wrote. “I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking as I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me.”

Obama’s Half-Siblings

Obama’s family includes six half-siblings located around the world. He shares a mother with half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and has five paternal half-siblings.

According to Oprah Daily , he has maintained a warm and close relationship with half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng. The two grew up together and both graduated from the Punahou School. “He took his job as big brother seriously,” she said of Obama. “Our mother divorced my father, and our grandfather died. So he really ended up being the man of the house.” Soetoro-Ng campaigned for Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, and the two have shared family vacations in Indonesia and Christmases in Hawaii.

Obama’s oldest paternal half-sibling, Malik Obama, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1958, and the two didn’t meet until 1985. Malik told the Associated Press in 2004 he served as the best man at Barack’s wedding and vice versa. However, Malik notably criticized Obama’s presidency in 2016 and announced his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump in that year’s election. He attended the third presidential debate as Trump’s guest.

Barack’s other half-siblings include:

• Half-sister Auma Obama, born 1960 in Nairobi. She and Barack met for the first time when they were in their 20s in Chicago.
• Half-brother Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, born in Nairobi in 1965. He and Barack have met several times following their 1988 introduction in Kenya.
• Half-brother David Ndesandjo, born in 1967. Although it’s not clear when, he died in a motorcycle accident, according to Politico .
• Half-brother George Hussein Onyango Obama, born in 1982 in Kenya. Barack has only spoken to his youngest half-brother a few times.

Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979. After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.

After his undergrad studies, Obama worked in the business sector for two years. He moved to Chicago in 1985, where he worked on the impoverished South Side as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities.

It was during this time that Obama, who said he “was not raised in a religious household,” joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya and paid an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father, who died in a car accident in November 1982, and his paternal grandfather.

“For a long time, I sat between the two graves and wept,” Obama wrote. “I saw that my life in America—the Black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d 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.”

Returning from Kenya with a sense of renewal, Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met with constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. Their discussion so impressed Tribe that when Obama asked to join his team as a research assistant, the professor agreed. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review . He graduated magna cum laude with his juris doctor from Harvard Law School in 1991.

In 1989, while still in law school, Obama joined the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin as a summer associate. There, he met Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer who was assigned to be his adviser. Initially, Michelle refused to date Barack, believing that their work relationship would make the romance improper. However, she relented not long after, and the couple fell in love.

On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago’s South Side. Barack and Michelle welcomed two daughters several years later: Malia , born in 1998, and Sasha , born in 2001. The couple has stated that their personal priority is their children. The Obamas tried to make their daughters’ world as “normal” as possible while living in the White House, with set times for studying, going to bed and getting up.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer with the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004—first as a lecturer and then as a professor—and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton ’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Obama’s advocacy work led him to run for and win a seat in the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat in 1996. During his years as a state senator, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to draft legislation on ethics, as well as 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. As chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases after a number of death-row inmates were found to be innocent.

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 for a Senate win.

Illinois Senator

Encouraged by poll numbers, Obama decided to run for the open U.S. Senate seat, vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. In the 2004 Democratic primary, he defeated multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes with 52 percent of the vote.

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 George W. 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 his ex-wife, actor Jeri Ryan. That August, diplomat and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.

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, Obama became only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Sworn into office on January 3, 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.

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 then-U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton . On June 3, 2008, Obama became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee after winning a sufficient number of pledged delegates during the primaries.

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.

On November 4, 2008, Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain , 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent, in the popular vote and won election as the 44 th president of the United States. A historic victory, Obama would soon be the first Black president in the nation’s history.

Obama’s inauguration took place on January 20, 2009. When he took office at age 47, Obama inherited a global economic recession, two ongoing foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the lowest-ever international favorability rating for the United States. 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 and Nobel Peace Prize

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 in the face of the Great Recession. Housing and credit markets were put on life support, with a market-based plan to buy U.S. banks’ toxic assets. The government made loans to the auto industry, and new regulations were proposed for Wall Street.

Obama 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.

Obama 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 nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq. (Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to invade Iraq as part of the “war on terror” initiative, saying at an October 2002 rally: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”)

In more dramatic incidents, Obama ordered an attack on pirates off the coast of Somalia and prepared the nation for a swine flu outbreak. He signed an executive order banning excessive interrogation techniques and ordered the closing of the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba within a year—a deadline that ultimately would not be met.

In recognition of his administration’s early work, the Nobel Committee in Norway awarded Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Affordable Care Act

Obama signed his signature health care reform plan, the Affordable Care Act, into law in March 2010. The new law prohibited the denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions, allowed citizens under 26 years old to be insured under parental plans, provided for free health screenings for certain citizens, and expanded insurance coverage and access to medical care to millions of Americans.

Casually known as “Obamacare,” the hallmark legislation faced strong opposition from Congressional Republicans and the populist Tea Party movement even after its passage. In October 2013, a dispute over the federal budget and Republican desires to defund or derail the Affordable Care Act caused a 16-day shutdown of the federal government.

The rollout of the reforms were initially bumpy. October 2013 saw the failed launch of HealthCare.gov, the website meant to allow people to find and purchase health insurance. Extra technical support was brought in to work on the troubled website, which was plagued with glitches for weeks. The health care law was also blamed for some Americans losing their existing insurance policies, despite repeated assurances from Obama that such cancellations would not occur.

The legislation has faced numerous challenges in court and wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court three times. In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which required citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a tax. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that the health care law’s signature provision fell within the taxation power granted to Congress under the Constitution.

In the summer of 2015, the Supreme Court upheld part of the Act regarding health care tax subsidies. Without these tax credits, buying medical insurance might have become too costly for millions of people.

The latest Supreme Court decision about the Affordable Care Act began in 2017 when Congressional Republicans dropped the individual mandate tax penalty to zero. Texas and 17 other Republican states quickly sued to strike down the Affordable Care Act, mainly based on their opposition to its individual mandate. A Texas federal judge ruled in favor of the suit, saying that because there was no longer a tax, the law was unconstitutional.

The case was sent to an appeals court. A final ruling came in June 2021 when the U.S. Supreme Court voted , 7-2, to uphold the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that the objecting states were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision and thus had no standing to bring the challenge to court. As of January 2023, nearly 15.9 million Americans were insured through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

Killing Osama bin Laden

On April 29, 2011, Obama approved a covert operation in Pakistan to track down infamous al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden , the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks who had been in hiding for nearly 10 years. On May 2, an elite team of U.S. Navy SEALs raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and, within 40 minutes, killed bin Laden in a firefight. There were no American casualties, and the team was able to collect invaluable intelligence about the workings of al-Qaeda.

The same day, Obama announced bin Laden’s death on national television. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda,” Obama said. “As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never will be—at war with Islam.”

Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

In 2011, Obama signed a repeal of 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 became the first president to voice support for same-sex marriage in May 2012.

2012 Reelection and Second Term Priorities

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 fundraising events.

In the 2012 general election, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden faced Republican opponent Mitt Romney and his vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan . On November 6, 2012, Obama won a second term as president, capturing more than 60 percent of the Electoral College.

Obama officially began his second term on January 21, 2013, when U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office. In his second inaugural address, Obama called the nation to action on such issues as climate change, health care, the federal deficit, and marriage equality. Although he made progress on some of these fronts, he also faced waning public support—his approval rating hit a low of 38 percent in September 2014, according to a Gallup poll —and a divided government, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the final two years of Obama’s administration.

NSA Wiretapping Controversy

In June 2013, after Edward Snowden shared confidential government documents with journalists, the news broke that the National Security Agency’s surveillance program was much broader than American citizens knew. Obama defended the NSA’s email monitoring and telephone wiretapping during a visit to Germany that month. “We are not rifling through the emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anyone else,” he said. Obama stated that the program had helped stop roughly 50 threats.

However, the president suffered a significant drop in his approval ratings, to 45 percent, partially due to the revelations. In October 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel revealed that the NSA had been listening in to her cell phone calls. “Spying among friends is never acceptable,” Merkel told a summit of European leaders.

ISIS Airstrikes

In late summer 2013, Obama was unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade Congress, and the international community at large, to take military action against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad , who had used chemical weapons against his country’s civilians. But there was interest in combatting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which had seized large portions of Iraq and Syria and conducted high-profile beheadings of foreign hostages.

In August 2014, Obama ordered the first airstrikes against the Islamic State on targets in Syria, though the president pledged to keep combat troops out of the conflict. Several Arab countries joined the airstrikes against the extremist group. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force,” Obama said in a speech to the United Nations. “So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.”

Efforts to dismantle the Islamic State have continued after Obama’s presidency. As recently as April 2023, a top ISIS leader was killed in an airstrike. However, U.S. airstrikes have also been responsible for a large civilian death toll. As of December 2021, more than 1,400 people have died, according to military officials. Outside watchdog organizations, like Airwars, estimate the number of casualties could be as many as several thousand.

Iran Nuclear Deal and Other Foreign Diplomacy

In September 2013, Obama made diplomatic strides with Iran. He spoke with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the phone, which marked the first direct contact between the leaders of the two countries in more than 30 years.

This groundbreaking move by Obama was seen by many as a sign of thawing in the relationship between the United States and Iran. “The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program,” reported Obama at a press conference.

In July 2015, Obama announced that, after lengthy negotiations, the United States and five world powers had reached an agreement with Iran. The deal allowed inspectors entry into Iran to make sure the country kept its pledge to limit its nuclear program and enrich uranium at a much lower level than would be needed for a nuclear weapon. In return, the United States and its partners removed the tough sanctions imposed on Iran and allowed the country to ramp up sales of oil and access frozen bank accounts. That year, Obama also traveled to India and reached a civilian nuclear agreement with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that opened the door to U.S. investment in India’s energy industry.

Elsewhere, Obama moved to reestablish diplomatic ties with Cuba in December 2014. He and Cuban President Raul Castro announced the normalizing of diplomatic relations between the countries for the first time since 1961. The policy change came after the exchange of American citizen Alan Gross and another unnamed American intelligence agent for three Cuban spies. However, the long-standing U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, instituted by President John F. Kennedy , remained in effect. On March 20, 2016, Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Cuba since 1928, as part of his larger program to establish greater cooperation between the two countries.

Just prior to the trip, on March 10, 2016, Obama met at the White House with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the first official visit by a Canadian leader in nearly 20 years.

Obama’s Climate Change Policies

In August 2015, the Obama administration announced the Clean Power Plan, a major climate change policy that included the first national standards to limit carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants and called for more renewable energy from sources like wind and solar power. Ultimately, the plan never took effect after facing backlash and lawsuits from business groups, companies, 27 states, and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell , who was then the Republican minority leader. In February 2019, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, to block the plan by putting a hold on regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, mostly from coal power plants. That June, the Clean Power Plan was replaced by with the Affordable Clean Energy rule .

Obama also worked to respond to climate change on the global level. In November 2015, he was a primary player in the international COP21 summit held outside of Paris that resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement requires all participating nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit the rise of global temperatures and also to allocate resources for the research and development of alternative energy sources.

Obama pledged that the United States would cut its emissions more than 25 percent by 2030. On October 5, 2016, the United Nations announced the Paris Climate Agreement had been ratified by a sufficient number of countries—including China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases—to allow it to take effect starting on November 4, 2016. But on June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Supreme Court Nominees

During his presidency, Obama filled two seats in the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor , who was confirmed in 2009 and is the court’s first Hispanic justice, and Elena Kagan , who was confirmed in 2010. Both justices were confirmed under a Democratic-majority Senate.

After the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, Obama once again had an open Supreme Court seat to fill. In March, the president held a press conference at the White House to present 63-year-old U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee for replacing the conservative stalwart. Garland was considered a moderate “consensus” candidate.

Garland’s nomination was immediately rebuffed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others in the Republican Party. They stated their intention to block any nominee put forward by Obama, fearing that such a confirmation would tip the balance toward a more liberal-leaning court. Garland was never granted a Senate confirmation hearing, and the seat sat empty until April 2017 when Neil Gorsuch , nominated by President Donald Trump, was confirmed.

Last Days in Office and Presidential Legacy

On January 19, 2017, Obama’s last full day in office, he announced 330 commutations for nonviolent drug offenders. The presidents granted a total of 1,715 clemencies, including commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning , the U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

Over the course of his administration, Obama led the country away from financial catastrophe as the Great Recession gave away to market stability and a declining unemployment rate. He expanded the country’s diplomatic relations, and the Affordable Care Act marked the biggest health care expansion since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Although he made inroads on immigration reform through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the United States continues to face a broken immigration system.

Obama also struggled to enact the gun control measures he hoped for, such as universal background checks and the resurrection of the federal ban on sales of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Some of the mass shootings during his time include at Sandy Hook Elementary School (20 children and six adult fatalities) in Connecticut; an Aurora, Colorado movie theater (12 fatalities); a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina (9 fatalities); and a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida (49 fatalities).

Ever the optimist, Obama shared these parting words at his last press conference with the White House press corps:

“I believe in this country. I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen. I think there’s evil in the world, but I think at the end of the day, if we work hard and if we’re true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time. That’s what this presidency has tried to be about. And I see that in the young people I’ve worked with. I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

2010 State of the Union

On January 27, 2010, Obama delivered his first State of the Union speech. During his oration, Obama addressed the challenges of the economy, proposed a fee for larger banks, announced a possible freeze on government spending in the following fiscal year, and spoke against the Supreme Court’s reversal of a law capping campaign finance spending.

Obama also challenged politicians to stop thinking of reelection and start making positive changes. He criticized Republicans for their refusal to support legislation and chastised 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 to strengthen our union once more.”

2015 State of the Union

In his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama declared that the nation was out of recession. “America, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back... know this: The shadow of crisis has passed,” he said. He went on to share his vision for ways to improve the nation through free community college programs and middle-class tax breaks.

With Democrats outnumbered by Republicans in both the House and the Senate, Obama threatened to use his executive power to prevent any tinkering by the opposition on his existing policies. “We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or re-fighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system,” he said. “And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, I will veto it.”

2016 State of the Union

On January 12, 2016, Obama delivered what would be his final State of the Union address. Diverging from the typical policy-prescribing format, Obama’s message for the American people was centered around themes of optimism in the face of adversity, asking them not to let fears about security or the future get in the way of building a nation that is “clear-eyed” and “big-hearted.”

This did not prevent him from taking thinly disguised jabs at Republican presidential hopefuls for what he characterized as their “cynical” rhetoric, making further allusions to the “rancor and suspicion between the parties” and his failure as president to do more to bridge that gap.

Farewell Address

On January 10, 2017, Obama returned to his adopted home city of Chicago to deliver his farewell address. In his speech, Obama spoke about his early days in the Windy City and his continued faith in the power of Americans who participate in their democracy.

He called on politicians and American citizens to come together despite their differences. “Understand, democracy does not require uniformity,” he said. “Our founders quarreled, and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity—the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.”

Obama also appealed for tolerance along racial and ethnic lines and curbing discrimination:

“After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. All of us have more work to do. After all, if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.

“If we decline to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we diminish the prospects of our own children—because those brown kids will represent a larger share of America’s workforce. Going forward, we must uphold laws against discrimination... But laws alone won’t be enough. Hearts must change.”

He quoted Atticus Finch, the main character in Harper Lee ’s To Kill a Mockingbird , asking Americans to heed the fictional lawyer’s advice: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Obama concluded his farewell address with a call to action: “My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you,” he said. “I won’t stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days. But for now, whether you are young or whether you’re young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president—the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change—but in yours.”

After leaving the White House, the Obama family moved to a home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to allow younger daughter Sasha to continue school there.

Obama embarked on a three-nation tour in late fall 2017, meeting with such heads of state as President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

National Portrait Gallery

On February 12, 2018, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled its official portraits of Barack and Michelle. Both rendered by African American artists, Kehinde Wiley’s work featured Barack in a chair surrounded by greenery and symbolic flowers, while Amy Sherald’s portrait of the former first lady depicted her in a flowing dress, gazing back at viewers from a sea of blue.

Netflix Content and Podcasts

In May 2018, Barack and Michelle finalized a multi-year deal with Netflix to create exclusive content for the streaming service through their production company, Higher Ground. The fruits of the collaboration first appeared with the August 2019 release of American Factory , an Oscar-winning documentary about the 2015 launch of a Chinese-owned automotive glass factory in Dayton, Ohio, and the clash of differing cultures and business interests.

The Obamas helped produce the 2020 documentary Crip Camp , which was nominated for best documentary feature at the 2021 Academy Awards. Higher Ground’s children’s series Ada Twist, Scientist and We the People each won awards at the inaugural Children’s and Family Emmy Awards in 2022.

Higher Ground has expanded into podcasts, including Renegades: Born in the USA —a series of conversations between Barack and musician Bruce Springsteen about life, music, and their love for America.

Barack Obama Presidential Center

In May 2015, the Barack Obama Foundation announced plans to construct the Barack Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago. The complex would be home to a Chicago Public Library branch, a museum, as well as office and activity spaces for the foundation.

In July 2016, Jackson Park was selected as the host site. Construction began in August 2021, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held the following month with Barack, Michelle, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot all in attendance.

The project has been the subject of two lawsuits from volunteer nonprofit Protect Our Parks, which claimed the city and state of Illinois violated their public trust obligations to protect pubic land in approving the project. They were dismissed by a federal judge in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

The project is expected to be completed by 2025 , according to the Obama Foundation.

Barack Obama Presidential Library

In September 2021, the Barack Obama Presidential Library announced plans to employ a virtual model with records available online, making it the first fully digital presidential library. According to the library, around 95 percent of the Obama administration’s Presidential records were born digital, including photos, documents, tweets, and emails.

According to White House documents , Obama’s physician measured him at 6 feet 1.5 inches tall during a 2016 physical exam.

Obama published his autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance , in 1995. The work received high praise from literary figures such as Toni Morrison . It has since been printed in more than 25 languages, including Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew. The book had a second printing in 2004 and was adapted for a children’s version. The audiobook version of Dreams , narrated by Obama, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word album in 2006.

His second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , was published in October 2006. It hit No. 1 on both the New York Times and Amazon’s best-seller lists.

The first volume of Obama’s presidential memoirs, A Promised Land , was released in November 2020.

Obama is one of the world’s most recognizable basketball enthusiasts. He played during his youth and for the junior varsity and varsity teams at the Punahou School, winning a state championship with the team in 1979.

Unsurprisingly, Obama became a fan of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls during his time living in Chicago. He appeared in The Last Dance , a 2020 documentary profiling Michael Jordan ’s career and final championship season with the Bulls in 1997-98.

Obama was known for playing pickup games during his first presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, with opponents including NBA and WNBA players. According to GQ , Obama also had a basketball-themed 49 th birthday party and invited stars like LeBron James , Chris Paul , Kobe Bryant , Carmelo Anthony , Magic Johnson , and Bill Russell to play for a group of wounded veterans at Washington’s Fort McNair.

Obama also became famous for filling out NCAA men’s and women’s tournament brackets every year in a segment for ESPN called “Barack-etology.” He correctly picked the men’s March Madness champion only once during his presidency: the University of North Carolina Tarheels in 2009.

In 2021, Obama joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner to help promote the league’s community efforts throughout the continent.

Other Hobbies

Obama has said he grew up a huge comic book fan and was particularly fond of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian . He also told students at a 2015 virtual field trip that some of his favorite books included The Hardy Boys , Treasure Island , The Hobbit , and The Lord of the Rings .

As for movies and TV, Obama has cited the first two Godfather movies as his top films, and classics like Casablanca (1942), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) among his favorites . Obama is a fan of the HBO drama The Wire , as well as Mad Men , Entourage , Downton Abbey , House of Cards , and The Knick . According to a 2013 article , he is also a Star Trek fan and enjoyed watching live sports at the White House and aboard Air Force One. In addition to the NBA’s Bulls, Obama is also a fan of Chicago’s MLB team the White Sox.

In terms of music, Obama told Rolling Stone in 2008 he had “probably 30” Bob Dylan songs on his iPod. He also said he listens to The Grateful Dead; Earth, Wind and Fire; Elton John ; and The Rolling Stones. However, his favorite artist of all-time is Stevie Wonder .

Obama isn’t totally old school; he follows contemporary media and releases a yearly list of his favorite books music and television from the prior 12 months.

Barack and Michelle’s first date in Chicago was the focus of the 2016 romantic drama film Southside With You ; Parker Sawyer played Barack.

That same year, Netflix released the film Barry about Obama’s time at Columbia University.

In August 2021, HBO released the documentary series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union in conjunction with the former president’s 60 th birthday.

• Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old.
• We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.
• Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.
• No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another.
• We are a nation that endures because of the courage of those who defend it.
• I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
• So don’t let anyone tell you that change is not possible. Don’t let them tell you that standing out and speaking up about injustice is too risky. What’s too risky is keeping quiet. What’s too risky is looking the other way.
• Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law—for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
• I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.
• It is easier to start wars than to end them.
• We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and strengthen our union once more.
• It’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.
• What Washington needs is adult supervision.
• 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.
• 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.
• If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
• My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.
• Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
• Hope—hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation.
• If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.
• Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.
• And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear... we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words—yes, we can.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

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Barack Obama

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 19, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Barack Obama , the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president, was elected over Senator John McCain of Arizona on November 4, 2008. Obama, a former senator from Illinois whose campaign’s slogan was “Change we can believe in” and “Yes we can,” was subsequently elected to a second term over Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. 

A winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Obama’s presidency was marked by the landmark passage of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”; the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six; the Iran Nuclear Deal and the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court.

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, as a member of the Luo ethnicity. He won a scholarship to study economics at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Wichita, Kansas , whose father had worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Did you know? Not only was Obama the first African American president, he was also the first to be born outside the continental United States. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. He would see his son only once more before dying in a car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta in the late 1960s, where Ann worked at the U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father , he first began to understand the tensions inherent in his mixed racial background. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 with a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working in corporate research and at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago , where he took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. For the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

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.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U. S. House of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq . 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars…I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

The Obama Years: A Nine-Part Oral History

The former president and 24 other members of his administration weigh in on their proudest moments, their regrets and the belief that they left it all on the field.

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, shooting to national prominence with his eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively unknown, young senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction .

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , he created a website that tracks all federal spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana , on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets to welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope , in October 2006.

2008 Presidential Campaign

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 chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate for president and served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain , a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As in the primaries, 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.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they had the best plan for economic improvement. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for office from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds ( Virginia , Indiana) and key battleground states ( Florida , Ohio ) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he 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.”

Barack Obama’s First Term as President

Barack Obama was sworn in as the first Black president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in the cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the same Bible President Abraham Lincoln used at his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days into office, giving legal protection in the fight for equal pay for women. To address the financial crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto industry and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq. He was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as universal healthcare or “ Obamacare .” Its goal was to give every American access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, but then providing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011,  Osama bin Laden , the mastermind of the September 11 Attacks , was captured and killed by Seal Team Six. No Americans were lost in the operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda .

Barack Obama’s Second Term as President

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Russian proposal that it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of his international diplomacy was his work on the Iran Nuclear Deal , which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit of enriched uranium in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump , withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories, but bound by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny .” 

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Why it worked: A rhetorical analysis of Obama’s speech on race

The National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) has declared today a National Day on Writing.  I celebrate such a day.  The introduction of my book "Writing Tools" imagines what America might look like and sound like if we declared ourselves a “nation of writers.” After all, what good is freedom of expression if we lack the means to express ourselves?

To mark this day – and to honor language arts teachers everywhere – Poynter is republishing an essay I wrote almost a decade ago.  Remember? It was the spring of 2008 and Barack Obama was running for president. Many of us wondered if America was ready to elect an African-American president (a man with the middle name Hussein).

To dispel the fears of some white Americans and to advance his chances for election, Obama delivered a major address on race in America, a speech that was praised even by some of his adversaries. Obama had/has a gift for language. He is a skilled orator. To neutralize that advantage, his opponents – including Hillary Clinton at one point – would characterize Obama’s words as empty “rhetoric” – an elaborate trick of language.

The Spring of 2008 seems like such a long time ago.  A time just before the Great Recession.  A time just before the ascendancy of social networks and the trolls who try to poison them.  A time before black lives were said to matter in a more assertive way. A time before fake news was anything more dangerous that a piece of satire in the Onion. A time before Colin Kaepernick took a knee — except when he was tired.  A time before torch-bearing white supremacists marched through the night in Charlottesville, Virginia.   

It feels like the perfect time for a restart on a conversation about race. To prepare us, let’s take another look at the words of Barack Obama before he was president. Let’s review what he said, and, more important, how and why he said it. My X-ray analysis of that speech is meant not as a final word on that historical moment, but as an invitation, a doorway to a room where we can all reflect on American history and the American language.

Have a great National Day on Writing.  

More than a century ago, scholar and journalist W.E.B. DuBois wrote a single paragraph about how race is experienced in America. I have learned more from those 112 words than from most book-length studies of the subject:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro;  two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Much has been said about the power and brilliance of Barack Obama's March 18 speech on race, even by some of his detractors. The focus has been on the orator's willingness to say things in public about race that are rarely spoken at all, even in private, and his expressed desire to move the country to a new and better place. There has also been attention to the immediate purpose of the speech, which was to reassure white voters that they had nothing to fear from the congregant of a fiery African-American pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

Amid all the commentary, I have yet to see an X-Ray reading of the text that would make visible the rhetorical strategies that the orator and authors used so effectively. When received in the ear, these effects breeze through us like a harmonious song. When inspected with the eye, these moves become more apparent, like reading a piece of sheet music for a difficult song and finally recognizing the chord changes.

Such analysis, while interesting in itself, might be little more than a scholarly curiosity if we were not so concerned with the language issues of political discourse. The popular opinion is that our current president, though plain spoken, is clumsy with language. Fair or not, this perception has produced a hope that our next president will be a more powerful communicator, a Kennedy or Reagan, perhaps, who can use language less as a way to signal ideology and more as a means to bring the disparate parts of the nation together. Journalists need to pay closer attention to political language than ever before.

Like most memorable pieces of oratory, Obama's speech sounds better than it reads. We have no way of knowing if that was true of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but it is certainly true of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. If you doubt this assertion, test it out. Read the speech and then experience it in its original setting recited by his soulful voice.

The effectiveness of Obama's speech rests upon four related rhetorical strategies:

1.  The power of allusion and its patriotic associations. 2.  The oratorical resonance of parallel constructions. 3.  The "two-ness" of the texture, to use DuBois's useful term. 4.  His ability to include himself as a character in a narrative about race.

Allusion Part of what made Dr. King's speech resonate, not just for black people, but for some whites, was its framing of racial equality in familiar patriotic terms: "This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, 'My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty of thee I sing.  Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.'"  What follows, of course, is King's great litany of iconic topography that carries listeners across the American landscape: "Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!…"

In this tradition, Obama begins with "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union," a quote from the Constitution that becomes a recurring refrain linking the parts of the speech. What comes next is "Two hundred and twenty one years ago," an opening that places him in the tradition of Lincoln at Gettysburg and Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial: "Five score years ago."

On the first page, Obama mentions the words democracy, Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia convention, 1787, the colonies, the founders, the Constitution, liberty, justice, citizenship under the law, parchment, equal, free, prosperous, and the presidency. It is not as well known as it should be that many black leaders, including Dr. King, use two different modes of discourse when addressing white vs. black audiences, an ignorance that has led to some of the hysteria over some of Rev. Wright's comments.

Obama's patriotic lexicon is meant to comfort white ears and soothe white fears. What keeps the speech from falling into a pandering sea of slogans is language that reveals, not the ideals, but the failures of the American experiment: "It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations." And "what would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part … to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."

Lest a dark vision of America disillusion potential voters, Obama returns to familiar evocations of national history, ideals, and language:

— "Out of many, we are truly one." — "survived a Depression." — "a man who served his country" — "on a path of a more perfect union" — "a full measure of justice" — "the immigrant trying to feed his family" — "where our union grows stronger" — "a band of patriots signed that document."

Parallelism At the risk of calling to mind the worst memories of grammar class, I invoke the wisdom that parallel constructions help authors and orators make meaning memorable. To remember how parallelism works, think of equal terms to express equal ideas. So Dr. King dreamed that one day his four children "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." ( By the content of their character is parallel to by the color of their skin .)

Back to Obama: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." If you are counting, that's five parallel phrases among 43 words. 

And there are many more:

Two-ness I could argue that Obama's speech is a meditation upon DuBois' theory of a dual experience of race in America. There is no mention of DuBois or two-ness, but it is all there in the texture. In fact, once you begin the search, it is remarkable how many examples of two-ness shine through:

— "through protests and struggles" — "on the streets and in the courts" — "through civil war and civil disobedience" — "I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas." — "white and black" — "black and brown" — "best schools … poorest nations" — "too black or not black enough" — "the doctor and the welfare mom" — "the model student and the former gang-banger …" — "raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor" — "political correctness or reverse racism" — "your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams"

Such language manages to create both tension and balance and, without being excessively messianic, permits Obama to present himself as the bridge builder, the reconciler of America's racial divide.

Autobiography There is an obnoxious tendency among political candidates to frame their life story as a struggle against poverty or hard circumstances. As satirist Stephen Colbert once noted of presidential candidates, it is not enough to be an average millionaire. To appeal to populist instincts it becomes de rigueur to be descended from "goat turd farmers" in France.

Without dwelling on it, Obama reminds us that his father was black and his mother white, that he came from Kenya, but she came from Kansas: "I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slave and slave owners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

The word "story" is revealing one, for it is always the candidate's job (as both responsibility and ploy) to describe himself or herself as a character in a story of his or her own making. In speeches, as in homilies, stories almost always carry the weight of parable, with moral lessons to be drawn.

Most memorable, of course, is the story at the end of the speech — which is why it appears at the end. It is the story of Ashley Baia, a young, white, Obama volunteer from South Carolina, whose family was so poor she convinced her mother that her favorite meal was a mustard and relish sandwich. 

"Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue.  And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. … He simply says to everyone in the room, 'I am here because of Ashley.'"

During most of the 20th century, demagogues, especially in the South, gained political traction by pitting working class whites and blacks against each other. How fitting, then, that Obama's story points in the opposite direction through an old black man who feels a young white woman's pain.  

CORRECTION : An earlier version of this post incorrectly attributed the phrase, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union" to the Declaration of Independence.

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Barack Obama: 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, his mother 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. He 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. (A movie version of his Columbia years, Barry , was released in 2016.) 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.

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 US Representative Bobby Rush. Rush was 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. Rush remained in the House; he was reelected to his thirteenth consecutive term in 2016.

Returning to the state senate, Obama began eyeing a 2004 race for the US 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 succeed 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.”

Consulting Editor: Michael Nelson

Professor of Political Science Rhodes College

Barack Obama's education

Punahou School, Hawaii 

Occidental College, Los Angeles

Columbia University, New York City

Harvard Law School, Boston

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Barack obama presidency page, barack obama essays, life in brief, life before the presidency (current essay), campaigns & elections, domestic affairs, foreign affairs, family life, impact and legacy.

Barack Obama - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, holds a significant place in history as the first African American to hold the office. Essays on Barack Obama could explore his political career, the challenges and accomplishments during his presidency, or his influence on global politics. Additionally, discussions could extend to his post-presidential role, his memoirs, or the social and cultural impact of his presidency in the broader discourse on race and identity in America. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Barack Obama you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

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How Obama Impacted Society

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Michelle Obama's early days in the vibrant heart of Chicago shaped not just her character but also her destiny. Born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson on a crisp January day in 1964, she opened her eyes to a world teeming with possibilities, even amidst the challenges of the South Side. Fraser and Marian Robinson, her hardworking parents, wove a tapestry of love, discipline, and aspiration around their children, Michelle and her older brother Craig, in their modest South Shore apartment. Life in […]

Barack Obama: a Historic Journey to Becoming America’s First Black President

When Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States in 2008, it was not just a political victory; it was a monumental chapter in the annals of American history. His election as the first black president marked a profound change in the nation's narrative, breaking centuries-old racial barriers and redefining the American dream. But the significance of this event goes beyond just a historical first; it's a story of societal evolution, a reflection of changing attitudes, […]

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How to Write an Essay About Barack Obama

Understanding barack obama's legacy.

Before writing an essay about Barack Obama, it is essential to understand his impact and legacy both as the 44th President of the United States and as a public figure. Obama's presidency marked a series of significant milestones and policies that left a lasting impact on American politics and society. Start your essay by providing a brief background about Obama, including his early life, education, and rise in politics. Discuss his historical significance as the first African American president and the context in which he was elected. Understanding Obama's key domestic and foreign policies, his leadership style, and his contributions to issues like healthcare, economic reform, and international diplomacy is crucial for a comprehensive analysis.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay about Barack Obama should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about Obama's presidency, political ideology, or legacy. For instance, you might explore the impact of the Affordable Care Act, analyze Obama's approach to international relations, or discuss his influence on American political discourse. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your topic.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

To support your thesis, gather evidence from various sources, including Obama's speeches, policy documents, biographies, and analyses by political experts. This might include statistical data on policy outcomes, excerpts from Obama’s memoirs, or commentary from political analysts. Use this evidence to support your thesis and build a persuasive argument. Be sure to consider different perspectives and address potential counterarguments.

Analyzing Obama's Presidency and Impact

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing key aspects of Obama's presidency and his broader impact. Discuss specific policies and initiatives, their implementation, and their short-term and long-term effects. Explore the challenges Obama faced, such as economic crises, political opposition, and global issues, and how he addressed them. Also, consider the social and cultural significance of his presidency in the context of American history.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence provided. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of Barack Obama's contribution to American politics and society. You might also want to reflect on his ongoing influence after his presidency and his role in current political discussions.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and refine it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, educators, or political analysts to further improve your essay. A well-written essay on Barack Obama will not only demonstrate your understanding of his presidency but also your ability to engage with complex political and historical topics.

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230 Barack Obama Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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• Barack Obama’s Victory Speech 2008 – Analysis The use of “answer” again here indicates that he is ready to solve the problems that have been affecting the U.S.in the new century and echoes the theme of change.
• Barack Obama as a Transformational Leader In this instance, Barack Obama’s approach was that of a transformational leader: he urged the American citizens to desire change and take measures towards achieving the transformation.
• ’A More Perfect Union’ Barack Obama Rhetorical Analysis In his speech, Obama is very conscious and aware of his audience. The message contained in his speech is that of peace and unity.
• The Challenges of Racism Influential for the Life of Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama However, Douglass became an influential anti-slavery and human rights activist because in the early childhood he learnt the power of education to fight inequality with the help of his literary and public speaking skills to […]
• Barack Obama’s Charismatic Leadership In Obama’s Case, the sparkle and invisible energy as defined by Rao pushed him to the presidency and continues allowing him some loyal following albeit the fact that some are being disappointed by the slow […]
• Obama vs. Lincoln: Presidents’ Comparison The people of the nation are the first line to be affected with how the president handles the state that is why they are very keen in evaluating the current president.
• The “Obama’s Deal” Documentary Reflection The world was not privy to the level of lobbying that happened behind the scenes, and the cost to his popularity, bipartisan ideals, and open government.
• President Obama’s Inaugural Speech Analysis In his speech, Obama was seen to take advantage of the significance of that moment to address the Americans’ main concerns.
• Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” Speech Analysis The purpose of the speech is to convince the audience that he is the man who can make people live better.
• An Analysis of Barack Obama’s Style of Public Speaking During the course of his speech, Obama alludes to this slogan a number of times to drive home the point that he is the ‘agent of change’.
• Obama Had Authority to Order Operation Geronimo The public opinion of the US citizens supported the president and military force actions because of the ongoing conflict between the USA and Al-Qaeda.
• Barack Obama’s Speech as a Rhetorical Example The main message of the speech was clearly understood – the president outlined his further steps in the development of the country, he would make.
• Barak Obama and Donald Trump: Communication Styles Nonetheless, it is essential to determine which of the factors play a decisive role by comparing the communication styles of Barak Obama and Donald Trump, examining the examples of their debates and speeches across their […]
• Barack Obama’s Leadership Skills Between the ages of six and ten, the young Barrack lived in Indonesia before coming back to the US to complete his education which culminated in a degree from Harvard Law School.
• Lifespan & Personality: Towards Explaining President Barrack Obama’s Personality Traits President Barrack Obama from the perspective of developmental psychology by applying two theories of personality in the analyses of the influences throughout the lifespan.
• Fiscal Policies by President Barrack Obama This research paper will further offer a comparison of the two as employed by the current president of United States of America then describe a statement of polices adopted by the White House.
• “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama Being a cultural anthropologist, she played a vital role in the development of Obama in that he grew up appreciating the fact that he was different and at the same time having the belief that […]
• Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speech and Rhetoric Obama seems to be talking from a point of experience and his understanding of the challenges he articulates is a proof to his assertion.
• Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech In his speech, Barack Obama makes a magnificent attempt to address the issues of racial dishonesty and white privilege that is still observed in America, to describe the “black anger” that is inherent to the […]
• Rhetoric in Obama’s 2008 Speech on Racism When the audience became excited, it was Obama’s responsibility to convey his message in a more accessible form. To conclude, Obama’s speech in 2008 facilitated his election as the first African American President in history.
• Barack Obama’s Biography and Political Leadership The main reason why many see him as an inspiration is that he was the first person of color to hold the office of president, but there is so much more to him and what […]
• President Obama’s Justification for Killing bin Laden In Schlag’s opinion, the secrecy of lawyers in working on the legal actions surrounding the plot of Bin Laden’s death raised concerns regarding the justification of his killing.
• Conservatism in the Clinton and Obama Administrations Thus, the Clinton and Obama administrations have examples of how the presidents challenged the rise of conservatism and were considered the continuation of it simultaneously.
• The Speech About the Assassination of Osama bin Laden by Barack Obama To conclude, we can consider this speech as a good example of weighted but at the same time pompous and threatening speech regarding the issue of national security.
• President Obama’s Inaugural Address in 2009 First, the inclusion of certain phonological elements such as alliteration, consonance, and assonance works to beautify the language, which causes it to resonate with the listener.’Pounded the pavement’ or ‘picked up the phones’ is an […]
• What Explains the Increased Use of Drones Under The Obama Administration in Pakistan The C.I.A.holds the responsibility for the Drone attacks in Pakistan.”The C.I.A.began using drones in Pakistan in 2004, even though the United States was not engaged in a war with that country.
• President Obama’s and Sen. Cruz’s Hanukkah Greetings The speeches reveal that upholding the celebration is an important event in commemorating the justice of redemption of Jerusalem and rededication of the second temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt.
• Barack Obama Policies in Healthcare: Ethical and Unethical Behavior The United State should not have health care reform when members are working but it has to support every child and provide him/her with quality healthcare services.
• Obama’s Health Care Speech to Congress Summary He said that the failing economy was affecting businesses and homeowners and there was a need for decisive action to cut costs and therefore ensure the survival of the Americans by not counting the returns […]
• Opioid Crisis During Trump, Obama, and Bush Presidency The president is the head of government, meaning that this political figure has the power to solve the existing problems. Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency, meaning that sufficient attention was necessary to […]
• Social Media Helped Obama Win The theory of hegemony is instrumental in understanding the relationship that exists between media and power as it can go a long way in reinforcing certain beliefs.
• A Critique of President Obama’s Administration Position on Contraception The paper comes from the premise that after all contraception is widely used in the US but not all the women can afford the contraceptive.
• Barack Obama: Ambassador Leadership Style The history and current experiences of the leaders determine the approaches to the management of contemporary institutions. The advantage of this leadership is that the staff gains a lot of experience as they become more […]
• Constitutional Issues vs. Obama Healthcare Law This is because of government involvement in subsidizing the medical cover costs and putting it mandatory for everyone to have a medical cover or pay a fine.
• Obama’s Health Reform and Weak Points Revealed Consequently, the chief goal of the US administration is to re-focus the benefits promised by the medical care in the USA on citizens but not on medical products manufacturers.
• Success and Mistakes of Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy This paper aims at discussing the achievements and shortcomings of the 44th U.S.president’s foreign policy. The second mistake of Obama’s foreign policy seems to be its expansive nature.
• Barack Obama Made History: The First Black President of the United States In addition to becoming the first black president of the united states, Barack Obama has numerous prominent achievements that will remain the history of the United States.
• President Obama’s Budget Proposal for the United States The budget is also expected to have an expansion of the earned income tax credit for the working poor. Contrary to the above, Republicans argue that raising the tax of the wealthy during a downturn […]
• US Economics and Political Ideology The purpose was also to strengthen the dollar and increase the fiscal stimulus. The public disbelieved it created more jobs and due to great debts, the help of the government turned out to be not […]
• The Healthcare Reform Law by Obama: Budget of the Healthcare Reform The proposed healthcare reform has an estimated budget of $828 billion; half of which is scheduled to be acquired from the expansion of Medicaid with an extra $29 billion stipulated to aid in the funding […]
• Obama’s Health Care Bill: Legaslation`s Changes Review It is imperative to note that the passage of the bill involved wrangling from what appeared as proposition and opposition sides of the Health Care Reform bill.
• President Obama’s Wall Street Reforms The new “bill stipulates that the amount of fees charged by banks to process debit card transactions need to be realistic and relative to the cost of the transaction”.
• Obama Versus McCain as Presidential Candidates John McCain is a strong supporter of the Iraq war and he voted in the year 2002 in support of a joint resolution to authorize the American invasion of Iraq.
• Obama’s Deal: The Problem of Healthcare Reform The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the problem of healthcare reform, which was raised in the documentary Obama’s Deal, and to evaluate the impact of lobbyists’ efforts on the legislative process.
• Barack Obama as an Exceptional Leader According to Huffington, “the first one hundred days of Obama in office has had a lot of achievements and intangible transformational leadership”.
• Obama and Sarkozy: Political Views and Personalities Comparing the forty-forth president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, to the twenty-third president of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, it should be noted that the historical background, economical systems and the foreign […]
• Marc Cooper on Anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Parties The main purpose of Cooper’s article is to throw light on the hypocritical and erring nature of the Tea Parties’ protests by revealing to the audience the nature of “the beef behind today’s protests”.
• Rating of Barack Obama and Economic Problems Most of the respondents attributed the down fall in the economy to the previous regime’s poor economic policies hence, supporting President Barrack Obama.
• The Department of Education in the Cabinet of Obama Kennedy the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Arne Duncan announced to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions his plans in the sphere of education.
• Synopsis of Gwen Ifill’s Book “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama II became the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office of the Presidency.
• How Is Obama Doing: Discussion of Obama’s Presidency The anointment of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States has signaled to the world that American democracy has finally matured and that it is truly the land of opportunity […]
• Obama Speech on Race – March 2008 Although the Constitution promised its people justice, equality and liberty, it has never been able to rid the slaves off their bondage and provide the people of every race and color their privileges and equal […]
• President’s Obama Ability to Address Issues In his capacity as the most senior member of the cabinet, the president needs to work together with other members of the executive including the cabinet to formulate policies for the nation.
• Obama’s Political Ideals and Machiavelli’s Philosophy The problem of power is reduced, in the real world, to the control of specific acts of particular powers. In the first instance, the fundamental abuse is the usurpation of the legal authority itself, the […]
• President Obama and Congress on Healthcare System The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Obama and the congress over the health care plan. Using the power of the media, he is appealing to the voters to maintain his […]
• The Barack Obama Presidency in the United States This essay discusses President Obama’s administration policies on foreign and domestic issues, the challenges he faces, the strengths he can utilize, and what he needs to do in order to deliver the promises he made […]
• The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama In the book The Breakthrough, Gwen Ifill addresses the political background and what part the women and men the author calls “the breakthrough politicians” or what the editor of the New Yorker David Remnick refers […]
• President Barack Obama’s Job Performance He has proven to be a president who listens to the logic and needs of his constituents. He has shown the world that as the new image of America, he is not to be feared […]
• George W. Bush’s Activities and Forecasts for Barack Obama So far, all he has done to show that he would make a better president, was to overturn a number of decisions made during the Bush administration.
• The Obama Stimulus Plan and Its Effect on Local and State Government The action of the plan is considered to attack the core of the problem of the recession, the reduction in spending that is manifesting in all sectors of the economy, using the Keynesian approach of […]
• Obama: The Rule of Law and the Chrysler Debacle The Rule of law is also well known as Supremacy of law and it establishes the fact that nobody should be considered above the law of a particular nation.
• “Race and the Opposition to Obama” Critical Analysis The opinion of the author is correct because if the people hate Barack Obama due to his race and opposition, they should adore Bill Clinton and George W.
• Obama’s Tax Relief Plan Analysis The following graph outlines the proposed tax cut relief plan in detail and it would be analyzed in terms of the effect that it has had on the economy and it’s bearing on the American […]
• Barack Obama and Joe Biden Committing to Domestic Reform The 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt is mostly renowned for his policy of progressivism, which initially arose at the end of the nineteenth century as a response to the vast changes brought […]
• Barack Obama’s First One Hundred Days in Office In his first interview of 60 Minutes, the president asserted that he the knowledge of the importance of the first one hundred days and this is because he was well acquainted with Roosevelt’s First 100 […]
• “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama The paper comprises the advantages and limitations of the author’s flow of thought, his manner of own life details description, and the effects which are seen nowadays in the political career of the author.
• Obama: Successes and Failures But Obama has not relented on the plan; in his speech to the Congress about the plan, he challenged them to face the plan as a way of tackling health issues.
• Obama and Solving the Problem of Racial Inequality One of the most important problems in this sphere is the growing tendency of authorities to influence the work of mass media.
• Obama or Mccain: President of the United States in 2008 Here is a summary of the biggest differences likely to crop up when the candidates meet for debate: Iraq problem: McCain, himself being an ex-serviceman was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq invasion, and continues […]
• Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address Let us utilize this marvelous gift we have of learning, adapting, innovating, and changing for the good of all. Above all, we are but the instruments of our Creator, and should forever seek His guidance.
• Inauguration of President Barack Obama on 2009 He smiled and waved to the audience, he was confident in correcting the Chief Justice during the oath and he was strong in his speech speaking of what has been done wrong in the past […]
• How Does Obama Embody Zeitgeist of 2008? Many theorists consider it to be the fight of an old and a new order and the representatives of the parties to be the representatives of an order which is to be set within America. […]
• Barack Obama: The Rhetoric of Political Words Rhetoric is a part of the language. This use is done to achieve some intentions that the speaker, user of rhetoric, has.
• How the Election of Barack Obama as the U.S. President Will Affect America’s Racial Issues The election of Barack Obama, an African-American to the highest seat in the nation is one big leap of a lifetime, an advancement that has not been even in the wildest dream of the world.
• Obama’s and McCain’s Election Campaigns McCain wants to place the school at the center of the education system and believes that the parents, children and teachers have a major role to play in determining the success of the education system.
• American Racism: So Why Isn’t Obama White? The race up to the inauguration of Barack Obama as President-in-waiting of the United States brought, once again, the issue of skin color to the front.
• Obama, the First US Black President: Is Racism Over? The blacks have fought long and hard for their right to be elected to the highest office in the land and having the white man entrust that most important position in the free world to […]
• Obama and McCain’s Taxation Policy The first two sections deal with the positions of McCain and Obama on the issue of taxes and a look at the merits and demerits of the same.
• Comparing Obama and Mccain Plans The health care problem has assumed great dimensions due to rising costs, rise in the number of uninsured people and lack of uniformity in providing care to the needy.
• B. Obama H. Clinton: Peculiar Individuals in US History Barack Obama-tracing his root in Africa- is out to be the first Black American to become the president of America while Hillary Clinton is out to be the first female president in the history of […]
• Presidential Election in USA: Barack Obama For many people, the choice of who to support for leadership in positions as important as the Presidency of the United States of America falls to one issue.
• Barack Obama as the Next President of the USA The real estate foreclosures, affected by the current crisis of the banking system, make way for imminent trouble in the 2008 Election as the conflict between the homeowners and foreclosed properties takes a clash.
• Barrack Obama Is a United States Presidential Candidate All his campaigns address the issue of the whole nation in trying to the nation that all the people in the United States have the pride of living in their country through the equal sharing […]
• 2008 US Elections: Barrack Obama and John McCain The war in Iraq is one issue that will determine the outcome of the 2008 presidential elections. Barrack Obama was opposed to the Iraq war right from the begging, He had to put his political […]
• Barack Obama: The First Black President Ever His contribution to debates in the Congress and the introduction of very trivial bills shows that he has a knack for democracy and he holds the wishes of the ordinary American citizen deep in his […]
• Barrack Obama’s Campaign Review He argues that he has the capability of bridging the differences in that he will put the race on the table and to have the hardest conversations will be the best demonstration of commitment especially […]
• Obama’s Interpretation of What It Means to Be an “American” The decision to define being an American through the lens of racial and ethnic inequalities in modern American society sets the focus of the analysis on the historical, cultural, and social exploration of the American […]
• “Barack Obama: Miles Traveled, Miles to Go” by Erin Kaplan The first one is the 2009 rise of Obama to the presidency, and the other one is the part where Obama experienced challenges as the president in 2010.
• Barack Obama’s Charisma in Leadership According to the report, charisma falls under leadership’s vision and it can be a misleading trait of leadership that can be used to manipulate subjects.
• Barack Obama’s Presidential Leadership and Charisma According to the report, charisma is one of the traits associated with leadership. The authors also note that although charisma is associated with leadership, it is not a determinant of leadership qualities.
• President Obama’s State of the Union Speeches In this case, the political stream is the concern of the public about the environmental problems and the use of dirty energy.
• Sociological Concepts for “Obama Gets It Right” In order to avoid condemning other segments of the population in terms of the troubles afflicting the black people, the president noted that they were responsible for these problems.
• Barack Obama’s Second Presidential Term Agenda The 2012 presidential elections of the United States marked the presidential election of the 57th quadrennial. In comparison to the optimism level of the historic election of 2008, 65% of the population was in support […]
• Obama Campaign vs. Save the Children Initiative Save the Children organization focuses on the future and the context needed to improve the lives of children in the US and worldwide.
• Is Obama “The Reagan of the Left”? This fact, alongside Obama’s ambitious nature and his investment in the progress of American prosperity, is the reason why he is sometimes referred to as “the Reagan of the Left”.
• Obama’s Presidency and Racism in the USA Irrespective of this criticism and even disappointment, it is possible to note that the presidency of Barak Obama is an important milestone that can eventually lead to the era of true racial justice in the […]
• Did President Obama Save the Auto Industry? As a result of all the failure, such industry giants as General Motors and Chrysler were unable to pay their bills, and to avoid a collapse had to plead for the government’s help.
• Barack Obama and Race Impact on American Politics A detailed explanation of this last statement from a deeper perspective helps in determining how race impacts the views of voters and people of American society and how Obama directed and structured his campaign to […]
• New York Times: Obama Vows to Push Immigration Changes Despite this bias, the report provides a fair view of the Democratic Party and the president’s view of the republicans on the issue of immigration.
• Three Problems That Obama Should Fix The efforts by Obama to deliver this promise has been dealt a big blow due to the problems he is encountering and which he has to fix to continue with his bid to fulfill his […]
• ‘Obama’s Deal’ Documentary Analysis After the struggle which was won by the president following the singing of the health reform, a surprise in the support that the president and his party had enjoyed was realized to have faded from […]
• Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney’s Economic Plans However, Obama defended his plan by claiming that the only reason that it failed in some sectors is due to the failing state of the economy when he took over the presidency.
• First Presidential Debate: Mitt Romney and Barack Obama Despite Obama was talking longer than Romney in the debate, most Americans thought that he was less dominant. However, most people believed that Romney controlled the agenda of the debate.
• Obama’s Policy: Delta and Northwest Airlines’ Case 70 % of the Delta’s employees discarded the Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and in the previous month, 52% of the flight crew chose not to unionize.
• Presidential Campaign: Barack Obama’s Message and Its Power It is clear that the candidate is one of the leaders of the movement for the change supported by thousands of Americans.
• King’s and Obama’s Views on Racism in America If this assertion is made today, Barack Obama will disagree with MLK’s statement, as seen in the excerpt to the speech entitled A Perfect Union: The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that […]
• Barack Obama and Mitt Romney Comparison These policies are based on the premise that the main concern of the government should be social welfare. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney does not say that the government should pay no attention to the work of […]
• Historical Event: Barack Obama’s Election The United States of America has had a shameful racial history characterized by the discrimination of the non-white citizens in the country.
• Peniel Joseph’ Views on Barack Obama The first chapter of the book dubbed “Re-imagining Black power movement” looks at Obama’s rise to power as a defining moment in the US.
• President Barrack Obama 2013 Inaugural Speech He asserts that the process of inaugurating a president is part and parcel of the constitutional order to elevate the status and sovereignty of a nation.
• Political Rhetoric: Barack Obama’s March 18 Speech The context of the speech was reassuring white voters that they did not stand a chance to lose anything based on a statement of a renown Black American Pastor. The speech used the pattern of […]
• Michelle Obama’s Remarks on American Dream She added that the main goal was to secure the blessings of liberty and to bring about the fulfillment of the promise of equality.
• Obama’s Brain Mapping Project It can be considered that the government has failed to recognize the importance of such an establishment until recently According to CNN, the US president has launched a $100 million funding for the establishment of […]
• Obama’s Health Care Reform and Utilitarian Theory Florida Blue The foreseeable good of the health care reform in Florida Blue is that it will increase the number of patients and thus improve its growth.
• The Challenges That Being Black Creates for Douglass and Obama However, that is not the case since a lot of racism was evident in the twentieth century, and Barack Obama was one of the victims.
• Comparing the Challenges that Being Black Creates for Douglass and Obama The books “Dreams from my father” by Barack Obama and Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” provide some of the best examples of using personal narratives to portray the […]
• Ronald Reagan Revolution Through Obama This strategy weakened the economy of the Soviet Union as it tried to keep the pace to be recognized globally like the US, and in the process, the move stopped the advancement of the soviet […]
• President Barack Obama’s Healthcare Reforms It is important to note that healthcare is one of the basic human needs in the world and specifically in the United States of America.
• Obama’s First Election and Racism For African Americans, the march of Barack Obama towards the American presidency was the culmination of a long journey that started in the farmlands of the South during times of slavery.
• Has President Obama’s Presidency Changed the US?
• Should Obama Nominate Another Woman or Two to Replace Justices Ginsburg and Breyer?
• How Obama’s First Election Has Been Affected by Racism?
• The Controversial Health Policy in the USA Initiated by the Obama’s Administration
• US Foreign Policy During Obama Presidency
• President Obama’s Higher Education Agenda
• Barack Obama’s Family History
• President Obama’s National Export Initiative
• President Obama’s Duties as the American CEO in His Second Term
• President Obama’s Foreign Policy
• President Obama: Manager of the Economy
• Did Obama’s Stimulus Work?
• Sumner, Wilson, Reagan, and Obama
• Fiscal Policies of President Bush and President Obama
• Obama’s Speech in India
• Obama’s American Jobs Act
• Analysis of Media Coverage of President Obama’s Activities
• Speech Analysis: Ronald Reagan vs. Barack Obama
• Print Media Journalism: Obama Campaign
• Nick Dyer-Witheford: Barack Obama’s Persona in “The New Combination”
• Addressing Barack Obama’s Presidency Issues
• Barrack Obama and Race in Politics and Culture
• On Guard, Mr. Opponent! Searching for the Logical Fallacies in October Debates. Obama vs. Romney
• Obama’s Administration Seeking Peace With Iran
• Obama and Romney’s Plans for Higher Education
• Immigration Debate: Romney & Obama
• Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney on Health Care
• The Views on the Debate of President Obama and Romney on 10/3/12
• Why Did President Obama Fail in His Attempts to Stop Israel Building Settlement and Prevent the Palestinians from Applying for UN Membership?
• American Jobs Act Proposed By President Obama
• Welfare Expenditure Reduction: Obama’s Federal Worker “Tax”
• Obama’s Wars and the International Relations
• Hero’s Journey: “Little Obama” Movie
• Memo to President Obama on the Possible Insolvency of the Postal Service
• Evaluating Obama’s Presidency
• President Obama’s State of the Union Address on January 1, 2011
• Barack Obama as President of the United States
• Compare and Contrast of the Historical Figures: Barrack Obama and Joel Osteen
• Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy
• Is Barrack Obama Like Hitler?
• Obama’s Speech on the Issue of Gun Control
• Should the Obama Generation Drop Out? by Charles Murray
• Obama’s Speech on 2012 Budget Cuts
• Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy: Partners or Opponents?
• Analysis of Barack Hussein Obama’s Inaugural Speech
• Comparison of the Similarities and Differences Between the Eulogies of Robert F. Kennedy and Barack Obama
• Analysis of Barack Obama’s Speech at Nelson Mandela’s Memorial
• Comparison between the Campaign Platforms of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
• Analysis of President Barack Obama’s Actions of Legalizing Same Sex Marriages and Medicinal Marijuana through the Lens of Lao-Tzu
• Comparison Of I Have A Dream By Martin Luther King And Victory Speech By Barack Obama
• Analysis of President Barack Obama’s Speech on the Death of Osama Bin Laden and the Fight against the Al-Qaeda
• Rhetorical Analysis of Barack Obama’s Interfaith Prayer
• Barack Obama Examined Through an Adlerian Framework Superiority Striving
• Analysis of the Advertisements for the Current Presidential Campaigns for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
• Comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain
• Conflict: Obama and Vocal Orchestra
• How Does Barack Obama Engage His Audience?
• How Does Barack Obama Use Language to Create Impact in His Speech?
• How the Current Economic Crisis has Changed Barack Obama’s Plans and Policies for the United States?
• How Will Obama Change the United States of America?
• What Is Making Barack Obama to Be a President in the US?
• Who Is Barack Obama?
• Differences in the Methods of Dealing with Economic Downturns between President Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama
• Barack Obama and Birth Abortion Ban
• Comparison of the Art of Rhetoric in Ancient and Modern Times, Based on Gorgias’ Arguments as Well as a Speech by Barack Obama
• Argument in Favor of Increasing Minimum Wage in America as Proposed by President Barack Obama
• Barack Obama and the Bush Tax Cut
• Barack Obama: Biography & First Black American President
• Comparison of the Administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama
• Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Daniel Craig and others – 1 is 2 Many – Campus Sexual Assault
• Barack Obama & Martin L.King: the Crossed Fate of Two Emblematic Eaders
• Political Centralism: The Development of Political Consciousness
• Barack Obama – Oval Office Speech on End of Operation Iraqi Freedom Mission
• Barack Obama – Oval Office Speech to the Nation on BP Oil Spill Disaster
• Syria and US Military Action Address to the Nation
• Barack Obama – Speech on the Iraq War at Federal Plaza, Chicago
• Dreams From My Father by Barack
• Barack Obama: Speech To The Nation On Passage Of New Health Care Reform Bill
• Call for Stricter Gun Control Laws, Comfort in a Time of Distress, and Eulogy to the Victims of the SAndy Hook Shooting in the Emotional Speech of President Barack Obama
• What Does the Way Barack Obama Makes Use of Rhetoric Language?
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 230 Barack Obama Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/barack-obama-essay-topics/

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President obama's handwritten essay marking the 150th anniversary of the gettysburg address.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history from Gettysburg, PA. In dedicating the military cemetery where thousands of soldiers were buried following the Battle of Gettysburg, fought just four months earlier, Lincoln described "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Paying tribute to the historic speech, President Obama hand wrote an essay for an exhibit at the Lincoln Presidential Library . President Obama joins former Presidents Clinton, Carter and H.W. Bush who have submitted their contributions, along with other notable essayists including Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, General Colin Powell, and Martin Luther King III, among hundreds of others.

You can read President Obama's essay here , and below:

Here's the full text of President Obama's essay:

In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office.  It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg address, written in Lincoln’s own hand. I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: “A new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Through the lines of weariness etched in his face, we know Lincoln grasped, perhaps more than anyone, the burdens required to give these words meaning.  He knew that even a self-evident truth was not self-executing; that blood drawn by the lash was an affront to our ideals; that blood drawn by the sword was in painful service to those same ideals. He understood as well that our humble efforts, our individual ambitions, are ultimately not what matter; rather, it is through the accumulated toil and sacrifice of ordinary men and women – those like the soldiers who consecrated that battlefield – that this country is built, and freedom preserved.  This quintessentially self-made man, fierce in his belief in honest work and the striving spirit at the heart of America, believed that it falls to each generation, collectively, to share in that toil and sacrifice. Through cold war and world war, through industrial revolutions and technological transformations, through movements for civil rights and women’s rights and workers’ rights and gay rights, we have.  At times, social and economic change have strained our union.  But Lincoln’s words give us confidence that whatever trials await us, this nation and the freedom we cherish can, and shall, prevail.

The fifth and final copy of the Gettysburg Address, which President Lincoln wrote in his own hand, is on display in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Take a closer look of the only version that Lincoln titled, signed, and dated through the Google Art Project . 

Learn more:

• Watch President Obama read the Gettysburg Address as part of the Learn the Address Project
• Learn more about President Abraham Lincoln

Kori Schulman

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Watch President Obama's final State of the Union address.

Read what the President is looking for in his next Supreme Court nominee.

Take a look at America's three newest national monuments.

‘Let’s Get to Work’: Obama Pens Essay About Turning Protests Into Real Change

• By Ryan Bort

While President Trump reportedly has “nothing to say” to a nation protesting the death of George Floyd and other black victims of police brutality, former President Barack Obama penned an essay Monday about “how to make this moment a real turning point to bring about real change.”

I wrote out some thoughts on how to make this moment a real turning point to bring about real change––and pulled together some resources to help young activists sustain the momentum by channeling their energy into concrete action. https://t.co/jEczrOeFdv — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 1, 2020

In the essay, which he posted to Medium , Obama lays out three “basic lessons” the new generation of activists can draw from the past.

The first is to not resort to violence. Obama acknowledges that the protests “represent a genuine and legitimate frustration” over the nation’s failure to reform policing practices and the criminal justice system, but notes that the small portion of protesters inciting violence are putting innocent people at risk and bringing ruin to vulnerable neighborhoods. “If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves,” Obama writes.

The former president then notes that Americans shouldn’t have to choose between protest and politics, and that he “couldn’t disagree more” with the idea that only direct action can cure the criminal justice system of racial bias and that voting in new elected officials is futile. Particularly, Obama stresses the importance of state and local elections. “Eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices,” he writes, “and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.”

Lastly, Obama writes that activists need to make specific demands, which will make it harder for officials to “pay lip service” to the cause. He notes that every community has different needs, but cites a policing-practices tool kit developed by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tailoring reforms for each community will require local activists and organizations to do their research and educate fellow citizens in their community on what strategies work best,” he writes.

Obama concludes with the same message that he laid out in his 2008 president campaign: that he is hopeful. “If, going forward, we can channel our justifiable anger into peaceful, sustained, and effective action, then this moment can be a real turning point in our nation’s long journey to live up to our highest ideals,” he writes. “Let’s get to work.”

The essay follows a statement Obama released on Friday addressing the death of Floyd.

My statement on the death of George Floyd: pic.twitter.com/Hg1k9JHT6R — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 29, 2020

“It falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station — including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day — to work together to create a “new normal” in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts,” he wrote.

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Marian Shields Robinson, mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, dies at 86

Marian Shields Robinson once said she had the “easiest job” at the White House as the “first grandmother.”

Marian Shields Robinson, mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, was a major pillar during former President Barack Obama’s 2008 bid for the White House. 

Taking on the task of caring for granddaughters Malia and Sasha, Robinson made their meals, ran their baths and tucked them into bed. She drove them to school, and to piano and dance lessons with Secret Service in tow. Once she became the nation’s first grandmother, she helped the girls settle into their home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The transition would prove to be just as challenging for the Chicago native. 

“I’ve never lived outside of Chicago, so I don’t know,’’ Robinson said in an interview with the New York Times , expressing her hesitations on permanently moving into the White House which reminded her of a museum. “In the end, I’ll do whatever. I might fuss a little, but I’ll be there.”

In her 2018 memoir, “ Becoming ,” Michelle Obama shared that her mother was forthright, honest and not afraid to speak her mind. “My mother, Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice,” she writes. 

Robinson, often called “Mrs. R.,” died Friday, according to a family statement shared with NBC News . “She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” read the statement. The cause of death was not mentioned.

Barack Obama, whom Robinson adored, shared via Facebook in 2019 to celebrate his mother-in-law’s birthday: “I’ve always appreciated her steadiness, her perspective, and the way a wisecrack from her reverberates around the room.”

A Chicago native

Born on July 29, 1937, Marian Lois Shields was the fourth of seven children of Purnell Nathaniel Shields and Rebecca Jumper. Purnell was a carpenter and painted houses, while Rebecca worked as a licensed practical nurse. Through DNA research, the New York Times revealed the Shields’ complex family lineage to slavery. The story showed Marian’s great-grandfather Dolphus T. Shields was the son of an enslaved teen girl and her white owner. 

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This discovery “underscores the entangled histories and racial intermingling that continue to bind countless American families more than 140 years after the Civil War,” the Times reported in 2012. Some of the Shields family did eventually migrate north. That included Purnell’s mother, Annie, who moved her two sons from Birmingham, Alabama, to Chicago between 1920 and 1923.    

In October 1960, Marian Shields married Fraser Robinson III, who worked for the Chicago Water Department. The couple would dedicate themselves to building a family life in their second-floor apartment of a brick bungalow located in Chicago’s South Side. 

Robinson once worked as a secretary for mail-order retailer Spiegel and at the University of Chicago, but she was mostly a stay-at-home mom for Michelle and son Craig Robinson, former head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University and Brown University. She returned to work as an executive assistant for a local bank when her daughter began high school.

“She was one of those parents that showed up all the time at schools,” Stephen Shields, the youngest of the Shields siblings, said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune . “She kept the teachers on their toes.” 

Michelle Obama has echoed that sentiment. “We were their investment,” she wrote in “Becoming.” “Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in the larger story of our country. Even when it’s not pretty or perfect.”    

Robinson doted on both of her children as they grew and became successful adults. “When I look at Michelle and Craig — a big-time college basketball coach — I feel like maybe, just maybe, Fraser and I got something right,” Robinson wrote in a 2012 personal essay for Essence . “We didn’t do anything special. But I see the adults our kids have become and I can’t help but smile a little bit.” 

Fraser, who had multiple sclerosis , passed away in 1991.

Life in the White House

Robinson lived a quiet life in that very apartment until 2009, when Barack Obama officially took office. The Obamas didn’t want their girls to be taken to school by Secret Service agents, and Robinson wrote in her essay for Essence that she agreed to support her daughter and son-in-law out of concern for the family’s safety.   

“[Robinson is] a presence in a very quiet, understated way,” a longtime family friend told Politico in 2011 . “The first lady wouldn’t be as comfortable as she is traveling around the country and the world if her mom wasn’t there to pitch in.”

Robinson’s plan upon moving to the third floor of the residence was to help everyone get settled and then return to her quiet Chicago life. But after three years, she seemed to have built her own new quiet life full of family. 

“One of my biggest blessings is getting to see my granddaughters grow up before my eyes. My job here is the easiest one of all: I just get to be Grandma,” she wrote in her essay for Essence. 

Robinson made sure her granddaughters did their chores, including cleaning their rooms, and she taught the girls how to do their own laundry . 

“[My mother] laid out the blueprint for how I have raised my own girls,” Michelle Obama wrote in a 2020 Mother’s Day tribute on Instagram .    

Carving out her own space

Robinson did carve out her own space. She would spend afternoons reading in the great hall, which served as the first family’s living room on the second-floor residence. After spending some family time, Mrs. R. often retreated to her room, which had a four-poster bed and sitting area.

“There are many times when she drops off the kids, we hang out and talk and catch up, and then she’s like, ‘I’m going home.’ And she walks upstairs,” Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey in an interview.

Robinson kept a busy social life, and the Obamas mused that they would have to plan their schedule around hers. She made new friends among D.C. locals and often dined out, leaving the White House without the Secret Service detail. Betty Currie, who served as President Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, was among those new friends. 

Robinson participated in many events at the White House and traveled with her daughter and her granddaughters for state visits. That included trips to China and South Africa . She also joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan to read to young children as part of “Let’s Read, Let’s Move,” one of Michelle Obama’s cherished causes as first lady. 

“She [was] having a great time,” a family friend told Politico in 2011 . 

Yet she never put aside her main role, caring for Sasha and Malia. During a 2010 state dinner, the Washington Post reported that Robinson excused herself in order to tuck in her granddaughters, and then returned to the soiree. “She’s been there for us every day,” former President Obama once said. 

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Watch these adorable twin babies meet each other for the first time

When a pair of twin babies finally noticed each other, it was love at first sight. “My twin boys discovering each other for the first time,” Meagan Garr, a wedding videographer in Ocala, Florida, wrote on a TikTok video of her 4-month-old sons Cooper and Olsen.

The video with 13 million views shows the fraternal twin brothers lying next each other having a non-verbal conversation. They’re smiling and staring into each other’s eyes, babbling, touching arms and very delighted with their mirror image.

Meagan tells TODAY.com that she recorded the interaction after trying to get her babies to acknowledge each other’s presence.

“I have a friend whose twins are 6 months old and she told me, ‘They just noticed each other.' I was like, ‘That’s a milestone — what?’” says Meagan.

The twins already react to their older brothers Jackson, 6, and Lucas, 3, says Meagan, but hadn’t acknowledged each other just yet. “It’s sort of like, ‘You’re my arm, you’re always there,’” she says.

This week, Meagan took photos of the twins, trying to catch them smile at the same time. While sorting through the pictures, she glanced up to see her boys smiling at each other.

“It was a candid moment, which made my heart so happy,” she says.

Meagan has wanted twins for a long time.

“When I was five, I told my mom, ‘I’m going to have twin boys when I grow up,’” she says. “Then I had my first baby and said, ‘Just kidding, one is really hard.’”

When Meagan and her husband Andrew found out they were expecting, she told her sons right away.

Although twins don’t run in either family, her oldest son Jackson knew.

“He said, ‘I want two babies,” says Meagan. During the first trimester, Jackson was convinced he was going to have twin brothers. According to Meagan, “He wasn’t even fazed” by the ultrasound results.

Cooper and Olsen were born premature at approximately 33 weeks and stayed in the NICU for their first month. Cooper weighed 3 pounds, 14 ounces (and was nicknamed ‘Mini Cooper”) and Olsen weighed five pounds, one ounce.

Meagan says she’d love for her twins to interact more.

“We’ve had a few moments,” she says, “if they’re both in a good mood and next to each other.”

Elise Solé is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles and covers parenting for TODAY Parents. She was previously a news editor at Yahoo and has also worked at Marie Claire and Women's Health. Her bylines have appeared in Shondaland, SheKnows, Happify and more.

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Mitch McConnell: Biden has waged war on affordable energy and it will hurt Kentucky

“I want you to look me in the eyes,” President Biden told a young woman during his 2020 presidential campaign. “I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”

Well, the President is making good on that promise with yet another assault in his War on Affordable Energy. The Biden Administration announced new regulations in May that will further cripple America’s domestic energy production, threaten our national security and squeeze workers and job creators in Middle America.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest rule will resurrect devastating emissions standards that liberals have spent more than a decade trying to drop on folks in Kentucky and the rest of coal country. The measure revives the Obama Administration’s so-called ‘ Clean Power Plan ’ with the intention of drastically reducing coal-fired power plants. In fact, the new requirements would require coal- and natural gas-powered power plants, which produce a whopping 60% of electricity in our country, to either slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% over the next decade or shut down

By imposing unworkable deadlines and requiring unproven technologies that are not commercially available, the Biden Administration’s message to Kentucky’s power plants and the rest of coal country is clear: shut down.

“This could rein in Kentucky’s ability to generate further economic development moving forward,” said one Kentucky energy producer.

More: EPA proposes new pollution rules for coal power plants. What it could mean for Kentucky

Jim Matheson of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association warned: This new rule would “force critical, always available power plants into early retirement.”

It “will further strain America’s electric grid and undermine decades of work to reliably keep the lights on across the nation,” he went on.

This latest version of the ‘Clean Power Plan’ comes at a time when energy usage is up 73% over the past four decades and widespread power outages continue to surge. Power plants that fail to meet the EPA’s stringent new requirements will be forced to shut down, further threatening the reliability of our power grids.

For two years, President Biden has given liberal activists the green light to push a radical climate agenda that only compounds the pain of Washington Democrats’ inflation. Lower-income ratepayers in particular will see their energy bills creep up as a result of these new mandates. And Eastern Kentucky, the heart of our coal country, could see more plants close and even more jobs lost.

By hollowing out production of affordable and reliable American energy, the Biden EPA’s new rule will threaten our energy security. Rather than unleash our own abundant reserves, Washington Democrats would apparently prefer to lean even further on our adversaries for critical supply chains.

Sadly, this is a story Kentuckians know all too well. For eight years under the Obama Administration, they watched the “ War on Coal ,” kill jobs and cripple communities across Appalachia. In his eight years in office, President Obama helped put more than 10,000 Kentucky miners out of work. Coal employment declined to levels we haven’t seen since the 1800s. And the damage is still being felt to this day. Now President Biden is picking up where he and President Obama left off. The Obama-Biden War on Coal has come in many different forms, but the same basic disdain for Middle America keeps showing its face.

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Given President Biden’s track record on executive overreach, it should come as no surprise that the Supreme Court struck down a similar EPA mandate only a year ago. Last April, the Court made it clear that it’s Congress that gets to create energy policy, not unelected bureaucrats. But the Biden Administration’s climate activists are trying to ram this policy through again anyway. So I’m proud to stand with my Republican colleague, Sen. Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is leading the charge in Congress against this punitive measure.

Washington Democrats’ latest power grab from the EPA is a recipe for soaring energy prices , electricity blackouts and less national security. Working Americans cannot afford it — and Kentuckians least of all.

Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, is the Senate Republican Leader.

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Marian Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama, dies at 86

WASHINGTON (AP) — Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.

Mrs. Robinson’s death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said “there was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”

She was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Mrs. Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig, to help persuade their mother to move.

“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Mrs. Robinson wrote in the foreword to “A Game of Character,” a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.

Mrs. Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.

Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7, respectively, when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Mrs. Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, Mrs. Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, “Becoming.” “She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.”

Mrs. Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady. It allowed her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping runs around town, to the president’s box at the Kennedy Center and for trips to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Mrs. Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor of the White House, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the U.S. until she moved to Washington.

Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast. She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.

Barack and Michelle Obama were married on Oct. 3, 1992.

One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department who had multiple sclerosis. He died in 1991.

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Marian Robinson, mother of first lady Michelle Obama, dies at 86

Mrs. Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother, was the first mother-in-law in years to live in the White House.

Marian Robinson, a homemaker from the South Side of Chicago who became the first presidential in-law in generations to live in the White House after her daughter, Michelle Obama, became first lady of the United States, died May 31 in Chicago. She was 86.

The family announced the death in a statement but did not provide a cause.

Mrs. Robinson, who often was called Mrs. R or the “First Grandma,” was the daughter of a painter and a stay-at-home mother and became a stay-at-home mother herself at a time when few African American women could afford not to work.

In a small but comfortable home, she raised her daughter, who pursued a career as a lawyer and health-care executive before becoming first lady, and her son, Craig Robinson, who grew up to become a college basketball coach. In later years, Mrs. Robinson also worked as a bank secretary.

Mrs. Robinson’s husband, Fraser, was a pump worker at the City of Chicago water plant who suffered from multiple sclerosis and died in 1991. He had been a Democratic Party precinct captain, but his wife had little interest in national politics until her son-in-law, Barack Obama, ran for the White House in 2008.

On election night, Obama described his mother-in-law as having been uncharacteristically emotional as she witnessed his historic election as the first Black president of the United States.

“She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns. And she’s like my grandmother was, sort of a no-fuss type of person. And suddenly, she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know, kind of squeezing it,” he said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” shortly after Barack Obama’s victory over the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), in November 2008.

“And you had this sense of, ‘Well, what’s she thinking?’ For a Black woman who grew up in the ’50s, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States … I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African Americans.”

Mrs. Robinson’s children often described her as a woman who spoke her mind and cherished her privacy. She sought to maintain those traits after agreeing to move with her daughter’s family into the White House.

“They’re dragging me with them, and I’m not that comfortable,” she told an interviewer when she left home, “but I’m doing exactly what you do. You do what has to be done.”

The decision drew widespread attention. Mrs. Robinson was the first presidential mother-in-law to live in the White House since Elvira “Minnie” Doud, Mamie Eisenhower’s mother.

Mrs. Robinson’s role was helping granddaughters Malia and Sasha Obama adjust to life in the Washington bubble and maintain normalcy.

She rode to school with the girls in Secret Service SUVs and tucked them in at night when their parents’ schedules kept them from home.

“One of my biggest blessings is getting to see my granddaughters grow up before my eyes. My job here is the easiest one of all: I just get to be Grandma,” Mrs. Robinson wrote in a 2012 essay published in Essence magazine.

During the time that she lived in the White House, Mrs. Robinson rarely gave interviews and appeared publicly with the Obamas only on holidays and at some cultural events, often when her granddaughters were present.

“If somebody’s going to be with these kids other than their parents,” she once said, “it better be me.”

Importance of education

Marian Lois Shields, one of seven siblings, was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. After all their children were born, her parents separated.

Marian attended two years at a teachers’ college but did not complete the program for financial reasons, her son wrote in a memoir. In her early 20s, she married Fraser Robinson and stressed the importance of education to her children, both of whom graduated from Ivy League schools.

“She taught us that you can be open and honest about your own shortcomings and it doesn’t necessarily mean your kids are going to adopt them,” Michelle Obama once said.

The Robinson family was skeptical when Michelle brought Barack Obama home to introduce him; they had met at the Chicago law office of Sidley Austin and began dating in 1989.

Michelle had been career-focused and showed little interest in settling down. But after their marriage in 1992, the large Chicago-based family brought him into its fold. Barack had few relatives nearby, and the Robinsons threw his birthday parties and became the family with whom he celebrated holidays.

Barack Obama said Mrs. Robinson was an unsung hero in his political trajectory. Had she not quit her job to help care for her granddaughters, Michelle Obama might not have felt comfortable taking on the travel required to support her husband’s presidential campaign.

Mrs. Robinson continued to live in the Chicago walk-up that she and Fraser had shared until moving to the White House. There, she lived on the third floor — one level up from where “Michelle’s family” lived.

Mrs. Robinson described herself as being like most grandmothers. She teased her daughter about her strict rules for Malia and Sasha, including limited television-watching and early bed times.

“I’ve heard [Michelle] say, ‘Mom, what are you rolling your eyes at? You made us do the same thing,’” Mrs. Robinson once told the Boston Globe. “I don’t remember being that bad. It seems like she’s just going overboard.”

Mrs. Robinson described her approach to grandmothering as: “I do everything that grandmothers do that they’re not supposed to.”

“I have candy, they stay up late … they watch TV as long as they want to, we’ll play games until the wee hours,” she said.

In addition to her daughter and son, survivors include six grandchildren.

Along with her deep involvement with her family, Mrs. Robinson maintained varied interests. She was in her 50s when she took up running and won gold in the 50-meter and 100-meter races at the 1997 Illinois Senior Olympics. She stopped running after an injury.

“If I can’t do it fast, I’m not doing it,” she told Oprah Winfrey’s magazine in 2007. “You don’t run just to be running — you run to win.”

She had not traveled abroad before her son-in-law was elected president and seemed to like tagging along on the first family’s official overseas visits. When asked once whether she was enjoying her life in Washington, Mrs. Robinson told Essence, “I really am. You want to know why? Because my children are good parents. It makes it very easy to be a grandmother when your children are good parents.”

Mrs. Robinson built a busy social calendar that included trips to casinos in Las Vegas and concerts in Washington. At the same time, her low profile gave her a level of anonymity that allowed her to travel without a security detail. If someone recognized her as the mother-in-law of the president, she would often say, “I get that a lot.”

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To Restrict Migrants, Biden Leans on Trump’s Favorite Immigration Law

President Biden’s executive action addresses one of his most serious political vulnerabilities ahead of the presidential election.

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By Michael D. Shear

Reporting from Washington

Looking for a way to shut down the southern border in 2018, President Donald J. Trump found a 73-word provision in the asylum law that he said gave him “magical authorities” to keep migrants out of the country.

President Biden turned to that same provision on Tuesday as he took executive action to temporarily close the border to asylum seekers , suspending longstanding guarantees that anyone who steps onto U.S. soil has the right to ask for protection in America.

“The simple truth is, there is a worldwide migrant crisis,” Mr. Biden said in remarks at the White House, “and if the United States doesn’t secure our border, there’s no limit to the number of people who may try to come here.”

Mr. Biden’s announcement is a stunning reversal for a president and a party that spent years arguing that America was a country of immigrants. When President Barack Obama wanted to shore up his chances of re-election in 2012, he issued a sweeping executive order on immigration — one that allowed millions of immigrants to stay in the country legally.

A dozen years later, with the number of people crossing the border illegally at historic highs, the next Democratic president moved entirely in the other direction. Critics say Mr. Biden is adopting the tactics of Mr. Trump and Stephen Miller , his immigration czar, to end asylum, even using the same clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act that Mr. Trump cited to justify a travel ban on Muslim countries.

“Stephen Miller and Donald Trump peddled fear-based politics on immigration, and the Biden White House has decided to buy,” said Heidi Altman, the policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. She called it “a dangerous shift” that will “put the United States at odds with core values and commitments.”

For years, Democrats like Mr. Biden and his allies assailed Mr. Trump for his obsession with closing the border. Kamala Harris denounced him in 2017 , saying that “we can’t turn our backs on the millions of refugees.” In 2018, Democratic lawmakers accused Mr. Trump of stoking “the fires of bigotry” by seeking an end to asylum. In 2020, Hakeem Jeffries, now the top Democrat in the House, called Mr. Trump the “Xenophobe. In. Chief.”

But the politics of immigration have shifted as record numbers of migrants have crossed into border communities and spread to cities far beyond. Mr. Biden has adjusted accordingly. Sensing that Americans want tougher policies, the president backed restrictive measures in bipartisan legislation this year. After Mr. Trump called on Republicans to kill that measure, Mr. Biden and his advisers felt compelled to find another way.

The president has rallied many Democrats behind the approach, which he announced just hours before leaving Washington for a five-day visit to Paris for D-Day celebrations. Mr. Biden blames Republicans for standing in the way of broader efforts to overhaul the immigration system, and many mayors and governors in his party say the time has come to finally do something to address the surge of migration into their cities.

The proclamation that Mr. Biden signed on Tuesday declared that asylum rights should be suspended whenever migration surged past a certain number. He then set the threshold low enough — at an average of 2,500 migrants each day — that the suspension would be prompted right away, starting at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday.

In fact, that threshold has been exceeded almost every day for nearly a year, thanks to a wave of global migration fueled by climate change, economic instability and political violence around the world. And even though it is lower than the peak of 10,000 migrants last December, it remains far higher than the average of about 1,000 migrants each day a decade ago. The restrictions will not apply to minors who cross the border alone and a small number of people who legitimately fear being tortured or persecuted in their home country, officials said.

Mr. Biden and the aides running his campaign are betting that voters will reward the president for newly aggressive efforts to limit the number of people crossing into the country illegally. They hope the move will relieve pressure on Democratic-led cities like New York and Denver, which are struggling to feed and house migrants.

And they believe the actions will give Mr. Biden a potent retort to Mr. Trump and Republicans, who have long accused Democrats of being weak on the border.

But the move is certain to inflame some of Mr. Biden’s supporters, too, especially those on the left who have already expressed frustration with the president on a range of other issues, like student loans and climate change.

Mr. Biden and his aides bristle at the accusation that they are following in Mr. Trump’s footsteps.

The president correctly notes that he has ruled out some of his predecessor’s extreme policies, such as separating children from their parents at the border to send a message to migrants that they should not come to the United States. On his first day in office, Mr. Biden proposed an immigration overhaul that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants. Republicans refused to consider the proposal.

“I will never demonize immigrants,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs.”

But the new measures are a sharp crackdown.

One measure included in the president’s proclamation on Tuesday prohibits migrants from entering the United States for five years — even through a legal pathway — if they have been caught trying to enter illegally while the president’s asylum ban is in place. Liberals have been fighting against such extended bans for decades.

Mr. Biden has also reached the same conclusion as Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller when it comes to the source of their legal authority to take executive action to prevent migration.

Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act reads: “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

Legal scholars have debated for years the meaning of those words. When the Supreme Court upheld Mr. Trump’s travel ban, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the provision “exudes deference to the president in every clause.” The American Civil Liberties Union said the court’s ruling in that case was wrong and “stands among its greatest failures, reminiscent of its decisions allowing the discriminatory incarceration of Japanese Americans.”

In February, Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump should use the provision in a “muscular” way during a second term and called for it to be part of an effort to “establish a fortress position on the border and say no one can cross here at all.”

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear