new barack obama biography

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 !

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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The Best Biographies of Barack Obama

17 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts , President #44 - B Obama

≈ 10 Comments

American history , Barack Obama , biographies , book reviews , David Garrow , David Maraniss , David Mendell , David Remnick , Peter Baker , presidential biographies , US Presidents

Born to a father he hardly knew and to a mother he almost never saw, Obama’s path to the White House is one of the most remarkable and unlikely of any I’ve seen. And yet, in hindsight, his political ascent makes almost perfect sense.

Because his presidency ended so recently, and due to his young age, it could be three decades or more before the definitive biography of Obama is written. To wrap up this six-year journey through the best biographies of the presidents I read three books on Barack H. Obama:

* “ The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama ” (2010) by David Remnick

Remnick’s “The Bridge” was the perfect place for me to start: it covers Obama’s life up through his presidential inauguration and although the narrative can be dense and dry, it is not tediously detailed and provides an excellent review of most aspects of his first forty-seven years.

But this book is not as engrossing as are the  very best biographies and it underplays the drama embedded in Obama’s unlikely and remarkable political ascent. But Remnick’s reporting eye and his tenacity in seeking out interviews of everyone who ever knew Obama are remarkable. And, of the three books I read, this provides the most informative “all around” coverage of Obama’s pre-presidency – 4¼ stars ( Full review here )

* “ Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama ” (2017) by David Garrow

This 1,078-page biography, covering Obama’s life up through his presidency, is noteworthy for its length as well as the deep research which supports an often extraordinary level of detail. Unfortunately, the degree of satisfaction a reader achieves by patiently navigating its ten chapters is inadequate compensation for the persistently tedious experience.

Garrow makes no discernible effort to separate mundane details from consequential facts and there are few, if any, overarching themes or theses.  Individual moments of merit are numerous, but are overshadowed by long stretches which seem aimless or inconsequential. And in stark contrast to the first 1000+ pages of the book, Obama’s presidency is covered in less than thirty pages.  As a reference on his pre-presidency this book is, in some ways, commendable.  But as a presidential biography it proves a mind-numbing exercise in patience and pointless perseverance – 2 stars ( Full review here )

* “ Barack Obama: The Story ” (2012) by David Maraniss

I had a great experience with Maraniss’s biography of the young Bill Clinton and this book on Barack Obama’s early life did not disappoint.  Its focus, somewhat to my surprise, is as much on Obama’s forebears as Obama himself. It takes time to develop, and not until the book’s second half does the future president come into sharp focus. It also ends somewhat abruptly – just as Obama is leaving Chicago to attend Harvard Law and well before the start of his political career.

But it is extremely well-researched, quite well written and, in the end, paints a compelling portrait of the 44th president (as he approaches the end of his third decade of life). My fingers are crossed that Maraniss writes a follow-up volume focusing on Obama’s political ascent and presidency. (He has indicated an interest in doing so, but only after Obama’s book is published and once his library archives are accessible) — 4¼ stars ( Full review here )

Best Biography of Barack Obama: ***Too early to call***

Follow-up :

– “ Obama: The Call of History ” (2017) by Peter Baker

– “ Obama: From Promise to Power ” (2007) by David Mendell

10 thoughts on “The Best Biographies of Barack Obama”

February 17, 2019 at 12:48 pm

Congratulations! You made it 👍

February 18, 2019 at 3:48 pm

Thanks – now if we could just get some decent DC-area weather over a weekend I need to get flying again 🙂

February 17, 2019 at 4:25 pm

Many thanks for the project, for your reviews. Best of luck.

February 28, 2019 at 12:02 pm

I can’t believe that I just found this blog! I can’t wait to read through more of it. I’m a big American history nerd, so this was an awesome find. I just wish I could’ve followed along more. Although I’m looking forward to seeing your reviews of the ancillary character biographies.

February 28, 2019 at 12:32 pm

Better late than never! And I’ve got a follow-up list of about 120 presidential biographies to get through, so even though I’ll be tossing some non-presidential biographies into the mix there will be plenty of POTUS-related follow-up!

December 2, 2020 at 3:54 pm

This is my personal review of “Obama: The Call of History” by Peter Baker (2017, 1st Ed.)

Peter Baker had established himself as an excellent writer of political history. His previous book “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” is detailed, comprehensive, and goes into the key characters in depth. He puts situations in prospective and fleshes out the politics and motives.

Knowing that a full and excellent biography of Obama couldn’t exist yet because it can take decades to write such a book, I was prepared to read two books, the first being “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” (2010) by David Remnick which gives Obama’s life up to the 2008 election, and this book which covers the 8 years in office.

The acknowledgments section clearly states that this coffee-table, overly illustrated, oversized tome (5 lbs by weight) was the creation of the New York Times as a show piece, and not the serious Obama biography that Baker might want to write. It is a disappointment for readers who want a good POTUS bio. That it might be the best available in 2020 doesn’t mitigate this assessment. Douglas Brinkley, one of the books paid reviewers, accurately characterizes it as a “remembrance of our forty-fourth president.”

As a Presidential biography I rate it 1-star.

December 2, 2020 at 4:04 pm

“1” star doesn’t inspire me to tackle this one any time soon. I enjoyed Baker’s biography of James Baker (which I recently read) but I remember hearing similar feedback to yours on this “remembrance” of Obama and thinking I would pass for the time being…

December 20, 2020 at 4:47 pm

I just wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge and book ratings with the greater general public. I belong to a small group of readers that are also making our way through the presidential list. Your site has become an indispensable resource for us and is always our first reference. We have great discussions on many different topics but invariably come back to the discussion of what makes a great leader or president. Do you have thoughts (and time) to share a few of your ideas on this topic? I am also wondering if you might be able to recommend a few good books that compare presidents and their leadership traits? Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book (“Leadership”) and Jon Meacham’s (“Soul of America”) are on our radar. Thanks again so very much.

December 21, 2020 at 6:38 am

I’m so glad to hear the site has been useful for stimulating discussion! You’ve probably noticed the large number of visitors who regularly comment and chip in thoughts & observations they have (which, in many cases, goes well beyond my own experience). For me, that’s the most useful feature of this website (which was originally designed just to give me somewhere to deposit my thoughts as I wound my way through the presidents).

But as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve not yet read any books explicitly designed to address leadership traits/skills. You note DKG’s book which is almost certainly a great starting point (I’m familiar with it but just haven’t read it cover-to-cover), but I don’t know where to send you next. The rifle-shot topic which has long been of great interest to me is the question of what makes a great president (and how would one really attempt to go about comparing presidents from different eras who each faced a variety of dissimilar challenges). I’ve deeply perused everything I can find on that topic but am still sorting through my own rubric / methodology. The ability to provide thoughtful leadership is probably one of the three or four key traits I believe go into making a president “successful” (whether or not “great”)…

It it would be fascinating to address your question head-on with a book or series of essays that examines each of the presidents’ leadership qualities irrespective of whether they are considered “great,” “near-great,” “average” or even worse. Among the most fascinating case studies to me would be Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, TR, FDR and Reagan.

Please let me know as your group winds its way through the leadership topic and I’ll try to let you know if my thinking develops further on the point..!

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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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New Barack Obama Biography Documents Growing Pains and Young Love

I n a new book Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama , Pulitzer Prize winner David J. Garrow documents the formative years of the 44th president. While the 1,460-page haute-tabloid tome came under critical fire (“overstuffed and ultimately unfair,” said the New York Times ) before it has even been officially released, it does contain intriguing insight into the growing pains of a 20-something who would go on to become the leader of the free world, most vividly in the form of letters he wrote to friends.

Readers of Obama’s own books like Dreams From My Father will be familiar with the President’s years of soul-searching while evaluating the many paths open to him as an exceptional student and an ambitious worker. Yet a 1984 letter to a friend about one of his early jobs after college sheds light on the way he thought about his own intellect and potential at an early age:

I’ve emerged as one of the ‘promising young men’ of Business International, with everyone slapping my back and praising my work. There is the possibility that they offer the job of Managing Editor for one of the publications, which would involve a hefty raise but an extended stay … The style and substance of what I write [is such that] I can churn out the crap without much effort [yet] the finished product confronts me as an alien being, not threatening, but a part of another system, another sensibility … because of the position, the best I can hope for is a draw, since I have no vehicle or forum to try to change things. For this reason, I can’t stay very much longer than a year.

The young Obama continued on to explain he was spending his weeknight evenings writing and had recently finished work on a fiction piece that gave him “some good feelings doing it, even though it’s not top quality. I still have a certain ambivalence towards writing/art as a vocation.” As for his “political reading/spectating,” he wrote, “my ideas aren’t as crystalized as they were while in school, but they have an immediacy and weight that may be more useful if and when I’m less observer and more participant.”

In 1986, while working as a community organizer, he wrote to a former girlfriend about how his work ethic and drive were evolving:

The pace of my life has quickened these past few months; feel like I’ve broken through the lengthy ‘Buddhist’ phase — acting more forcefully, letting myself make mistakes. I’ve stopped eating peanuts, I’m working like a bitch, still writing when I have the time.

Romantic considerations were another complicated element of Obama’s early adulthood, and Garrow relies heavily upon interviews with a former girlfriend of Obama’s with whom he lived in Chicago. Sheila Miyoshi Jager was an anthropology student at the time, and though she describes the relationship as a passionate affair, a letter from Obama to a friend is marked by the kind of ambivalence present in many youthful relationships. (Jager is reportedly the basis for a composite character in Dreams of My Father .) Noting that they had recently moved in together, he describes Jager as a “very sweet lady, as busy as I am, and so temperamentally well-suited.”

Not that there are no strains; I’m not really accustomed to having another person underfoot all the time, and there are moments when I miss the solitude of a bachelor’s life. On the other hand, winter’s fast approaching, and it is nice to have someone to come home to after a late night’s work. Compromises, compromises.

Jager recounts a visit the couple made to her parents over Christmas 1986, when she says they were considering getting married. Obama got into a heated political argument with Jager’s conservative father, and her mother deemed them too young for marriage.

Garrow frequently goes out of his way to quote early friends and acquaintances who say they did not see Obama as black, but white — a bizarre and bigoted observation that seems to imply black people could not possibly share this young man’s interests, intellect and poise. Obama’s decision not to remain with Jager is framed as a rejection of white women (Jager is half-Japanese) in favor of the optics that would come from having a black wife when he entered public life. Though Garrow details the sexual chemistry between Obama and his white girlfriends, his relationship with Michelle is presented as cool and businesslike. Leaving aside the questionable taste of that decision, to any observer of the Obamas’ marriage, the characterization of their romance as a lukewarm, politically advantageous union is plainly out-of-touch and offensive.

Though Garrow continues to document Obama’s progress from Harvard Law School through his presidential campaign, the epilogue strangely returns to Jager who said in 2014 that her “past with Barack still feels very present,” and who still seemed to resent having been left out of his 1995 memoir. “Something changed in him after we went our separate ways,” she said, “as if the part of him that was so vulnerable and open (and sensual?) went underground and something else — raging ambition, quest for greatness, whatever just took over instead.”

Would that we could all take credit for our exes’ success by way of being dumped. The former First Lady probably isn’t taking any of this too hard, however — she and the President surely have more boring , loveless travel planned before they celebrate their 25th anniversary in October.

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Barack Obama

The 44th President of the United States

The biography for President Obama and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. The framers of the Constitution always hoped that our leadership would not be limited to Americans of wealth or family connections. Subject to the prejudices of their time—many of them owned slaves—most would not have foreseen an African American president. Obama’s father, Barack Sr., a Kenyan economist, met his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, when both were students in Hawaii, where Barack was born on August 4, 1961. They later divorced, and Barack’s mother married a man from Indonesia, where he spent his early childhood. Before fifth grade, he returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents and attend Punahou School on scholarship.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995), Obama describes the complexities of discovering his identity in adolescence. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University, where he studied political science and international relations. Following graduation in 1983, Obama worked in New York City, then became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, coordinating with churches to improve housing conditions and set up job-training programs in a community hit hard by steel mill closures. In 1988, he went to Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review . Returning to Chicago, he joined a small law firm specializing in civil rights.

In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law. Their daughters, Malia and Sasha, were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the U.S. Senate in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention that summer, he delivered a much acclaimed keynote address. Some pundits instantly pronounced him a future president, but most did not expect it to happen for some time. Nevertheless, in 2008 he was elected over Arizona Senator John McCain by 365 to 173 electoral votes.

As an incoming president, Obama faced many challenges—an economic collapse, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing menace of terrorism. Inaugurated before an estimated crowd of 1.8 million people, Obama proposed unprecedented federal spending to revive the economy and also hoped to renew America’s stature in the world. During his first term he signed three signature bills: an omnibus bill to stimulate the economy, legislation making health care more accessible and affordable, and legislation reforming the nation’s financial institutions. Obama also pressed for a fair pay act for women, financial reform legislation, and efforts for consumer protection. In 2009, Obama became the fourth president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2012, he was reelected over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by 332 to 206 electoral votes. The Middle East remained a key foreign policy challenge. Obama had overseen the killing of Osama bin Laden, but a new self-proclaimed Islamic State arose during a civil war in Syria and began inciting terrorist attacks. Obama sought to manage a hostile Iran with a treaty that hindered its development of nuclear weapons. The Obama administration also adopted a climate change agreement signed by 195 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.

In the last year of his second term, Obama spoke at two events that clearly moved him—the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, and the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Our union is not yet perfect, but we are getting closer,” he said in Selma. “And that’s why we celebrate,” he told those attending the museum opening in Washington, “mindful that our work is not yet done.”

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

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New biography details Obama's struggle with racial identity

By Lucy Madison

June 15, 2012 / 11:10 AM EDT / CBS News

(CBS News) A new biography excerpted Friday in the Washington Post sheds light on some of President Obama's formative experiences coming to terms with his racial identity as a young man, from his time as a student in Indonesia to his years working as a community activist in Chicago.

"Barack Obama: The Story," by David Maraniss, which comes out June 19, discusses the president's early education in Jakarta as well as his years in Hawaii, in college, and beyond. In Jakarta, Mr. Obama was sometimes jokingly referred to as "Bahasa tarzan" and inspired curiosity for having a white mother.

One friend from Occidental College remembers the young Mr. Obama's explanation of his nickname, Barry, as a sort of protective barrier.

According to the book, "one day, as Moore recalled the scene, he and Obama were 'sitting around, discussing the world . . . and I said, 'Barry Obama? What is that derivative of?' And he told me the story of how his mom had met his father. And I had been to Kenya. . . . It was a bit of serendipity in our lives. We were just kind of chatting. I was heckling a bit. . . . 'Barry Obama, what kind of name is that for a brother?' And he said, 'Well, my real name is Buh-ROCK. Barack Obama.' And I said, 'Well, that's a strong name. Rock, Buh-ROCK.' And we laughed about it.'"

Maraniss writes: "He said, 'I go by Barry so I don't have to explain myself to the world. You're my bro, I can give you the background on it.' But it was basically an accommodation to the Anglo world, Anglo society. You don't want to be singled out, necessarily."

Mr. Obama and Moore also bonded over music, debating the meaning of Bob Marley's album "Survival" and the work of Stevie Wonder.

He later transferred to Columbia University, where he became friends with a group of Pakistani students and spoke about his desire to one day become president, according to one friend interviewed in the book.

Mir Mahboob Mahmood, a student at Columbia Law School and a friend of Mr. Obama's in those days, remembers that the two "had known each other only a few months when Obama posed this question to him: 'Do you think I will be president of the United States?'"

"If America is ready for a black president, you can make it," Mahmoud says he told him.

Throughout these years, the book posits, Mr. Obama often felt he fit in nowhere: At Occidental, he was called an "Oreo" by other black students for his multicultural heritage, one fellow student remembers. Later, while he was living in New York, he expressed to an acquaintance and onetime girlfriend apparent feelings of uncertainty about his place in the world.

"Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me . . . the only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions [of all the] classes; make them mine, me theirs," he wrote.

Another ex-girlfriend, who was white, encouraged his search for identity -- and urged him to "go black."

Maraniss writes: "She realized that 'in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black. I told him that. I think he felt very encouraged by my absolute conviction that his future lay down the road with a black woman. He doubted there were any black women he would feel truly comfortable with. I would tell him, 'No, she is out there.'"

Ultimately, Mr. Obama moved to Chicago, where he took a job in community organizing and became immersed in the urban black community there. Still, he maintained what is cast as a few characteristic reservations.

"In Chicago, Obama was finding -- and being found," Maraniss writes. "Even as he was insinuating himself into the South Side culture and finding comfort in the black world there, Obama remained the participant observer. His perspective was universal, removed, not racial. He had reservations about people of every race when it came to tribal thinking."

Lucy Madison is a political reporter for CBSNews.com.

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A President Looks Back on His Toughest Fight

By Barack Obama

Our first spring in the White House arrived early. As the weather warmed, the South Lawn became almost like a private park to explore. There were acres of lush grass ringed by massive, shady oaks and elms and a tiny pond tucked behind the hedges, with the handprints of Presidential children and grandchildren pressed into the paved pathway that led to it. There were nooks and crannies for games of tag and hide-and-go-seek, and there was even a bit of wildlife—not just squirrels and rabbits but a red-tailed hawk and a slender, long-legged fox that occasionally got bold enough to wander down the colonnade.

Cooped up as we’d been through the winter of 2009, we took full advantage of the new back yard. We had a swing set installed for Sasha and Malia directly in front of the Oval Office. Looking up from a late-afternoon meeting on this or that crisis, I might glimpse the girls playing outside, their faces set in bliss as they soared high on the swings.

But, of all the pleasures that first year in the White House would deliver, none quite compared to the mid-April arrival of Bo, a huggable, four-legged black bundle of fur, with a snowy-white chest and front paws. Malia and Sasha, who’d been lobbying for a puppy since before the campaign, squealed with delight upon seeing him for the first time, letting him lick their ears and faces as the three of them rolled around on the floor.

A note from our editor about this excerpt, drawn from President Obama’s forthcoming memoir.

With Bo, I got what someone once described as the only reliable friend a politician can have in Washington. He also gave me an added excuse to put off my evening paperwork and join my family on meandering after-dinner walks around the South Lawn. It was during those moments—with the light fading into streaks of purple and gold, Michelle smiling and squeezing my hand as Bo bounded in and out of the bushes with the girls giving chase—that I felt normal and whole and as lucky as any man has a right to expect.

Bo had come to us as a gift from Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, part of a litter that was related to Teddy’s own beloved pair of Portuguese water dogs. It was a truly thoughtful gesture—not only because the breed was hypoallergenic (a necessity, owing to Malia’s allergies) but also because the Kennedys had made sure that Bo was housebroken before he came to us. When I called to thank them, though, it was only Vicki I could speak with. It had been almost a year since Teddy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and although he was still receiving treatment in Boston, it was clear to everyone—Teddy included—that the prognosis was not good.

I’d seen him in March, when he’d made a surprise appearance at a White House conference we held to get the ball rolling on universal-health-care legislation. Teddy’s walk was unsteady that day; his suit draped loosely on him after all the weight he’d lost, and despite his cheerful demeanor his pinched, cloudy eyes showed the strain it took just to hold himself upright. And yet he’d insisted on coming anyway, because thirty-five years earlier the cause of getting everyone decent, affordable health care had become personal for him. His son Teddy, Jr., had been diagnosed with a bone cancer that led to a leg amputation at the age of twelve. While at the hospital, Teddy had come to know other parents whose children were just as ill but who had no idea how they’d pay the mounting medical bills. Then and there, he had vowed to do something to change that.

Through seven Presidents, Teddy had fought the good fight. During the Clinton Administration, he helped secure passage of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Over the objections of some in his own party, he worked with President George W. Bush to get drug coverage for seniors. But, for all his power and legislative skill, the dream of establishing universal health care—a system that delivered good-quality medical care to all people, regardless of their ability to pay—continued to elude him.

Which is why he had forced himself out of bed to come to our conference, knowing his brief but symbolic presence might have an effect. Sure enough, when he walked into the East Room, the hundred and fifty people who were present erupted into lengthy applause. His remarks were short; his baritone didn’t boom quite as loudly as it used to when he’d roared on the Senate floor. By the time we’d moved on to the third or fourth speaker, Vicki had quietly escorted him out the door.

I saw him only once more in person, six weeks later, at a signing ceremony for a bill expanding national-service programs, which Republicans and Democrats alike had named in his honor. But I would think of Teddy sometimes when Bo wandered into the Treaty Room and curled up at my feet. And I’d recall what Teddy had told me that day, just before we walked into the East Room together. “This is the time, Mr. President,” he had said. “Don’t let it slip away.”

The quest for some form of universal health care in the United States dates back to 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt, who had previously served nearly eight years as a Republican President, decided to run again—this time on a progressive ticket and with a platform that called for the establishment of a centralized national health service. At the time, few people had or felt the need for private health insurance. Most Americans paid their doctors visit by visit, but the field of medicine was quickly growing more sophisticated, and as more diagnostic tests and surgeries became available the attendant costs began to rise, tying health more obviously to wealth. Both the United Kingdom and Germany had addressed similar issues by instituting national health-insurance systems, and other European nations would eventually follow suit. Although Roosevelt ultimately lost the 1912 election, his party’s progressive ideals planted a seed: accessible and affordable medical care might one day be viewed as a right more than a privilege. It wasn’t long, however, before doctors and Southern politicians vocally opposed any type of government involvement in health care, branding it as a form of Bolshevism.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed a nationwide wage freeze, during the Second World War, meant to stem inflation, many companies began offering private health insurance and pension benefits as a way to compete for the limited number of workers not deployed overseas. Once the war ended, this employer-based system continued, in no small part because labor unions used the more generous benefit packages negotiated under collective-bargaining agreements as a selling point to recruit new members. The downside was that those unions then had little motivation to push for government-sponsored health programs that might help everybody else. Harry Truman proposed a national health-care system twice, once in 1945 and again as part of his Fair Deal package, in 1949, but his appeal for public support was no match for the well-financed P.R. efforts of the American Medical Association and other industry lobbyists. Opponents didn’t just kill Truman’s effort. They convinced a large swath of the public that “socialized medicine” would lead to rationing, to the loss of the family doctor and of the freedoms Americans hold so dear.

Rather than challenging private insurance head on, progressives shifted their energy to helping those populations the marketplace had left behind. These efforts bore fruit during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society campaign, when a universal single-payer program partially funded by payroll-tax revenue was introduced for seniors (Medicare) and a not so comprehensive program based on a combination of federal and state funding was set up for the poor (Medicaid). During the nineteen-seventies and early eighties, this patchwork system functioned well enough, with roughly eighty per cent of Americans covered through either their jobs or one of these two programs. Meanwhile, defenders of the status quo could point to the many innovations brought to market by the for-profit medical industry, from MRIs to lifesaving drugs.

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Useful as these innovations were, though, they also drove up health-care costs. And, with insurers footing the nation’s medical bills, patients had little incentive to question whether drug companies were overcharging or whether doctors and hospitals were ordering redundant tests and unnecessary treatments in order to pad their bottom lines. At the same time, nearly a fifth of the country lived just an illness or an accident away from potential financial ruin. Unable to afford regular checkups and preventive care, the uninsured often waited until they were very sick before seeking attention at hospital emergency rooms, where more advanced illnesses meant more expensive treatment. Hospitals made up for this uncompensated care by increasing prices for insured customers, which further jacked up premiums.

All this explained why the United States spent a lot more money per person on health care than any other advanced economy (eighty-seven per cent more than Canada, a hundred and two per cent more than France, a hundred and eighty-two per cent more than Japan), and for similar or worse results. The difference amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars a year—money that could have been used instead to provide child care for American families, or to reduce college tuition, or to eliminate a good chunk of the federal deficit. Spiralling health-care costs also burdened American businesses: Japanese and German automakers didn’t have to worry about the extra fifteen hundred dollars in worker and retiree health-care costs that Detroit had to build into the price of every car rolling off the assembly line.

In fact, it was in response to foreign competition that U.S. companies began off-loading rising insurance costs onto their employees in the late nineteen-eighties and nineties, replacing traditional plans that had few, if any, out-of-pocket costs with cheaper versions that included co-pays, lifetime limits, higher deductibles, and other unpleasant surprises hidden in the fine print. Unions often found themselves able to preserve their traditional benefit plans only by agreeing to forgo increases in wages. Small businesses found it tough to provide their workers with health benefits at all. Meanwhile, insurance companies that operated in the individual market perfected the art of rejecting customers who, according to their actuarial data, were most likely to make use of the health-care system, especially anyone with a “preëxisting condition”—which they often defined as anything from a previous bout of cancer to asthma and chronic allergies.

It’s no wonder, then, that by the time I took office there were very few people ready to defend the existing system. More than forty-three million Americans were now uninsured, premiums for family coverage had risen ninety-seven per cent since 2000, and costs were only continuing to climb. And yet the prospect of trying to get a big health-care-reform bill through Congress at the height of a historic recession made my team nervous. Even my adviser David Axelrod—who had experienced the challenges of getting specialized care for a daughter with severe epilepsy and had left journalism to become a political consultant in part to pay for her treatment—had his doubts.

“The data’s pretty clear,” he said when we discussed the topic with Rahm Emanuel , my chief of staff. “People may hate the way things work in general, but most of them have insurance. They don’t really think about the flaws in the system until somebody in their own family gets sick. They like their doctor. They don’t trust Washington to fix anything. And, even if they think you’re sincere, they worry that any changes you make will cost them money and help somebody else.”

“What Axe is trying to say, Mr. President,” Rahm interrupted, his face screwed up in a frown, “is that this can blow up in our faces.”

We were already using up precious political capital, Rahm said, in order to fast-track the passage of the Recovery Act, a major economic-stimulus package. As an adviser in the Clinton White House, he’d had a front-row seat at the last push for universal health care, when Hillary Clinton’s legislative proposal crashed and burned, and he was quick to remind us that the backlash had contributed to Democrats’ losing control of the House in the 1994 midterms. “Republicans will say health care is a big new liberal spending binge, and that it’s a distraction from solving the economic crisis,” Rahm said.

“Unless I’m missing something,” I said, “we’re doing everything we can do on the economy.”

“I know that, Mr. President. But the American people don’t know that.”

“So what are we saying here?” I asked. “That despite having the biggest Democratic majorities in decades, despite the promises we made during the campaign, we shouldn’t try to get health care done?”

Rahm looked to Axe for help.

“We all think we should try,” Axe said. “You just need to know that, if we lose, your Presidency will be badly weakened. And nobody understands that better than McConnell and Boehner.”

I stood up, signalling that the meeting was over. “We better not lose, then,” I said.

When I think back to those early conversations, it’s hard to deny my overconfidence. I was convinced that the logic of health-care reform was so obvious that even in the face of well-organized opposition I could rally the American people’s support. Other big initiatives—like immigration reform and climate-change legislation—would probably be even harder to get through Congress; I figured that scoring a victory on the item that most affected people’s day-to-day lives was our best shot at building momentum for the rest of my legislative agenda. As for the political hazards that Axe and Rahm worried about, the recession virtually guaranteed that my poll numbers were going to take a hit anyway. Being timid wouldn’t change that reality. Even if it did, passing up a chance to help millions of people just because it might hurt my reëlection prospects—well, that was exactly the kind of myopic, self-preserving behavior I’d vowed to reject.

My interest in health care went beyond policy or politics; it was personal, just as it was for Teddy. Each time I met a parent struggling to come up with the money to get treatment for a sick child, I thought back to the night Michelle and I had to take three-month-old Sasha to the emergency room for what turned out to be viral meningitis. I remembered the terror and the helplessness we felt as the nurses whisked her away for a spinal tap, and the realization that we might never have caught the infection in time had the girls not had a regular pediatrician we felt comfortable calling in the middle of the night. Most of all, I thought about my mom, who had died in 1995, of uterine cancer.

In mid-June, I headed to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the first in a series of health-care town-hall meetings we would hold around the country, hoping to solicit citizen input and educate people on the possibilities for reform. Introducing me that day was a local resident named Laura Klitzka, who was thirty-five years old and had been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer that had spread to her bones. Even though she was on her husband’s insurance plan, repeated rounds of surgery, radiation, and chemo had bumped her up against the policy’s lifetime limits, leaving the couple with twelve thousand dollars in unpaid medical bills. Over the objections of her husband, Peter, she was now pondering whether more treatment was worth it. Sitting in their living room before we headed for the event, she smiled wanly as we watched Peter doing his best to keep track of their two young kids playing on the floor.

“I want as much time with them as I can get, but I don’t want to leave them with a mountain of debt,” she said to me. “It feels selfish.” Her eyes started misting, and I held her hand, remembering my mom wasting away in those final months: the times she’d put off checkups that might have caught her disease because she was in between consulting contracts and didn’t have coverage; the stress she carried to her hospital bed when her insurer refused to pay her disability claim, arguing that she had failed to disclose a preëxisting condition, despite the fact that she hadn’t even been diagnosed when her policy started. The unspoken regrets.

Passing a health-care bill wouldn’t bring my mom back. It wouldn’t douse the guilt I still felt for not having been at her side when she took her last breath. It would probably come too late to help Laura Klitzka and her family. But it would save somebody’s mom, somewhere down the line. And that was worth fighting for.

The question was whether we could get it done. Any major health-care bill meant rejiggering a sixth of the American economy. Legislation of this scope was guaranteed to involve hundreds of pages of endlessly fussed-over amendments and regulations. A single provision tucked inside the bill could translate to billions of dollars in gains or losses for some sector of the health-care industry. A shift in one number, a zero here or a decimal point there, could mean a million more families getting coverage—or not. Across the country, insurance companies were major employers, and local hospitals served as the economic anchor for many small towns and counties. People had good reasons—life-and-death reasons—to worry about how any change would affect them.

There was also the question of how to pay for the changes. To cover more people, I argued, America didn’t need to spend more money on health care; we just needed to use that money more wisely. In theory, that was true. But one person’s waste and inefficiency was another person’s profit or convenience; spending on coverage would show up on the federal books much sooner than the savings from reform; and, unlike the insurance companies or Big Pharma, whose shareholders expected them to be on guard against any change that might cost them a dime, most of the potential beneficiaries of reform—the waitress, the family farmer, the independent contractor, the cancer survivor—didn’t have gaggles of well-paid and experienced lobbyists roaming the halls of Congress.

In other words, both the politics and the substance of health care were mind-numbingly complicated. I was going to have to explain to the American people, including those with high-quality health insurance, why and how reform could work. For this reason, I thought we’d use as open and transparent a process as possible. “Everyone will have a seat at the table,” I’d told voters during the campaign. “Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C- SPAN , so that the American people can see what the choices are.” When I later brought this idea up with Rahm, he looked like he wished I weren’t the President, just so he could more vividly explain the stupidity of my plan. If we were going to get a bill passed, he told me, the process would involve dozens of deals and compromises along the way—and it wasn’t going to be conducted like a civics seminar.

“Making sausage isn’t pretty, Mr. President,” he said. “And you’re asking for a really big piece of sausage.”

One thing Rahm and I did agree on was that we had months of work ahead of us, and we needed a topnotch health-care team to keep us on track. Luckily, we were able to recruit a remarkable trio of women to help run the show. Kathleen Sebelius, the two-term Democratic governor of Republican-leaning Kansas, came on as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Jeanne Lambrew, a professor at the University of Texas and an expert on Medicare and Medicaid, became the director of the H.H.S. Office of Health Reform, basically our chief policy adviser.

It was Nancy-Ann DeParle whom I would come to rely on most as our campaign took shape. A Tennessee lawyer who had run that state’s health programs before serving as the Medicare administrator in the Clinton Administration, Nancy-Ann carried herself with the crisp professionalism of someone accustomed to seeing hard work translate into success. How much of that drive could be traced to her experiences growing up Chinese-American in a tiny Tennessee town, I couldn’t say. I did know that when she was seventeen her mom died of lung cancer. It seems I wasn’t the only one for whom getting health care passed was personal.

Our team began to map out a legislative strategy. Based on our experiences with the Recovery Act, we had no doubt that Mitch McConnell would do everything he could to torpedo our efforts, and that the chances of getting Republican votes in the Senate were slim. We could take heart from the fact that, instead of the fifty-eight senators who were caucusing with the Democrats when we passed the stimulus bill, we were likely to have sixty by the time any health-care bill actually came to a vote. Al Franken had finally taken his seat after a contentious election recount in Minnesota, and Arlen Specter had decided to switch parties after being effectively driven out of the G.O.P. for supporting the Recovery Act.

This would give us a filibuster-proof majority, but our head count was tenuous: it included the terminally ill Ted Kennedy and the frail and ailing Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, not to mention conservative Democrats like Nebraska’s Ben Nelson (a former insurance-company executive), who could go sideways on us at any minute. Beyond wanting some margin for error, I also knew that passing something as monumental as health-care reform on a purely party-line vote would make the law politically more vulnerable down the road. So we thought it made sense to shape our legislative proposal in such a way that it at least had a chance of winning over a handful of Republicans.

Fortunately, we had a model to work with—one that, ironically, had grown out of a partnership between Ted Kennedy and the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. A few years earlier, confronting budget shortfalls and the prospect of losing Medicaid funding, Romney had become fixated on finding a way to get more Massachusetts residents properly insured, which would then reduce state spending on emergency care for the uninsured and, ideally, lead to a healthier population in general.

He and his staff came up with a multipronged approach in which every person would be required to purchase health insurance (an “individual mandate”), the same way every car owner was required to carry auto insurance. Middle-income people who couldn’t get insurance through their job, didn’t qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, and were unable to afford insurance on their own would get a government subsidy to buy coverage. Subsidies would be determined on a sliding scale according to each person’s income, and a central online marketplace—an “exchange”—would be set up so that consumers could shop for the best insurance deal. Insurers, meanwhile, would no longer be allowed to deny coverage based on preëxisting conditions.

These two ideas—the individual mandate and protecting people with preëxisting conditions—went hand in hand. With a huge new pool of government-subsidized customers, insurers no longer had a financial incentive for trying to cherry-pick only the young and the healthy for coverage. And the mandate would prevent people from gaming the system by waiting until they got sick to purchase insurance. Touting the plan to reporters, Romney called the individual mandate “the ultimate conservative idea,” because it promoted personal responsibility.

Not surprisingly, Massachusetts’s Democratic-controlled state legislature had initially been suspicious of the Romney plan, and not just because a Republican had proposed it; among many progressives, the need to replace private insurance and for-profit health care with a single-payer system like Canada’s was an article of faith. Had we been starting from scratch, I would have agreed with them; the evidence from other countries showed that a single, national system—basically, Medicare for All—was a cost-effective way to deliver health care. But neither Massachusetts nor the United States was starting from scratch. Teddy, who despite his reputation as a wide-eyed liberal was ever practical, understood that trying to dismantle the existing system and replace it with an entirely new one would be both a nonstarter politically and hugely disruptive to the economy. Instead, he’d embraced the Romney proposal and helped the Governor line up the Democratic votes in the state legislature required to get it passed into law.

“Romneycare,” as it eventually became known, was now two years old and had been a clear success, driving the uninsured rate in Massachusetts down to just under four per cent, the lowest in the country. Teddy had used it as the basis for draft legislation he had started preparing many months ahead of the election, in his role as the chair of the Senate Health and Education Committee. And, though Axe and my campaign manager, David Plouffe, had persuaded me to hold off on endorsing the Massachusetts approach during my run for President—the idea of requiring people to buy insurance was extremely unpopular with voters, and I’d instead focussed my plan on lowering costs—I was now convinced, as were most health-care advocates, that Romney’s model offered us the best chance of achieving universal coverage.

People still differed on the details of what a national version of the Massachusetts plan might look like, and a number of advocates urged us to settle these issues early by putting out a specific White House proposal for Congress to follow. We decided against that. One of the lessons from the Clintons’ failed effort was the need to involve key Democrats in the process, so that they would feel a sense of ownership of the bill. Insufficient coördination, we knew, could result in legislative death by a thousand cuts.

On the House side, this meant working with old-school liberals like Henry Waxman, the wily, pugnacious congressman from California and the head of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had jurisdiction over health care. In the Senate, the landscape was different: with Teddy convalescing, the main player was Max Baucus, a conservative Democrat from Montana, who chaired the powerful Finance Committee, and had a close friendship with the Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee’s ranking Republican. Baucus was optimistic that he could win Grassley’s support for a bill.

“Trust me, Mr. President,” Baucus said. “Chuck and I have already discussed it. We’re going to have this thing done by July.”

Every job has its share of surprises. A key piece of equipment breaks down. A traffic accident forces a change in delivery routes. A client calls to say you’ve won the contract—but they need the order filled three months earlier than planned. No matter where you work, you need to be able to improvise to meet your objectives, or at least to cut your losses.

The Presidency was no different. In the course of the spring and summer of that first year, as we wrestled with the financial crisis, two wars, and the push for health-care reform, another unexpected item got added to an already overloaded agenda. In April, reports surfaced of a worrying flu outbreak in Mexico. The flu virus usually hits vulnerable populations like the elderly, infants, and asthma sufferers hardest, but this strain appeared to strike young, healthy people—and was killing them at a higher than usual rate. Within weeks, people in the United States were falling ill with the virus: one in Ohio, two in Kansas, eight in a single high school in New York City. By the end of the month, both our own Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization had confirmed that we were dealing with a variation of the H1N1 virus. In June, the W.H.O. officially declared the first global pandemic in forty years.

I had more than a passing knowledge of H1N1 after working on U.S. pandemic preparedness when I was in the Senate. What I knew scared the hell out of me. Starting in 1918, a strain of H1N1 that came to be known as the “Spanish flu” had infected an estimated half a billion people and killed as many as a hundred million—around five per cent of the world’s population. In Philadelphia alone, more than twelve thousand died in the span of a few weeks. The effects of the pandemic went beyond the stunning death tolls and the shutdown of economic activity; later research revealed that those who were in utero during the pandemic grew up to have lower incomes, poorer educational outcomes, and higher rates of physical disability.

It was too early to tell how deadly this new virus would be. But I wasn’t interested in taking any chances. On the same day that Kathleen Sebelius was confirmed as H.H.S. Secretary, we sent a plane to pick her up from Kansas, flew her to Washington to be sworn in at a makeshift ceremony in the Oval Office, and immediately asked her to lead a two-hour conference call with W.H.O. officials and health ministers from Mexico and Canada. A few days later, we pulled together an interagency team to evaluate how ready the United States was for a worst-case scenario.

The answer was that we weren’t at all ready. Annual flu shots didn’t provide much protection against H1N1, it turned out, and, because vaccines generally weren’t a moneymaker for drug companies, the few U.S. vaccine-makers that existed had a limited capacity to ramp up production of a new one. Then, we faced questions of how to distribute antiviral medicines, what guidelines hospitals used in treating cases of the flu, and even how we’d handle the possibility of closing schools and imposing quarantines if things got significantly worse. Several veterans of the Ford Administration’s 1976 swine-flu response team warned us of the difficulties involved in getting out in front of an outbreak without overreacting or triggering a panic. Apparently, President Ford, wanting to act decisively in the middle of a reëlection campaign, had fast-tracked vaccinations before the severity of the pandemic had been determined, with the result that more Americans developed a neurological disorder connected to the vaccine than died from the flu.

“You need to be involved, Mr. President,” one of Ford’s staffers advised, “but you need to let the experts run the process.”

My instructions to the public-health team were simple: decisions would be made based on the best available science, and we were going to explain to the public each step of our response—including detailing what we did and didn’t know. Over the course of the next six months, we did exactly that. A summertime dip in H1N1 cases gave the team time to work with drugmakers and incentivize new processes for quicker vaccine production. They pre-positioned medical supplies across regions and gave hospitals increased flexibility to manage a surge in flu cases. They evaluated—and ultimately rejected—the idea of closing schools for the rest of the year, but worked with school districts, businesses, and state and local officials to make sure that everyone had the resources they needed to respond in the event of an outbreak.

Although the United States did not escape unscathed—more than twelve thousand Americans lost their lives—we were fortunate that this particular strain of H1N1 turned out to be less deadly than the experts had feared. News that the pandemic had abated by mid-2010 didn’t generate headlines. Still, I took great pride in how well our team had performed. Without fanfare or fuss, they not only helped keep the virus contained but strengthened our readiness for any future public-health emergency—which would make all the difference several years later, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa triggered a full-blown panic.

This, I was coming to realize, was the nature of the Presidency: sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed.

The slow march toward health-care reform consumed much of the summer. As the legislation lumbered through Congress, we looked for any opportunity to help keep the process on track. The good news was that the key Democratic chairs—especially Baucus and Waxman—were working hard to craft bills that they could pass out of their respective committees before the traditional August recess. The bad news was that the more everyone dug into the details of reform, the more differences in substance and strategy emerged—not just between Democrats and Republicans but between House and Senate Democrats, between the White House and congressional Democrats, and even between members of my own team.

Most of the arguments revolved around the issue of how to generate a mixture of savings and new revenue to pay for expanding coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. Baucus, given his interest in producing a bipartisan bill, hoped to avoid anything that could be characterized as a tax increase. Instead, he and his staff had calculated the windfall profits that a new flood of insured customers would bring to hospitals, drug companies, and insurers, and had used those figures as a basis for negotiating billions of dollars in up-front contributions—through fees or Medicare-billing reductions—from each industry. To sweeten the deal, Baucus was also prepared to make certain policy concessions. For example, he promised the pharmaceutical lobbyists that his bill wouldn’t include provisions allowing the reimportation of drugs from Canada—a popular Democratic proposal that highlighted the way Canadian and European government-run health-care systems used their immense bargaining power to negotiate much lower prices than Big Pharma charged in the United States.

Politically and emotionally, I would have found it a lot more satisfying to just go after the drug and insurance companies and see if we could beat them into submission. They were wildly unpopular with voters, and for good reason. But, as a practical matter, it was hard to argue with Baucus’s more conciliatory approach. We had no way to get to sixty votes in the Senate for a major health-care bill without at least the tacit agreement of the big industry players. Drug reimportation was a great political issue, but, at the end of the day, we didn’t have the votes for it, partly because plenty of Democrats had major pharmaceutical companies headquartered or operating in their states.

With these realities in mind, I signed off on having Rahm, Nancy-Ann, and my deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, sit in on Baucus’s negotiations with health-care-industry representatives. By the end of June, they’d hashed out a deal, securing hundreds of billions of dollars in givebacks and broader drug discounts for seniors using Medicare. Just as important, they’d gotten a commitment from the hospitals, insurers, and drug companies to support—or at least not oppose—the emerging bill.

It was a big hurdle to clear, a case of politics as the art of the possible. But for some of the more liberal Democrats in the House, where no one had to worry about a filibuster, and among progressive advocacy groups that were still hoping to lay the groundwork for a single-payer health-care system, our compromises smacked of capitulation, a deal with the devil. It didn’t help that, as Rahm had predicted, none of the negotiations with the industry had been broadcast on C- SPAN . The press started reporting on details of what they called “backroom deals.” More than a few constituents wrote in to ask whether I’d gone over to the dark side. And Waxman made a point of saying he didn’t consider his work bound by whatever concessions Baucus or the White House had made to industry lobbyists.

Quick as the House Democrats were to mount their high horse, they were also more than willing to protect the status quo when it secured their prerogatives or benefitted politically influential constituencies. For example, more or less every health-care economist agreed that it wasn’t enough just to pry money out of insurance- and drug-company profits and use it to cover more people; in order for reform to work, we also had to do something about the skyrocketing costs charged by doctors and hospitals. Otherwise, any new money put into the system would yield less and less care for fewer and fewer people over time. One of the best ways to “bend the cost curve” was to establish an independent board, shielded from politics and special-interest lobbying, that would set reimbursement rates for Medicare based on the comparative effectiveness of particular treatments.

House Democrats hated the idea. It would mean giving away their power to determine what Medicare did and didn’t cover (along with the potential campaign fund-raising opportunities that came with that power). They also worried that they’d get blamed by cranky seniors who found themselves unable to get the latest drug or diagnostic test advertised on TV, even if an expert could prove that it was actually a waste of money.

They were similarly skeptical of the other big proposal to control costs: a cap on the tax deductibility of so-called Cadillac insurance plans—high-cost, employer-provided policies that paid for all sorts of premium services but didn’t improve health outcomes. Other than corporate managers and well-paid professionals, union members made up the main group covered by such plans, and the unions were adamantly opposed to what would come to be known as “the Cadillac tax.” It didn’t matter to labor leaders that their members might be willing to trade a deluxe hospital suite or a second, unnecessary MRI for a chance at higher take-home pay. And so long as the unions were opposed to the Cadillac tax, most House Democrats were going to be, too.

The squabbles quickly found their way into the press, making the whole process appear messy and convoluted. By late July, polls showed that more Americans disapproved than approved of the way I was handling health-care reform, prompting me to complain to Axe about our communications strategy. “We’re on the right side of this stuff,” I insisted. “We just have to explain it better to voters.”

Axe was irritated that his shop was seemingly getting blamed for the very problem he’d warned me about from the start. “You can explain it till you’re blue in the face,” he told me. “But people who already have health care are skeptical that reform will benefit them, and a whole bunch of facts and figures won’t change that.”

Toward the end of the month, versions of the health-care bill had passed out of all the relevant House committees. The Senate Health and Education Committee had completed its work as well. All that remained was getting a bill through Max Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee. Once that was done, we could consolidate the different versions into one House and one Senate bill, ideally passing each before the August recess, with the goal of having a final version of the legislation on my desk for signing before the end of the year.

No matter how hard we pressed, though, we couldn’t get Baucus to complete his work. As the summer wore on, his optimism that he could produce a bipartisan bill began to look delusional. The Republican Minority Leaders, McConnell and John Boehner, had already announced their vigorous opposition to our legislative efforts, arguing that they represented an attempted “government takeover” of the health-care system. Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican strategist, had circulated a memo stating that, after market-testing some thirty anti-reform messages, he’d concluded that invoking a government takeover was the best way to discredit the health-care legislation. From that point on, conservatives followed the script, repeating the phrase like an incantation.

Senator Jim DeMint, the conservative firebrand from South Carolina, was more transparent about his party’s intentions. “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo,” he announced on a nationwide conference call with conservative activists. “It will break him.”

Unsurprisingly, given the atmosphere, the group of three G.O.P. senators who had been invited to participate in bipartisan talks with Baucus was now down to two: Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe, the moderate from Maine. My team and I did everything we could to help Baucus win their support. I had Grassley and Snowe over to the White House repeatedly and called them every few weeks to take their temperature. We signed off on scores of changes they wanted made to Baucus’s draft bill. Nancy-Ann became a permanent fixture in their Senate offices and took Snowe out to dinner so often that we joked that her husband was getting jealous.

“Tell Olympia she can write the whole damn bill!” I said to Nancy-Ann as she was leaving for one such meeting. “We’ll call it the Snowe plan. Tell her if she votes for the bill she can have the White House—Michelle and I will move to an apartment!”

And still we were getting nowhere. Snowe took pride in her centrist reputation, but the Republican Party’s sharp rightward tilt had left her increasingly isolated within her own caucus.

Grassley was a different story. He talked a good game about wanting to help the family farmers back in Iowa who had trouble getting insurance they could count on, and when Hillary Clinton had pushed health-care reform, in the nineties, Grassley had actually co-sponsored an alternative that in many ways resembled the Massachusetts-style plan we were proposing, complete with an individual mandate. But, unlike Snowe, Grassley rarely bucked his party’s leadership on tough issues. With his long, hangdog face and throaty Midwestern drawl, he would hem and haw about this or that problem he had with the bill without ever telling us what exactly it would take to get him to yes. Phil Schiliro, who ran the White House’s legislative-affairs department, thought that Grassley was just stringing Baucus along at McConnell’s behest, trying to stall the process and prevent us from moving on to the rest of our agenda. Even I, the resident White House optimist, finally got fed up and asked Baucus to come by for a visit.

“Time’s up, Max,” I told him in the Oval during a meeting in late July. “You’ve given it your best shot. Grassley’s gone. He just hasn’t broken the news to you yet.”

Baucus shook his head. “I respectfully disagree, Mr. President,” he said. “I know Chuck. I think we’re this close to getting him.” He held his thumb and index finger an inch apart, smiling at me like someone who’s discovered a cure for cancer and is forced to deal with foolish skeptics. “Let’s just give Chuck a little more time and have the vote when we get back from recess.”

A part of me wanted to get up, grab Baucus by the shoulders, and shake him till he came to his senses. I decided that this wouldn’t work. Another part of me considered threatening to withhold my political support the next time he ran for reëlection, but since he polled higher than I did in his home state of Montana, I figured that wouldn’t work, either. Instead, I argued and cajoled for another half hour, finally agreeing to his plan to delay an immediate party-line vote and instead call the bill to a vote within the first two weeks of Congress’s reconvening in September.

With the House and the Senate adjourned and both votes still looming, we decided I’d spend the first two weeks of August on the road, holding health-care town halls in places like Montana and Colorado, where public support for reform was shakiest. As a sweetener, my team suggested that Michelle and the girls join me, and that we visit some national parks along the way.

I was thrilled by the suggestion. It’s not as if Malia and Sasha were deprived of fatherly attention or in need of extra summer fun—they’d had plenty of both, with playdates and movies and a whole lot of loafing. Often, I’d come home in the evening and go up to the third floor to find the solarium overtaken by pajama-clad eight- or eleven-year-old girls settling in for a sleepover, bouncing on inflatable mattresses, scattering popcorn and toys everywhere, giggling non-stop at whatever was on Nickelodeon.

But, as much as Michelle and I (with the help of infinitely patient Secret Service agents) tried to approximate a normal childhood for our daughters, it was hard, if not impossible, for me to take them places like an ordinary dad would. We couldn’t go to an amusement park together, making an impromptu stop for burgers along the way. I couldn’t take them, as I once had, on lazy Sunday-afternoon bike rides. A trip to get ice cream or a visit to a bookstore was now a major production, involving road closures, tactical teams, and the omnipresent press pool.

If the girls felt a sense of loss over this, they didn’t show it. But I felt it acutely. I especially mourned the fact that I’d probably never get a chance to take Malia and Sasha on the sort of long summer road trip I’d made when I was eleven, after my mother and my grandmother, Toot, decided it was time for Maya and me to see the mainland of the United States. It had lasted a month and burned a lasting impression into my mind—and not just because we went to Disneyland (although that was obviously outstanding). We had dug for clams during low tide in Puget Sound, ridden horses through a creek at the base of Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona, watched the endless Kansas prairie unfold from a train window, spotted a herd of bison on a dusky plain in Yellowstone, and ended each day with the simple pleasures of a motel ice machine, the occasional swimming pool, or just air-conditioning and clean sheets. That one trip gave me a glimpse of the dizzying freedom of the open road, how vast America was, and how full of wonder.

I couldn’t duplicate that experience for my daughters—not when we flew on Air Force One, rode in motorcades, and never bunked down in a place like Howard Johnson’s. Getting from point A to point B happened too fast and too comfortably, and the days were too stuffed with prescheduled, staff-monitored activity—absent that familiar mixture of surprises, misadventures, and boredom—to fully qualify as a road trip. But in the course of an August week we watched Old Faithful blow, and looked out over the ochre expanse of the Grand Canyon. The girls went inner-tubing. At night, we played board games and tried to name the constellations. Tucking my daughters into bed, I hoped that, despite all the fuss that surrounded us, their minds were storing away a vision of life’s possibilities and the beauty of the American landscape, just as mine once had; and that they might someday think back on our trips together and be reminded that they were so worthy of love, so fascinating and electric with life, that there was nothing their parents would rather do than share those vistas with them.

Of course, one of the things Malia and Sasha had to put up with on the trip out West was their dad peeling off every other day to talk about health care. The town halls themselves weren’t very different from the ones I’d held in the spring. People shared stories about how the existing health-care system had failed their families, and asked questions about how the emerging bill might affect their own insurance. Even those who opposed our effort listened attentively to what I had to say.

Outside, though, the atmosphere was very different. We were in the middle of what came to be known as the “Tea Party summer,” an organized effort to marry people’s honest fears about a changing America with a right-wing political agenda. Heading to and from every venue, we were greeted by dozens of angry protesters. Some shouted through bullhorns. Others flashed a single-fingered salute. Many held up signs with messages like “ OBAMACARE SUCKS” or the unintentionally ironic “ KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE .” Some waved doctored pictures of me looking like Heath Ledger’s Joker, in “The Dark Knight,” with blackened eyes and thickly caked makeup, appearing almost demonic. Still others wore Colonial-era patriot costumes and hoisted the “ DON’T TREAD ON ME” flag. All of them seemed most interested in expressing their general contempt for me, a sentiment best summed up by a refashioning of the famous Shepard Fairey poster from our campaign: the same red-white-and-blue rendering of my face, but with the word “ HOPE” replaced by “ NOPE .”

This new and suddenly potent force in American politics had started months earlier, as a handful of ragtag, small-scale protests against bank bailouts and the Recovery Act. A number of the early participants had apparently migrated from the quixotic, libertarian Presidential campaign of the Republican congressman Ron Paul, who called for the elimination of the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve, a return to the gold standard, and withdrawal from the U.N. and NATO . The group was now focussed on stopping the abomination they called “Obamacare,” which they insisted would introduce a socialistic, oppressive new order to America. As I was conducting my relatively sedate health-care town halls out West, newscasts started broadcasting scenes from parallel congressional events around the country, with House and Senate members suddenly confronted by angry, heckling crowds in their home districts, and Tea Party members deliberately disrupting the proceedings, rattling some of the politicians enough that they were cancelling public appearances altogether.

It was hard to decide what to make of all this. The Tea Party ’s anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government manifesto was hardly new; its basic story line—that corrupt liberal élites had hijacked the federal government to take money out of the pockets of hardworking Americans in order to finance welfare patronage and reward corporate cronies—was one that Republican politicians and the conservative media had been peddling for years. Nor, it turned out, was the Tea Party the spontaneous, grassroots movement it purported to be. From the outset, the Koch brothers and affiliates like Americans for Prosperity, along with other billionaire conservatives, had carefully nurtured the movement, providing much of the Tea Party’s financing, infrastructure, and strategic direction.

Still, there was no denying that the Tea Party represented a genuine populist surge within the Republican Party. It was made up of true believers, possessed with the same grassroots enthusiasm and jagged fury we’d seen in Sarah Palin’s supporters during the closing days of the Presidential campaign. Some of that anger I understood, even if I considered it misdirected. Many of the working- and middle-class whites gravitating to the Tea Party had suffered for decades from sluggish wages, rising costs, and the loss of the steady blue-collar work that provided secure retirement. George W. Bush and establishment Republicans hadn’t done anything for them, and the financial crisis had further hollowed out their communities. And so far, at least, the economy had grown steadily worse with me in charge, despite more than a trillion dollars channelled into stimulus spending and bailouts. For those already predisposed toward conservative ideas, the notion that my policies were designed to help others at their expense—that the game was rigged and I was part of the rigging—must have seemed entirely plausible.

I also had a grudging respect for how rapidly Tea Party leaders had mobilized a strong following and managed to dominate the news coverage, using some of the same social-media and grassroots-organizing strategies we had deployed during my own campaign. I’d spent my entire political career promoting civic participation as a cure for much of what ailed our democracy. I could hardly complain, I told myself, just because it was opposition to my agenda that was now spurring such passionate citizen involvement.

As time went on, though, it became hard to ignore some of the more troubling impulses driving the movement. As had been true at Palin rallies, reporters at Tea Party events caught attendees comparing me to animals or Hitler. Signs turned up showing me dressed like an African witch doctor with a bone through my nose. Conspiracy theories abounded: that my health-care bill would set up “death panels” to evaluate whether people deserved treatment, clearing the way for “government-encouraged euthanasia,” or that it would benefit illegal immigrants, in the service of my larger goal of flooding the country with welfare-dependent, reliably Democratic voters. The Tea Party also resurrected an old rumor from the campaign: that I was not only Muslim but had actually been born in Kenya, and was therefore constitutionally barred from serving as President. By September, the question of how much nativism and racism explained the Tea Party’s rise had become a major topic of debate on the cable shows—especially after the former President and lifelong Southerner Jimmy Carter offered up the opinion that the extreme vitriol directed toward me was at least in part spawned by racist views.

At the White House, we made a point of not commenting on any of this—and not just because Axe had reams of data telling us that white voters, including many who supported me, reacted poorly to lectures about race. As a matter of principle, I didn’t believe a President should ever publicly whine about criticism from voters—it’s what you signed up for in taking the job—and I was quick to remind both reporters and friends that my white predecessors had all endured their share of vicious personal attacks and obstructionism.

More practically, I saw no way to sort out people’s motives, especially given that racial attitudes were woven into every aspect of our nation’s history. Did that Tea Party member support “states’ rights” because he genuinely thought it was the best way to promote liberty, or because he continued to resent how federal intervention had led to desegregation and rising Black political power in the South? Did that conservative activist oppose any expansion of the social-welfare state because she believed it sapped individual initiative or because she was convinced that it would benefit only brown people who had just crossed the border? Whatever my instincts might tell me, whatever truths the history books might suggest, I knew I wasn’t going to win over any voters by labelling my opponents racist.

One thing felt certain: a pretty big chunk of the American people, including some of the very folks I was trying to help, didn’t trust a word I said. One night, I watched a news report on a charitable organization called Remote Area Medical, which provided medical services in temporary pop-up clinics around the country, operating out of trailers parked at fairgrounds and arenas. Almost all the patients in the report were white Southerners from places like Tennessee and Georgia—men and women who had jobs but no employer-based insurance or had insurance with deductibles they couldn’t afford. Many had driven hundreds of miles to join crowds of people lined up before dawn to see one of the volunteer doctors, who might pull an infected tooth, diagnose debilitating abdominal pain, or examine a breast lump. The demand was so great that patients who arrived after sunup sometimes got turned away.

I found the story both heartbreaking and maddening, an indictment of a wealthy nation that failed too many of its citizens. And yet I knew that almost every one of those people waiting to see a free doctor came from a deep-red Republican district, the sort of place where opposition to our health-care bill, along with support of the Tea Party, was likely to be strongest. There had been a time—back when I was still a state senator driving around southern Illinois or, later, travelling through rural Iowa during the earliest days of the Presidential campaign—when I could reach such voters. I wasn’t yet well known enough to be the target of caricature, which meant that whatever preconceptions people may have had about a Black guy from Chicago with a foreign name could be dispelled by a simple conversation, a small gesture of kindness.

I wondered if any of that was still possible, now that I lived locked behind gates and guardsmen, my image filtered through Fox News and other media outlets whose entire business model depended on making their audience angry and fearful. I wanted to believe that the ability to connect was still there. My wife wasn’t so sure. One night, Michelle caught a glimpse of a Tea Party rally on TV—with its enraged flag-waving and inflammatory slogans. She seized the remote and turned off the set, her expression hovering somewhere between rage and resignation.

“It’s a trip, isn’t it?” she said.

“That they’re scared of you. Scared of us.” She shook her head and headed for bed.

Ted Kennedy died on August 25th. The morning of his funeral, the skies over Boston darkened, and by the time our flight landed the streets were shrouded in thick sheets of rain. The scene inside the church befitted the largeness of Teddy’s life: the pews packed with former Presidents and heads of state, senators and members of Congress, hundreds of current and former staffers. But the stories told by his children mattered most that day. Patrick Kennedy recalled his father tending to him during crippling asthma attacks. He described how his father would take him out to sail, even in stormy seas. Teddy, Jr., told the story of how, after he’d lost his leg to cancer, his father had insisted they go sledding, trudging with him up a snowy hill, picking him up when he fell, and telling him “there is nothing you can’t do.” Collectively, it was a portrait of a man driven by great appetites and ambitions but also by great loss and doubt—a man making up for things.

“My father believed in redemption,” Teddy, Jr., said. “And he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the results of his own failings or of ours.”

I carried those words with me back to Washington, where a spirit of surrender increasingly prevailed—at least, when it came to getting a health-care bill passed. A preliminary report by the Congressional Budget Office, the independent, professionally staffed operation charged with scoring the cost of all federal legislation, priced the initial House version of the health-care bill at an eye-popping one trillion dollars. Although the C.B.O. score would eventually come down as the bill was revised and clarified, the headlines gave opponents a handy stick with which to beat us over the head. Democrats from swing districts were now running scared, convinced that pushing forward with the bill amounted to a suicide mission. Republicans abandoned all pretense of wanting to negotiate, with members of Congress regularly echoing the Tea Party’s claim that I wanted to put Grandma to sleep.

The only upside to all this was that it helped me cure Max Baucus of his obsession with trying to placate Chuck Grassley. In a last-stab Oval Office meeting with the two of them in early September, I listened patiently as Grassley ticked off five new reasons that he still had problems with the latest version of the bill.

“Let me ask you a question, Chuck,” I said finally. “If Max took every one of your latest suggestions, could you support the bill?”

“Well . . .”

“Are there any changes—any at all—that would get us your vote?”

There was an awkward silence before Grassley looked up and met my gaze. “I guess not, Mr. President.”

I guess not.

At the White House, the mood rapidly darkened. Some of my team began asking whether it was time to fold our hand. Rahm was especially dour. Having been to this rodeo before, he understood all too well what my declining poll numbers might mean for the reëlection prospects of swing-district Democrats, many of whom he had personally recruited and helped elect, not to mention my own prospects in 2012. Rahm proposed that we try to cut a deal with Republicans for a significantly scaled-back piece of legislation—perhaps allowing people between sixty and sixty-five to buy into Medicare or widening the reach of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. “It won’t be everything you wanted, Mr. President,” he said. “But it’ll still help a lot of people, and it’ll give us a better chance to make progress on the rest of your agenda.”

Some in the room agreed. Others felt it was too early to give up. Phil Schiliro said he thought there was still a path to passing a comprehensive law with only Democratic votes, but he admitted that it was no sure thing.

“I guess the question for you, Mr. President, is, Do you feel lucky?”

I looked at him. “Where are we, Phil?”

Phil hesitated, wondering if it was a trick question. “The Oval Office?”

“And what’s my name?”

“Barack Obama.”

I smiled. “Barack Hussein Obama. And I’m here with you in the Oval Office . Brother, I always feel lucky.”

I told the team that we were staying the course. But my decision didn’t have much to do with how lucky I felt. Rahm wasn’t wrong about the risks, and perhaps in a different political environment, on a different issue, I might have accepted his advice. On this issue, though, I saw no indication that Republican leaders would throw us a lifeline. We were wounded, their base wanted blood, and, no matter how modest the reform we proposed, they were sure to find a whole new set of reasons for not working with us.

More than that, a scaled-down bill wasn’t going to help millions of people who were desperate. The idea of letting them down—of leaving them to fend for themselves because their President hadn’t been sufficiently brave, skilled, or persuasive to cut through the political noise and get what he knew to be the right thing done—was something I couldn’t stomach.

Knowing we had to try something big to reset the health-care debate, Axe suggested that I deliver a prime-time address before a special joint session of Congress. It was a high-stakes gambit, he explained, used only twice in the past sixteen years, but it would give me a chance to speak directly to millions of viewers. I asked what the other two joint addresses had been about.

“The most recent was when Bush announced the war on terror after 9/11.”

“And the other?”

“Bill Clinton talking about his health-care bill.”

I laughed. “Well, that worked out great, didn’t it?”

Despite the inauspicious precedent, we decided it was worth a shot.

Two days after Labor Day, Michelle and I climbed into the back seat of the Presidential S.U.V., known as the Beast, drove up to the Capitol’s east entrance, and retraced the steps we had taken seven months earlier to the doors of the House chamber, where I’d given my first address to a joint session of Congress, back in February. The mood in the chamber felt different this time—the smiles a little forced, a murmur of tension and doubt in the air. Or maybe it was just that my mood was different. Whatever giddiness or sense of personal triumph I’d felt shortly after taking office had now been burned away, replaced by something sturdier: a determination to see a job through.

For an hour that evening, I explained as straightforwardly as I could what our reform plan would mean for the families who were watching—how it would provide affordable insurance to those who needed it but also give critical protections to those who already had insurance; how it would prevent insurance companies from discriminating against people with preëxisting conditions and eliminate the kind of lifetime limits that burdened families like Laura Klitzka’s. I detailed how the plan would help seniors pay for lifesaving drugs and require insurers to cover routine checkups and preventive care at no extra charge. I explained that the talk about a government takeover and death panels was nonsense, that the legislation wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit, and that the time to make this happen was now. But in the back of my mind was a letter from Ted Kennedy I’d received a few days earlier. He’d written it in May but had instructed Vicki to wait until after his death to pass it along. It was a farewell letter, two pages long, in which he thanked me for taking up the cause of health-care reform, referring to it as “the great unfinished business of our society” and the cause of his life. He added that he would die with some comfort, believing that what he’d spent years working toward would now, under my watch, finally happen.

I ended my speech that night by quoting from Teddy’s letter, hoping that his words would bolster the nation just as they had bolstered me. “What we face,” he’d written, “is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

According to poll data, my address to Congress boosted public support for the health-care bill, at least temporarily. Even more important for our purposes, it seemed to stiffen the spine of wavering congressional Democrats. It did not, however, change the mind of a single Republican in the chamber. This was clear less than thirty minutes into the speech, when—as I debunked the phony claim that the bill would insure undocumented immigrants—a relatively obscure five-term Republican congressman from South Carolina named Joe Wilson leaned forward in his seat, pointed in my direction, and shouted, his face flushed with fury, “You lie!”

For the briefest moment, a stunned silence fell over the chamber. I turned to look for the heckler (as did Speaker Pelosi and Joe Biden, Nancy aghast and Joe shaking his head). I was tempted to exit my perch, make my way down the aisle, and smack the guy in the head. Instead, I simply responded by saying, “It’s not true,” and then carried on with my speech as Democrats hurled boos in Wilson’s direction.

As far as anyone could remember, nothing like that had ever happened before a joint-session address—at least, not in modern times. Congressional criticism was swift and bipartisan, and, by the next morning, Wilson had apologized publicly for the breach of decorum, calling Rahm and asking that his regrets get passed on to me as well. I downplayed the matter, telling a reporter that I appreciated the apology and was a big believer that we all make mistakes.

And yet I couldn’t help noticing the news reports saying that online contributions to Wilson’s reëlection campaign spiked sharply in the week following his outburst. Apparently, for many Republican voters out there, he was a hero, speaking truth to power. It was an indication that the Tea Party and its media allies had accomplished more than just their goal of demonizing the health-care bill. They had demonized me and, in doing so, had delivered a message to all Republican office-holders: when it came to opposing my Administration, the old rules no longer applied.

Despite having grown up in Hawaii, I have never learned to sail a boat; it wasn’t a pastime my family could afford. Still, for the next three and a half months, I felt the way I imagine sailors feel on the open seas after a brutal storm has passed. The work remained arduous and sometimes monotonous, made tougher by the need to patch leaks and bail water. But, for a span of time, we had in us the thankfulness of survivors, propelled in our daily tasks by a renewed belief that we might make it to port after all.

For starters, after months of delay, Baucus finally opened debate on a health-care bill in the Senate Finance Committee. His version, which tracked the Massachusetts model we had all been using, was stingier with its subsidies to the uninsured than we would have preferred, and we insisted that he replace a tax on high-value employer-based insurance plans with increased taxes on the wealthy. But, to everyone’s credit, the deliberations were generally substantive and free of grandstanding. After three weeks of exhaustive work, the bill passed out of committee by a fourteen-to-nine margin. The lone Republican vote we got came from Olympia Snowe.

Speaker Pelosi then engineered the quick passage of a consolidated House bill against overwhelming and boisterous G.O.P. opposition, with a vote held on November 7, 2009. If we could get the full Senate to pass a similarly consolidated version of its bill before the Christmas recess, we figured, we could then use January to negotiate the differences between the Senate and House versions, send a merged bill to both chambers for approval, and, with any luck, have the final legislation on my desk for signing by February.

It was a big if—and one largely dependent on my old friend Harry Reid. True to his generally dim view of human nature, the Senate Majority Leader assumed that Olympia Snowe couldn’t be counted on once a final version of the health-care bill hit the floor. (“When McConnell really puts the screws to her,” he told me matter-of-factly, “she’ll fold like a cheap suit.”) To overcome the possibility of a filibuster, Harry couldn’t afford to lose a single member of his sixty-person caucus. And, as had been true with the Recovery Act, this fact gave each one of those members enormous leverage to demand changes to the bill, regardless of how parochial or ill-considered their requests might be.

This wouldn’t be a situation conducive to high-minded policy considerations, which was just fine with Harry, who could maneuver, cut deals, and apply pressure like nobody else. For the next six weeks, as the consolidated bill was introduced on the Senate floor and lengthy debates commenced on procedural matters, the only action that really mattered took place behind closed doors in Harry’s office, where he met with the holdouts one by one to find out what it would take to get them to yes. Some wanted funding for well-intentioned but marginally useful pet projects. Several of the Senate’s most liberal members, who liked to rail against the outsized profits of Big Pharma and private insurers, suddenly had no problem at all with the outsized profits of medical-device manufacturers with facilities in their home states and were pushing Harry to scale back a proposed tax on the industry. Senators Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson made their votes contingent on hundreds of millions of additional Medicaid dollars specifically for Louisiana and Nebraska, concessions that the Republicans cleverly labelled “the Louisiana Purchase” and “the Cornhusker Kickback.”

Whatever it took, Harry was game. Sometimes too game. Occasionally, he’d dig his heels in on some deal he wanted to cut, and I’d have to intervene with a call. Listening to my objections, he’d usually relent, but not without some grumbling, wondering how on earth he would get the bill passed if he did things my way.

“Mr. President, you know a lot more than I do about health-care policy,” he said at one point. “But I know the Senate, O.K.?”

Compared with the egregious pork-barrelling, logrolling, and patronage-dispensing tactics that Senate leaders had traditionally used to pass big, controversial bills like the Civil Rights Act or Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, or a package like the New Deal, Harry’s methods were fairly benign. But those bills had passed during a time when most Washington horse-trading stayed out of the papers, before the advent of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. For us, the slog through the Senate was a P.R. nightmare. Each time Harry’s bill was altered to mollify another senator, reporters cranked out a new round of stories about “backroom deals.” And things got markedly worse when Harry decided, with my blessing, to strip the bill of something called the “public option.”

From the very start of the health-care debate, policy wonks on the left had pushed us to modify the Massachusetts model by giving consumers the choice to buy coverage on the online “exchange,” not just from the likes of Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield but also from a newly formed insurer owned and operated by the government. Unsurprisingly, insurance companies had balked at the idea of a public option, arguing that they would not be able to compete against a government insurance plan that could operate without the pressures of making a profit. Of course, for public-option proponents, that was exactly the point. By highlighting the cost-effectiveness of government insurance and exposing the bloated waste and immorality of the private-insurance market, they hoped the public option would pave the way for a single-payer system.

It was a clever idea, and one with enough traction that Nancy Pelosi had included it in the House bill. But, on the Senate side, we were nowhere close to having sixty votes for a public option. There was a watered-down version in the Senate Health and Education Committee bill, requiring any government-run insurer to charge the same rates as private insurers, but, of course, that would have defeated the whole purpose of a public option. My team and I thought a possible compromise might involve offering a public option only in those parts of the country where there were too few insurers to provide real competition and a public entity could help drive down premium prices over all. But even that was too much for the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus to swallow, including Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, who announced shortly before Thanksgiving that under no circumstances would he vote for a package containing a public option.

When word got out that the public option had been removed from the Senate bill, activists on the left went ballistic. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and onetime Presidential candidate, declared it “essentially the collapse of health-care reform in the United States Senate.” They were especially outraged that Harry and I appeared to be catering to the whims of Joe Lieberman, whose apparent power to dictate the terms of health-care reform reinforced the view among some Democrats that I treated enemies better than allies.

I found the whole brouhaha exasperating. “What is it about sixty votes these folks don’t understand?” I groused to my staff. “Should I tell the thirty million people who can’t get covered that they’re going to have to wait another ten years because we can’t get them a public option?”

It wasn’t just that criticism from friends always stung the most. The carping carried immediate political consequences for Democrats. It confused our base (which, generally speaking, had no idea what the hell a public option was) and divided our caucus. It also ignored the fact that all the great social-welfare advances in American history, including Social Security and Medicare, had started off incomplete and had been built upon gradually, over time. By preëmptively spinning what could be a monumental, if imperfect, victory into a bitter defeat, the criticism contributed to a potential long-term demoralization of Democratic voters—otherwise known as the “What’s the point of voting if nothing ever changes?” syndrome—making it even harder for us to win elections and move progressive legislation forward in the future.

There was a reason, I told my adviser Valerie Jarrett, that Republicans tended to do the opposite—that Ronald Reagan could preside over huge increases in the federal budget, the federal deficit, and the federal workforce and still be lionized by the G.O.P. faithful as the guy who successfully shrank the federal government. They understood that, in politics, the stories told were often as important as the substance achieved.

We made none of these arguments publicly, though for the rest of my Presidency the phrase “public option” became a useful shorthand inside the White House anytime Democratic interest groups complained about us failing to defy political gravity and securing less than a hundred per cent of whatever they were asking for. Instead, we did our best to calm folks down, reminding disgruntled supporters that we would have plenty of time to fine-tune the legislation when we merged the House and Senate bills. Harry kept doing Harry stuff, including keeping the Senate in session weeks past the scheduled adjournment for the holidays.

As he’d predicted, Olympia Snowe braved a blizzard to stop by the Oval and tell us in person that she’d be voting no. But it didn’t matter. On Christmas Eve, after twenty-four days of debate, with Washington blanketed in snow and the streets all but empty, the Senate passed its health-care bill, titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—the A.C.A.—with exactly sixty votes. It was the first Christmas Eve vote in the Senate since 1895.

A few hours later, I settled back in my seat on Air Force One, listening to Michelle and the girls discuss how well Bo was adjusting to his first plane ride as we headed to Hawaii for the holiday break. I felt myself starting to relax just a little. We were going to make it, I thought. We weren’t docked yet—not even close, it would turn out—but thanks to my team, thanks to Nancy, Harry, and a whole bunch of congressional Democrats who’d taken tough votes, we finally had land within our sights. ♦

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Obama staked his first Presidential campaign on unity —on bringing together two halves of America that are profoundly divided.

“I’m here because somebody marched,” Obama said at a church in Selma , in 2007. “I’m here because you all sacrificed for me.”

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The 10 Best Books on President Barack Obama

Essential books on barack obama.

There are countless books on Barack Obama, and it comes with good reason, after being elected America’s forty-fourth President , he inherited a nation reeling from economic collapse, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing menace of terrorism. Moreover, during his first term, he signed three signature bills: an omnibus bill to stimulate the economy, legislation making health care more accessible and affordable, and legislation reforming the nation’s financial institutions.

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope,” he remarked.

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of America’s most consequential figures to the height of political power, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on Barack Obama.

Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss

David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing information, a masterly narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama in the Oval Office, and a trove of letters, journals, diaries, and other documents.

The book unfolds in the small towns of Kansas and the remote villages of western Kenya, following the personal struggles of Obama’s white and black ancestors through the swirl of the twentieth century. It is a roots story on a global scale, a saga of constant movement, frustration and accomplishment, strong women and weak men, hopes lost and deferred, people leaving and being left. Disparate family threads converge in the climactic chapters as Obama reaches adulthood and travels from Honolulu to Los Angeles to New York to Chicago, trying to make sense of his past, establish his own identity, and prepare for his political future.

The Bridge by David Remnick

In this nuanced and complex portrait of Barack Obama, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Remnick offers a thorough, intricate, and riveting account of the unique experiences that shaped our nation’s first African American president.

Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, Remnick explores the elite institutions that first exposed Obama to social tensions, and the intellectual currents that contributed to his identity. Using America’s racial history as a backdrop for Obama’s own story, Remnick further reveals how an initially rootless and confused young man built on the experiences of an earlier generation of black leaders to become one of the central figures of our time.

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father – a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man – has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey – first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Rising Star by David Garrow

This gem among books on Barack Obama captivatingly describes his tumultuous upbringing as a young black man attending an almost all-white, elite private school in Honolulu while being raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents. After recounting Obama’s college years in California and New York, Garrow charts Obama’s time as a Chicago community organizer, working in some of the city’s roughest neighborhoods; his years at the top of his Harvard Law School class; and his return to Chicago, where Obama honed his skills as a hard-knuckled politician, first in the state legislature and then as a candidate for the United States Senate.

Detailing a scintillating, behind-the-scenes account of Obama’s 2004 speech, a moment that labeled him the Democratic Party’s “rising star,” Garrow also chronicles Obama’s four years in the Senate, weighing his stands on various issues against positions he had taken years earlier, and recounts his thrilling run for the White House in 2008.

This is a gripping read about a young man born into uncommon family circumstances, whose faith in his own talents came face-to-face with fantastic ambitions and a desire to do good in the world.

Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward

In  Obama’s Wars , Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan, and the worldwide fight against terrorism.

At the core of  Obama’s Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War.

Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city – which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency – a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating  Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Barack and Michelle by Christopher Andersen

Subtitled Portrait of an American Marriage,  here is the first in-depth look at the popular U.S. President and his beautiful, brilliant, and stylish First Lady. Andersen, already internationally acclaimed for his intimate portraits of the Kennedys, Bushs, and Clintons now celebrates the unique union of President and Mrs. Obama with Barack and Michelle , shedding fascinating light on a romantic relationship and a political destiny like no other.

Game Change by John Heilemann

Game Change   is the  New York Times  bestselling story of the 2008 presidential election, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the best political reporters in the country. In the spirit of Richard Ben Cramer’s  What It Takes  and Theodore H. White’s  The Making of the President 1960 , this classic campaign trail book tells the defining story of a new era in American politics, going deeper behind the scenes of the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin campaigns than any other account of the historic 2008 election.

The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin

From the moment John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, blundered through the Oath of Office at Barack Obama’s inauguration, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the White House has been confrontational. Both men are young, brilliant, charismatic, charming, determined to change the course of the nation, and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue.

This ideological war will crescendo during the 2011-2012 term, in which several landmark cases are on the Court’s docket – most crucially, a challenge to Obama’s controversial health-care legislation. With four new justices joining the Court in just five years, including Obama’s appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, this is a dramatically – and historically – different Supreme Court, playing for the highest of stakes.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.”

The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics – a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship   and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.”

He explores those forces – from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media – that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.

If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on Barack Obama, check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President Bill Clinton !

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President Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to parents Barack H. Obama, Sr., and Stanley Ann Dunham. His parents divorced when he was 2 years old and he was raised by his mother, Ann, and maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His mother later married Lolo Soetoro, and his sister Maya was born in 1970. (He also has several siblings on his father’s side.)

Obama moved with his family to Indonesia in 1967, where he attended local Indonesian schools and received additional lessons via U.S. correspondence courses under his mother’s direction.

He returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents in 1971 and attended Punahou School, from which he graduated in 1979. Obama first attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, before transferring to Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1983.

After graduation, Obama briefly worked as an analyst at Business International Corporation in New York City, before changing his career direction toward community service organizing. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1985 when he accepted a job with the Developing Communities Project. Eventually rising to the role of Director, Obama worked with low-income communities on Chicago’s South Side, often collaborating with local religious organizations and civic groups.

After three years of community organizing, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. After completing his first year, he worked as a summer associate at Chicago corporate law firm of Sidley & Austin, where his mentor was Michelle Robinson, his future wife.

Obama was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, prior to graduating magna cum laude in 1991. He returned to Chicago in 1992 and served as the Illinois Executive Director of PROJECT VOTE!. In 1993, he was hired as an associate at the firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Gallard, where he largely worked on voting rights cases.

Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson were married in 1992 at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. They have two daughters, Malia and Natasha “Sasha.” In the summer of 1995, Obama’s first book was published. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance detailed his personal history and search for identity.

Political Career

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from the thirteenth district. As a State Senator, he served as Democratic Spokesperson for Public Health and Welfare Committee and Co-Chairman of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, in addition to being a member of the Judiciary and Revenue Committees. He also worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago from 1996 until 2004, teaching three courses per year.

Obama was elected to a second term in the Illinois State Senate in November 1998. In 2000, Obama made his first run for the U.S. Congress when he sought the Democratic U.S. House seat in Illinois First District. He lost to incumbent Representative Bobby Rush by a margin of more than 2-to-1.

In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, held in Boston, Massachusetts. He was elected as the junior Senator from Illinois in November 2004. While serving as U.S. Senator from Illinois, Obama completed his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , published in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination at Invesco Stadium in Denver, Colorado on August 28, 2008. On November 4, 2008, Obama became the first African-American to be elected President. He resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate on November 16, 2008.

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

Presidential Administration

Domestic policy decisions dominated the first 100 Days of the Obama administration. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which encourages fair pay for all workers and established new methods of protesting unfair paychecks, was the first signed legislation of the administration. To combat the effects of the Great Recession, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (known as the Recovery Act) in February 2009, which outlined a policy to create additional jobs, extend unemployment benefits, and established the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

In March 2010, after announcing his intent for healthcare reform in a 2009 address to Congress, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”), establishing the most sweeping reforms of the American healthcare system in recent history. To improve access to healthcare coverage, the Act included a Patient’s Bill of Rights to end discrimination by insurance companies based on pre-existing conditions. Among its other reforms, the Act strengthened Medicare and required the insurer to cover preventative screenings for cancer, diabetes, and blood pressure disorders.

The Obama administration centered its foreign policy on drawing down the number of American forces stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama also committed to destroying the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) terrorist organization through the administration’s comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, including systematic airstrikes against ISIL, providing additional support to forces fighting ISIL on the ground, increased cooperation with counter-terrorism partners, and humanitarian assistance to civilians.

On May 2, 2011, President Obama announced to the nation that the United States had conducted an operation that resulted in the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Following leads from the intelligence community, the raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was conducted with no American casualties.

President Obama also obtained congressional approval for military action against Syria following the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on civilians. Negotiations with Russia led to the signing of a New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) Treaty, which limited the two countries to fewer strategic arms over the course of seven years through inspections and verification. In 2015, the U.S. and other partners reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which aimed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and committed Iran to further monitoring of all Iranian nuclear activities.

President Obama announced plans to normalize foreign relations with Cuba in conjunction with President Castro, including reopening the U.S. Embassy in Havana in July 2015. The First Family visited Cuba in March 2016, making President Obama the first sitting President to visit the nation in 90 years.

Post-Presidency

President and Mrs. Obama returned to their lives as private citizens on January 20, 2017.

Works Published by Barack Obama

• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance , 1995
• The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , 2006
• Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to my Daughters , 2010
• A Promised Land, 2020

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Obama ‘as insecure as Trump,’ claims biographer whose book revealed ex-prez ‘repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men’

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Barack Obama is “as insecure as Trump,” his biographer said this week — and doubled down on his book’s revelations that the former president “repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

David Garrow penned the 1,472-page “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” in 2017, which he discussed in a lengthy interview with Tablet Wednesday.

The 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning historian sat with Obama for eight hours over three days for the massive tome, which received mixed reviews — and obtained letters from three of his former girlfriends.

Among them was Alex McNear, Obama’s girlfriend when they both attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, ‘It’s about homosexuality,'” Garrow told Tablet.

The letters eventually ended up at Emory University, where their most salacious bits were transcribed by hand by Garrow’s friend Harvey Klehr.

“So I emailed Harvey, said, ‘Go to the Emory archives.’ He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures. So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

In his time with Obama, Garrow found a stunning similarity between the 44th president and his successor, Donald Trump.

“I’ve sometimes said to people that I think Barack is actually just as insecure as Trump, but in ways that are not readily perceived by the vast majority of people,” he said.

“I think that’s probably my most basic takeaway.”

Obama, 62, “has no interest in building the Democratic Party as an institution. I think that’s obvious,” the author mused.

“And I don’t think he had any truly deep, meaningful policy commitments other than the need to feel and to be perceived as victorious, as triumphant.”

Garrow also revealed that he thinks Obama would be “too lazy” to serve on the Supreme Court, which President Biden said he’d nominate his former boss to “ if he’d take it .”

“He’d be terrible because he’s too lazy. This is in the book. It goes back to him being Hawaiian,” he said. “At one point, he says, ‘I’m fundamentally lazy and it’s because I’m from Hawaii.’ That’s close to the actual quote.”

“Rising Star” made headlines when it was published and revealed that, among other things, the former president was a sex machine shortly after he moved to New York City in the 1980s to attend Columbia University.

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Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States, the first Black man to do so. Prior to that, he was a civil rights lawyer, constitutional law professor, and U.S. senator from Illinois. As president, Obama oversaw the passage of several notable pieces of legislation, including the Affordable Care Act (also known as "Obamacare") and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Fast Facts: Barack Obama

• Known For: Obama was the 44th president of the United States
• Born: Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii
• Parents: Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham
• Education: Occidental College, Columbia University (B.A.), Harvard University (J.D.)
• Awards and Honors: Nobel Peace Prize
• Spouse: Michelle Robinson Obama (m. 1992)
• Children: Malia, Sasha
• Notable Quote: “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America."

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a White mother and a Black father. His mother Ann Dunham was an anthropologist, and his father Barack Obama Sr. was an economist. They met while studying at the University of Hawaii. The couple divorced in 1964 and Obama Sr. returned to his native Kenya to work for the government. He rarely saw his son after this separation.

In 1967, Barack Obama moved with his mother to Jakarta, where he lived for four years. At the age of 10, he returned to Hawaii to be raised by his maternal grandparents while his mother completed fieldwork in Indonesia. After finishing high school, Obama went on to study at Occidental College , where he gave his first public speech—a call for the school to divest from South Africa in protest of the country's system of apartheid. In 1981, Obama transferred to Columbia University, where he graduated with a degree in political science and English literature.

In 1988, Obama began studying at Harvard Law School . He became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and spent his summers working at law firms in Chicago. He graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

Michelle Obama / Twitter

Obama married Michelle LaVaughn Robinson—a lawyer from Chicago he met while he was working in the city—on October 3, 1992. Together they have two children, Malia and Sasha. In her 2018 memoir Becoming , Michelle Obama described their marriage as "a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal.” Barack supported Michelle when she chose to leave private law for public service, and she supported him when he decided to enter politics.

Career Before Politics

Upon graduating from Columbia University, Barack Obama worked at Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonpartisan political organization. He then moved to Chicago and became director of the Developing Communities Project. After law school, Obama wrote his memoir, Dreams from My Father , which was widely acclaimed by critics and other writers, including Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison .

Obama worked as a community organizer and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years. He also worked as a lawyer during this same period. In 1996, Obama made his foray into political life as a member of the Illinois State Senate. He supported bipartisan efforts to improve health care and increase tax credits for child care. Obama was reelected to the State Senate in 1998 and again in 2002.

U.S. Senate

In 2004, Obama launched a campaign for U.S. Senate. He positioned himself as a progressive and an opponent of the Iraq War. Obama won a decisive victory in November with 70% of the vote and was sworn in as a U.S. senator in January 2005. As a senator, Obama served on five committees and chaired the European Affairs subcommittee. He sponsored legislation to expand Pell grants, provide support for victims of Hurricane Katrina, improve the safety of consumer products, and reduce homelessness among veterans.

By now, Obama was a national figure and a rising star in the Democratic Party, having delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In 2006, Obama released his second book, The Audacity of Hope , which became a New York Times bestseller.

2008 Election

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Obama began his run for U.S. president in February 2007. He was nominated after a very close primary race against key opponent Hillary Clinton , a former U.S. senator from New York and a future U.S. secretary of state, who was also the wife of former president Bill Clinton . Obama chose then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate. The two campaigned on a platform of hope and change; Obama made ending the Iraq War and passing health care reform his primary issues. His campaign was notable for its digital strategy and fundraising efforts. With support from small donors and activists across the nation, the campaign raised a record $750 million. Obama's main opponent in the presidential race was Republican Sen. John McCain. In the end, Obama won 365 electoral votes and 52.9% of the popular vote.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Within the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a piece of legislation designed to address the worst effects of the Great Recession. The Recovery Act was a stimulus package that injected about $800 billion into the economy through tax incentives for individuals and businesses, infrastructure investment, aid for low-income workers, and scientific research. Leading economists broadly agreed that this stimulus spending helped reduce unemployment and avert further economic challenges.

Obama's signature achievement—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as "Obamacare")—was passed on March 23, 2010. The legislation was designed to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health insurance by subsidizing those who meet certain income requirements. At the time of its passage, the bill was quite controversial . In fact, it came before the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2012 that it was not unconstitutional.

By the end of 2010, Obama had also added two new judges to the Supreme Court— Sonia Sotomayor , who was confirmed on August 6, 2009, and Elena Kagan , who was confirmed on August 5, 2010. Both are members of the court's liberal wing.

On May 1, 2011, Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, was killed during a Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan. This was a major victory for Obama, winning him praise across party lines. "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda," Obama said in a public address to the nation. "Today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people."

2012 Reelection

Obama launched his campaign for reelection in 2011. His main challenger was Republican Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts. To make use of growing social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the Obama campaign hired a team of tech workers to build digital campaign tools. The election centered on domestic issues, including health care and Social Security, and in many ways was a referendum on the Obama administration's response to the Great Recession. In November 2012, Obama defeated Romney with 332 electoral votes and 51.1% of the popular vote.   Obama called the victory a vote for "action, not politics as usual," and promised to work on bipartisan proposals to improve the American economy.

Second Term

Sonya N. Hebert / The White House

During his second term as president, Obama focused on new challenges facing the country. In 2013, he organized a group to begin negotiations with Iran. An agreement was reached in 2015 in which the United States would lift sanctions and steps would be taken to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, Obama signed a series of executive orders designed to reduce gun violence. He also voiced support for more comprehensive background checks and a ban on assault weapons. In a press conference at the White House, Obama said, "If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try."

In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that marriage equality is protected under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This was a major milestone in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Obama called the ruling a "victory for America."  

In July 2013, Obama announced that the United States had negotiated plans to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. The following year, he became the first American president to visit the country since Calvin Coolidge did so in 1928. The shift in U.S.-Cuba relations—dubbed the Cuban thaw—was met with approval by many political leaders around the world.

Obama also had a number of accomplishments in climate change and environmentalism in general. The Environmental Defense Fund noted his top accomplishments, stating that Obama:

• Made progress on the national climate: "His Clean Power Plan was the first-ever national limit on carbon pollution from its largest source," the EDF stated.
• Completed an international climate agreement: "(His) work with China led to a long-sought global agreement among 195 nations to reduce climate pollution," according to the EDF.
• Mandated cleaner cars and trucks: "Obama’s EPA moved on in his second term to tackling truck emissions, reining in methane leaks from the oil and gas industry and updating energy efficiency standards for home appliances," Marianne Lavelle wrote in a 2016 article published on the website Inside Climate News.

Additionally, the EDF noted, Obama mandated pollution limits on power plants, made clean-energy investments (such as in wind and solar power technology and companies); signed "the first major environmental law in two decades, passed with bipartisan support, fixing our broken chemical safety system;" established systems to increase sustainable agriculture, western water, and protect endangered species; implemented laws that reduced overfishing and led to a rebound of fisheries in U.S. waters; and designated 19 national monuments—"more than any of his predecessors"—thus preserving "260 million acres for future generations."

Facing Racism

In A Promised Land , a 768-page autobiography (the first volume in a planned two-volume set) published in November 2020 and covering his early years through most of his first term as president, Obama wrote surprisingly little about the racism he personally faced growing up and during his political career—except as it was experienced by Michelle and his daughters. But, reflecting on his experiences as a young man, Obama wrote that at one point in his presidency he reflected on:

"The multiple occasions when I'd been asked for my student ID while walking to the library on (Columbia University's) campus, something that never seemed to happen to my white classmates. The unmerited traffic stops while visiting certain 'nice' Chicago neighborhoods. Being followed around by department store security guards while doing my Christmas shopping. The sound of car locks clicking as I walked across the street, dressed in a suit and tie, in the middle of the day.

"Moments like these were routine among Black friends, acquaintances, guys in the barbershop. If you were poor, or working-class, or lived in a rough neighborhood, or didn't properly signify being a respectable Negro, the stories were usually worse."

Just a few of countless examples of racism that Obama faced over the years include:

The birther debate: Obama was dogged throughout his presidency by rumors that he was not an American by birth. Indeed, Donald Trump boosted his own rise to power by fueling this discredited rumor. The “birthers”—as the people spreading this rumor are known—say that he was born in Kenya. Although Obama’s mother was a White American and his father was a Black Kenyan national, his parents met and married in the United States, which is why the birther conspiracy has been deemed equal parts silly and racist.

Political caricatures: Before and after his presidential election, Obama was depicted as subhuman in graphics, email, and posters. He was portrayed as a shoeshine man, an Islamic terrorist, and a chimp, to name a few. The image of his altered face has been shown on a product called Obama Waffles in the manner of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

The “Obama is a Muslim” conspiracy: Much like the birther debate, the debate over whether Obama is a practicing Muslim appears to be racially tinged. While the president did spend some of his youth in the predominantly Muslim country of Indonesia, there’s no evidence that he has practiced Islam. In fact, Obama has said that neither his mother nor his father was particularly religious.

The racist tropes morphed into concerns over potential threats of physical violence and even assassination when Obama ran for president in 2008. "There were concerns about his security that were very real and very dark," David M. Axelrod, chief strategist for Obama's presidential campaigns said, referring to the increased racism and threats Obama faced after he won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 and become the frontrunner for the 2008 presidential nomination.

In the first installment of a television documentary series called "First Ladies," which covered the experiences of Michelle Obama, CNN noted that Obama and his family were "given a security detail earlier than any other presidential candidate in history." In that same segment, Van Jones, a CNN political commentator, stated:

"There was a resignation in the Black community, that you cannot rise up without being chopped down... Medgar Evers , Malcolm X, Dr. (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) , if you come from the Black community, almost every hero you read about was killed."

And, it wasn't only Barack who came under attack. After Michelle began to campaign for her husband, she had to withstand withering racist tropes—along with Barack. After the couple did a fist bump during one campaign stop, a number of people in the media, according to CNN, began to call the couple "jihadists," a derogatory term for a Muslim who advocates for or participates in a holy war waged on behalf of Islam. One television network began to refer to Michelle as Barack Obama's "baby mama," according to the CNN report. Marcia Chatelain, an associate professor at Georgetown University, noted:

"Michelle Obama was met with every single stereotype about African-American women magnified by a million."

According to the CNN report, and Michelle Obama, herself, in her autobiography, "Becoming," many people and those in the media began to use the "easy trope of the angry Black woman" to try to humiliate her. As Michelle Obama wrote about her experience on the campaign trail and after becoming first lady:

"I've been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an 'angry black woman.' I've wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it 'angry' or 'black' or 'woman?'"

And the family only suffered more racism and threats once Obama was president. As Obama told NPR in 2015 referring to the racism he faced once he held the nation's highest office:

"If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials, what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background, and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them."

Michelle Obama was more direct in describing the intense, daily onslaught of racism and threats the family faced during Barack's presidency. Michelle, and Barack in his biography "A Promised Land," talked about the sometimes daily threats and racist insults the family experienced, but Michelle was a particular target, singled out for insults. The Guardian , a British newspaper, reported in 2017 on what Michelle Obama told a crowd of 8,500:

"Asked which of the falling glass shards cut the deepest, she said: 'The ones that intended to cut,' referencing an incident in which a West Virginia county employee called her an 'ape in heels,' as well as people not taking her seriously because of her colour. 'Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin colour.'”

Key Speeches

Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

Obama gave a number of important speeches during his two terms as president, Mark Greenberg and David M. Tait reprinted some of the key speeches, in the book, "Obama: The Historic Presidency of Barack Obama: 2,920 Days":

Victory speech: Obama told a crowd in Grant Park In Chicago on November 4, 2008, during his election night victory speech: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible...tonight is your answer."

Inaugural address: Obama told a record 1.8 million people gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2009: "(O)ur patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth."

On the death of Osama bin Laden: Obama announced bin Laden's death at the White House on May 3, 2011, stating: "On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood....On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family." Obama also announced: "Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against (a) compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (where bin Laden was living)....After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

On marriage equality: Obama spoke in the White House rose garden on July 26, 2015, stating: "This morning, the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution guarantees marriage equality." On the POTUS Twitter account, Obama added; "Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry, just like everyone else."

On the Affordable Care Act: Obama addressed a crowd at Miami Dade College on October 20, 2016, six years after the passage of the act, telling listeners, "...never in American history has the uninsured rate been lower than it is today....It's dropped among women, among Latinos and African Americans, (and in) every other demographic group. It's worked."

On climate change: In a speech Obama gave at Georgetown University in June 2013, the president declared: "I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing. And that’s why, today, I'm announcing a new national climate action plan, and I'm here to enlist your generation's help in keeping the United States of America a leader—a global leader—in the fight against climate change. This plan builds on the progress that we've already made. Last year, I took office—the year that I took office, my administration pledged to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from their 2005 levels by the end of this decade. And we rolled up our sleeves and we got to work. We doubled the electricity we generated from wind and the sun. We doubled the mileage our cars will get on a gallon of gas by the middle of the next decade."

On the Shoulders of Others

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Obama is the first Black man to not only be nominated by a major political party but also to win the presidency of the United States. Though Obama was the first to win the office, there were many other notable Black men, and women, who sought the office. US News & World Report compiled this list of just a few of the contenders:

Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman ever elected to the  U.S. Congress and represented the 12th congressional District of New York for seven terms. She ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972, becoming the first Black person and the first Black woman to run for the office on a major party ticket, as well as the first woman to win delegates for a presidential nomination by a major party.

Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for president in the Democratic primary in 1984, becoming the second Black person to do so (after Chisholm), winning one-fourth of the votes and one-eighth of the convention delegates before losing the nomination to Walter Mondale. Jackson ran again in 1988 ran again, receiving 1,218 delegate votes but lost the nomination to Michael Dukakis. Though unsuccessful, Jackson's two presidential campaigns laid the groundwork for Obama to become president two decades later.

Lenora Fulani  "ran as an independent (in 1988) and was the first Black woman to appear on presidential ballots in all 50 states. She also ran in 1992," US News noted.

Alan Keyes "served in the (Ronald) Reagan administration (and) campaigned for the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000," according to US News , adding that he "also lost to Barack Obama in their race for a Senate seat in 2004."

Carol Moseley Braun, a U.S. senator, "briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004," US News wrote.

Rev. Al Sharpton , a "New York-based activist campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination" in 2004, US News reported.

Additionally, Frederick Douglass , a North American 19th-century Black activist and advocate for women's rights, ran for president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket.

Obama, in his run, campaigned as an agent of change. It may be too early to fully discuss Obama's legacy as of January 2021—more than four years after he left office. Elaine C. Kamarck, the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank based in Washington, D.C., was not glowing in her review of Obama, published in 2018:

"It becomes clearer every day that Barack Obama, a historic president, presided over a somewhat less than historic presidency. With only one major legislative achievement (Obamacare)—and a fragile one at that—the legacy of Obama’s presidency mainly rests on its tremendous symbolic importance and the fate of a patchwork of executive actions."  

But historians note that the very fact that Obama was the first Black man to hold the office of president of the United States, was a huge door-opener for the country. H.W. Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, stated:

"The single undeniable aspect of Obama’s legacy is that he demonstrated that a Black man can become president of the United States. This accomplishment will inform the first line in his obituary and will earn him assured mention in every American history textbook written from now to eternity."  

However, there were negative, or unanticipated, consequences of Obama's election as the first Black U.S. president. Several studies have shown that as a result of Obama's election the public's perception of racism in the U.S. dropped, which, in turn, may have made it more difficult to approve funding or gain support for much-needed social programs. A study published in May 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found:

"Americans may also use Obama’s victory as a justification for further legitimizing the current status hierarchy and for blaming Black Americans for their disadvantaged position in society....These justifications may result in the failure to examine structural aspects of society that lead to profound disadvantages for minorities (e.g., failing schools in predominately minority neighborhoods)."

A similar study, published in Public Opinion Quarterly , in May 2011, stated:

"A representative panel study of Americans interviewed immediately before and after the (2008) election reveals a roughly 10 percent decline in perceptions of racial discrimination. About one quarter of respondents revised their perceptions of discrimination downward."

Indeed, in the area of race in the United States, Obama has faced criticism that he did not do as much as he should, or could, have. Michelle Alexander in "The New Jim Crow, 10th Anniversary Edition," published in January 2020, said that Obama was:

"...a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the Civil Rights movement.... (and) it sometimes appeared that Obama was reluctant to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the structural changes required to address police violence and the prevailing systems of racial and social control."

Alexander noted that while Obama was the first sitting president to visit a federal prison and "oversee a drop in the federal prison population" (which she said is disproportionately represented by Black people, particularly Black men), he greatly increased deportations of undocumented immigrants and his administration oversaw a large expansion of facilities to detain these immigrants.

In response to these criticisms, Obama acknowledged the need for reforms in the criminal justice system and on racial equality in general. He told NPR's Steve Inskeep in 2016:

 "I—what I would say is that the Black Lives Matter movement has been hugely important in getting all of America to—to see the challenges in the criminal justice system differently. And I could not be prouder of the activism that has been involved. And it's making a difference."

But in terms of his own legacy on these issues, Obama argued the importance of understanding political realities when pushing for change:

"I'm constantly reminding young people, who are full of passion, that I want them to keep their passion, but they've got to gird for the fact that it takes a long time to get stuff done in this democracy."

Other historians note that Obama "brought stability to the economy, to the job market, to the housing market, to the auto industry and to the banks," as Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian and author of bestselling biographies, noted in an article in Time magazine.   Kearns also said that Obama brought "tremendous progress" to the LGBTQ+ community, and helped initiate an era of cultural change—which is a major legacy in and of itself.

Additional References

• Alexander, Michelle.  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition . The New Press, 2020.
• “ Barack Obama - Key Events .”  Miller Center , 8 July 2020.
• Butterfield, Fox. “ First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review .”  The New York Times , The New York Times, 6 Feb. 1990.
• Gaby, Keith. “ Ready to Defend Obamas Environmental Legacy? Top 10 Accomplishments to Focus On .”  Environmental Defense Fund , 12 Jan. 2017.
• Kaiser, Cheryl R., et al. “ The Ironic Consequences of Obama's Election: Decreased Support for Social Justice .”  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , Academic Press, 1 Feb. 2009.
• Lavelle, Marianne. “ 2016: Obama's Climate Legacy Marked by Triumphs and Lost Opportunities .”  Inside Climate News , 26 Dec. 2016.
• "Michelle Obama." First Ladies, Robin Wright Narrator, Season 1, Episode 1, CNN, 4 October 2020.
• Montgomery, Alicia. “ President Obama Defends His Record On Race .”  NPR , NPR, 1 July 2016.
• Obama, Barack. A Promised Land . Penguin Books Ltd, 2020.
• Obama, Barack. "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Canongate, 2016.
• Obama, Michelle. "Becoming." Crown Publishing Group, 2018.
• “ Remarks by the President on Climate Change .” National Archives and Records Administration.
• Remnick, David. "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama." Vintage Books, 2011.
• Samuel, Terence. “ The Racist Backlash Obama Has Faced during His Presidency .”  The Washington Post , 22 April 2016.
• Taylor, Jessica. “ WATCH: Obama Says Trump Exploiting Anger, Fear Among Blue-Collar Men .”  NPR , NPR, 21 Dec. 2015.
• Valentino, Nicholas A., and Ted Brader. “ Sword's Other Edge: Perceptions of Discrimination and Racial Policy Opinion after Obama .”  OUP Academic , Oxford University Press, 4 May 2011.

“ Voting America .”  Presidential Elections 1972 - 2008 , dsl.richmond.edu.

“ Osama Bin Laden Dead .”  National Archives and Records Administration.

Glass, Andrew. “ Obama Handily Wins a Second Term: Nov. 6, 2012 .”  POLITICO , 6 Nov. 2015.

“Remarks by the President on the Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality.”  National Archives and Records Administration , 26 June 2015.

Greenberg, Mark and Tait, David M.  Obama: the Historic Presidency of Barack Obama - 2,920 Days . Sterling Publishing Co., 2019

Kamarck, Elaine. “ The Fragile Legacy of Barack Obama .”  Brookings , Brookings, 6 Apr. 2018.

Staff, TIME. “ President Barack Obamas Legacy: 10 Historians Weigh In .”  Time , Time, 20 Jan. 201.

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Fired CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge accuses network of ‘journalistic rape’ for seizing her files at Capitol Hill hearing

C atherine Herridge — the acclaimed CBS News investigative journalist known for her reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal — accused the network of “journalistic rape” for seizing her files after she was fired during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.

Breaking her silence for the first time since her controversial dismissal in February, Herridge called the move by her former bosses an assault on journalism.

“ When my records were seized I felt it was a journalistic rape,” Herridge testified at the hearing, titled “Fighting for a Free Press: Protecting Journalists and their Sources.”

“When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, including confidential source information, that is an attack on investigative journalism.”

The Emmy-award winning reporter — who is in the middle of a First Amendment case being closely watched by journalists nationwide — also said that confiscating her files could have put her sources at risk.

“CBS News’ decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization,” Herridge said.

“Multiple sources said they were concerned that by working with me to expose government corruption and misconduct they would be identified and exposed.”

Herridge, who had spent nearly five years at the network after being hired away from Fox News, was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a  larger purge of 800 employees by Paramount.

While some sources called the seizure “unprecedented” at CBS News, the network  insisted in a written response to the committee that the episode was not unusual .

CBS said no one had rifled through the files and that they were eventually locked inside Herridge’s former office in Washington, DC, before being returned after outcry from her union, SAG-AFTRA.

The Post reached out to CBS News for comment.

Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Herridge if she wrote critical stories about Hunter Biden, the laptop, the Biden family, the business operation and the Biden brand.

Herridge replied: ” I reported out the facts of the story. I called balls and strikes.”

“You sure did,” Jordan said. “You reported the facts and then CBS fired you!”

During her time at CBS,  Herridge had encountered roadblocks from higher-ups  over her Hunter Biden coverage, sources had told The Post.

She also clashed with CBS News president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, who was investigated and cleared in 2021 over  accusations of favoritism and discriminatory hiring and management practices , as The Post previously reported.

In addition to Herridge, SAG-AFTRA chief news and broadcast officer Mary Cavallaro testified on Thursday about the union’s negotiations with CBS to return Herridge’s confidential materials.

The House Judiciary Committee also heard testimony from former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who  quit the network in 2014  over claims that  CBS killed stories that put then-President Barack Obama in a bad light .

Attkisson’s told the committee that her critical reporting of the government resulted in her phone being tapped.

Meanwhile, in Herridge’s closely watched First Amendment case, the journalist has appealed US District Judge Christopher Cooper’s  decision to hold her in contempt  for withholding the name of her source for an investigative piece she penned when she was working for Fox News seven years ago.

Herridge said that the litigation and being held in contempt has “taken a toll on me and my career.”

“One of our children recently asked me if I would go to jail, if we would lose our house, and if we would lose our family savings to protect my reporting sources,” she said. “I wanted to answer that, in this country, where we say we value democracy and the role of a vibrant and free press, it was impossible. But I couldn’t offer that assurance.”

“This is not a battle you can fight alone,” Herridge added, thanking fellow journalists for the support, as well as Fox News — which is paying for her legal defense.

“When you go through major life events, as I have in recent weeks, losing your job, your

health insurance, having your reporting files seized by your former employer, and being held in

contempt of court, it gives you clarity,” she said.

“The First Amendment, the protection of confidential sources, and a free press are my guiding principles. They are my North Star.”

Heridge cited the importance of the Press Act, which protects journalists from being forced to disclose sources to government agencies.

The House passed the Press Act in January, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)  told The Post last month  that the upper chamber could soon send the law to President Biden’s desk.

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Presidents assemble: Obama can reach parts of Democratic base Biden can’t

Biden’s charismatic former boss and rival appeared in a show of unity alongside Bill Clinton, who despite a problematic legacy still has a campaign role to play too

F or once, showbusiness royalty – Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, Lea Michele and Mindy Kaling – was not the main attraction. Instead it was a trio of US presidents that enticed people to pay up to half a million dollars for New York’s hottest ticket.

Last month Joe Biden was joined onstage by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at a sold-out Radio City Music Hall. At more than $26m, it was the most successful political fundraising event in history . It was also an “Avengers assemble” moment for Democrats seeking to bury their differences ahead of November’s presidential election.

“Last night showed our sceptics, as well as our supporters – it showed the press; it showed everyone – that we are united. We’re a united party,” the US president said later , hinting at the contrast with his opponent, Donald Trump, who is shunned by his only living Republican predecessor, George W Bush, and even his own vice-president, Mike Pence.

But the spectacle of three living Democratic presidents (the fourth, Jimmy Carter, is 99 and in hospice care) joining forces masked some complex personal dynamics in a White House race where 81-year-old Biden is likely to need all the help that he can get.

Obama, 62, remains the Democratic party’s biggest star with books, media appearances, civil society work, plans for a presidential library and campaign speeches each electoral cycle. Clinton, 77, by contrast, saw his stock plummet when Democrats moved left on policy and embraced the #MeToo movement’s reckoning over sexual misconduct .

But analysts believe that both men could prove powerful surrogates for Biden as he seeks to emulate them by winning a second term. Tara Setmayer , a senior adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “We’re going to see a lot more of President Obama during this election. He’s the best surrogate for President Biden for the constituencies that he needs to shore up: Black voters, young voters, the Democratic coalition.

“Bill Clinton still has an appeal in a certain constituency within the Democratic establishment, so they will use him where they think he’s best suited. If they didn’t think he had value, he would not have been on that stage.”

It is a team of former rivals. The three men were on a collision course during the Democratic presidential primary election in 2008. Biden and Obama sought the nomination, as did Clinton’s wife, Hillary. Obama came out on top then chose Biden as vice-president and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

As Obama’s two terms were ending and the 2016 election was approaching, he nudged Hillary Clinton to the forefront as his preferred successor and dissuaded Biden from running after Biden’s elder son died of cancer. Clinton lost to Trump, who lost to Biden in 2020. Obama privately helped clear a path for Biden to the Democratic nomination that year.

There have been notable splits between the presidents on key issues. Biden was unsuccessful in persuading Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan in 2009. US forces remained in the country until 2021, when Biden withdrew them during his first year in office.

But at last month’s fundraiser , moderated by the late-night TV host Stephen Colbert, the pair were in lockstep. After Biden had painted a dire picture of the threat posed by Trump, it was Obama who highlighted the current president’s achievements, from record-breaking job growth to lower healthcare costs, from expanding college access to a historic investment in clean energy.

“It’s not just the negative case against the presumptive nominee on the other side,” Obama said. “It’s the positive case for somebody who’s done an outstanding job in the presidency.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters heckled the presidents’ conversation, underlining how the war in Gaza has become one of Biden’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities. When Obama was interrupted, he pushed back in a way that might have been awkward for the current president: “Here’s the thing: you can’t just talk and not listen because that’s part of democracy. Part of democracy is not just talking; it’s listening. That’s what the other side does.”

Obama’s exalted status among Democrats could give him a central role in get-out-the-vote efforts in the final weeks of the campaign. David Litt , one of his speechwriters at the White House, said: “President Obama has kind of become a cultural figure in a way that most presidents are not and so he has an ability to reach audiences and a credibility with audiences that might be sceptical of Biden right now, especially younger groups of people.”

He added: “To be able to have Barack Obama say Joe Biden has done a great job is just inherently more credible than Joe Biden saying Joe Biden’s done a great job. In the same way that if I tell you that I’m really good-looking, that’s not very convincing.”

Obama’s presence on the campaign trail will be a useful reminder of his signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare, which Trump narrowly failed to repeal and has vowed to attack again. His charisma and eloquence could have a downside, however, if he consistently overshadows Biden and throws his age into sharp relief.

Henry Olsen , a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I don’t think they should share a stage. You want to have Obama as a surrogate; as a former president, he can draw attention on his own. You do not want to have the contrast of a young, fluidly moving, fluidly speaking Obama with the rather rigid-in-all-respects president of the United States.”

Like Carter before him, Clinton has spent years in a political wilderness of sorts. A crime bill he signed as president is widely blamed for fuelling a mass incarceration crisis, while his “third way” economic centrism and welfare reform are out of step with today’s progressive movement. A New York Times newspaper report on the 2018 midterm elections was headlined : No One Wants to Campaign With Bill Clinton Anymore.

His 1998 affair with Monica Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old White House intern, and other allegations of sexual misconduct have come under renewed scrutiny. Comments last month by Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville – blaming “too many preachy females” in the Democratic party – reinforced the view that the Clinton era belongs firmly in the 20th century.

But the 42nd president, who once styled himself as “the comeback kid”, has no intention of leaving the arena. On Sunday Clinton will lead the US presidential delegation to Rwanda to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the genocide. In November, just after the election, Clinton will publish a memoir about his post-presidential life.

And at last month’s fundraiser in New York, he relished the opportunity to praise Biden – “That’s the kind of president I want. Stay with what works” – and take a swipe at Trump’s economic record. “President Trump – let’s be honest – had a pretty good couple of years because he stole them from Barack Obama.”

Joshua Kendall , a presidential historian, was surprised by Clinton’s presence there. “The #MeToo allegations are pretty serious because it’s not just Monica Lewinsky but Juanita Broaddrick,” he said, referring to a woman who accused of Clinton of rape (Clinton has consistently denied all accusations of harassment and assault).

“There are also a couple of other allegations that are serious but it seems that people are a little bit sick of #MeToo and so Clinton has been recycled. The Democrats are just so focused on Trump that they feel like they can’t afford any sort of internal squabbles. That’s why Clinton is there. They just feel like they have to do everything they can to work together because polls are frightening.”

Biden, Clinton and Obama closed out the New York fundraiser by donning Biden’s trademark sunglasses as the president quipped: “Dark Brandon is real,” a nod to a meme featuring Biden with lasers for eyes. They are likely to mount another show of unity at the Democratic national convention in Chicago this summer.

John Zogby , an author and pollster, said: “Obama can fire up a crowd and Clinton does have a charisma factor, so it’s not bad having him on your team – as long as Hillary is not there and as long as Bill Clinton is the third man as opposed to the lead.”

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The Story of Barack Obama: A Biography Book for New Readers (The Story Of: A Biography Series for New Readers): An Inspiring Biography for Young Readers Kindle Edition

Help kids ages 6 to 9 discover the life of Barack Obama—a story about hope, change, and breaking down barriers Barack Obama was the first African American president of the United States. Before he made history fighting for the environment, healthcare, and civil rights, he was a smart kid who knew he wanted to help others. He worked hard to become a lawyer, a senator, and then president, all so that he could make people’s lives better. With this Barack Obama children’s book, you can explore how he went from being a boy growing up in Hawaii to one of the most celebrated leaders in the world. How will his extraordinary journey inspire you?

• Independent reading —This Barack Obama biography is broken down into short chapters and simple language so kids 6 to 9 can read and learn on their own.
• Critical thinking— Kids will learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Barack's life, find definitions of new words, discussion questions, and more.
• A lasting legacy— Find out how Barack Obama progressed from a kid to the president of the United States with a helpful timeline.
• Part of series The Story Of: A Biography Series for New Readers
• Print length 65 pages
• Language English
• Publication date July 14, 2020
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• See all details
• Customers Also Enjoyed
• In This Series
• By Tonya Leslie

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About the author, product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08BTJ3YYM
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rockridge Press (July 14, 2020)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 14, 2020
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 5560 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 65 pages
• #30 in Children's US Presidents & First Ladies
• #60 in Children's American History of 2000s
• #233 in Children's US Presidents & First Ladies Biographies

About the author

Tonya leslie.

I was in first grade when I wrote my first book. I was probably in third grade when I illustrated my second book. Writing is my happy place. When I write I feel like words sing to me, asking me to release them to the page. I hope that the books I write make a difference to the children who read them.

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Michelle and Barack Obama's daughter Malia changes her name as she steps out of her parents' shadow

The former white house occupants share two daughters.

Michelle  and Barack Obama have one of the most famous surnames in the world – but their daughter, Malia , appears to want to distance herself from it as she forges her career. 

The 25-year-old is a budding filmmaker and showcased her short film, The Heart  – about the relationship between a mother and her son – at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah on January 18. Watch it below.

In what appears to be an attempt to distance herself from the nepo-baby stigma – her parents launched a production company, Higher Ground, in 2018 – the Harvard graduate has dropped 'Obama' from her last name in favor of a different stage moniker. 

During the Sundance Institute's Meet the Artist spotlight video, it was revealed that Malia is using her middle name as she was referred to as Malia Ann. 

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Malia is proving herself in the entertainment industry after interning on HBO's Girls  and at Harvey Weinstein's production company. 

She also worked as a staff writer on Donald Glover's Amazon Prime series Swarm , and he had nothing but good things to say about her work ethic. 

"Her writing style is great," he told Vanity Fair in 2022: "She's just like, an amazingly talented person. She's really focused, and she's working really hard." 

He added: "I feel like she’s just somebody who's gonna have really good things coming soon." 

Donald wasn't the only one who saw her talent either. His brother,  Steven Glover , who often collaborates with his sibling, had plenty of praise for Malia too. 

"Donald always says perspective is important," he revealed during the same interview. "And people with different perspectives are important for a writer's room. 

"And for sure, she definitely has a unique perspective on everything. So, we wanted to hear her stories and have her work with us. Listening to her stories and having her involved really gave us a lot of good ideas." 

Steven also joked that "we can't be easy on her just because she's the [former] president's daughter." 

Malia and Donald have maintained a close working relationship as The Heart  was one of the first projects produced by his company, Gilga. 

Speaking to GQ  about her film debut, he said: "The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once. You're Obama's daughter. So, if you make a bad film, it will follow you around." 

The Heart  is Malia's first film to appear at Sundance after it was chosen to premiere in the acclaimed festival, which sees over 14,000 filmmakers submit their work but only around 100 are selected. 

Speaking about the project, Malia described it as "an odd little story, somewhat a fable, about a man grieving the death of his mother after she leaves him an unusual request". 

She continued: "The film is about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret, but I also think it works hard to uncover where tenderness and closeness can exist in those things." 

Malia added: "We hope it makes you feel a bit less lonely or at least reminds you not to forget about the people who are. 

"The folks who came together to make this film have my heart, pun intended!"

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Three Presidents, No Neckties

Did Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton, appearing together at a fund-raiser in open-neck shirts, look casual or ‘a little disheveled’?

By Guy Trebay

Simultaneously historic and perhaps a big nothing, the shot was snapped on Thursday in New York City when President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered, before a Democratic fund-raiser, for the taping of “SmartLess,” a podcast hosted by the comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.

With his beard and rumpled corduroy pants, Mr. Bateman was clearly the odd man out in a group of radiantly healthy alphas dressed in crisp blazers or suits. As one social media quipster put it, Mr. Bateman, the “Arrested Development” star who is soon to appear in a limited series with Jude Law, looked as if he was celebrating his release from the hoosegow. The other dudes were on hand to help cut the cake.

It was not Mr. Bateman, though, who generated online buzz with his attire. It was those three presidents appearing without ties. (Messrs. Arnett and Hayes also skipped the neckwear, and as it happened, the three presidents remained without ties straight through the evening’s event.) Were we once again at the precipice, as some commentators seemed to suggest? Was civilization nearing its end? Or were we yet again being reminded of the inexorable march from casual Friday to casual everyday, and to a world in which chief executives dress like field hands and the only people who can be relied on to sport a suit and tie outside a courtroom are bodyguards and limo chauffeurs?

Pity the poor tie. Pundits are forever writing its obit. Back in 2022, the doomsayers piled on when, at a G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, world leaders including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson “declared the end of the necktie,” according to Women’s Wear Daily, by posing for a group photo in suits and open-neck shirts.

Women’s Wear Daily, citing the pandemic and the corresponding boom in athleisure and active wear, noted that the formal suit — with that sadly diminished phallic accessory, the necktie — “no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.”

Just as with Mark Twain, reports of the necktie’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is it debatable whether, as a New York Times newsletter asserted last year, “neckties have been out of fashion for so long that even articles about neckties being out of fashion have gone out of fashion,” but they have in truth enjoyed a robust resurgence.

For proof, check out the recent runways of New York, Milan or Paris and collections produced by industry leaders like Prada, Gucci and Armani. Scan the style blogs or the pages of GQ, Esquire or L’Uomo Vogue and you will quickly conclude that the issue is not whether the necktie is dead but how politicians’ stylists fell so badly behind the curve.

For presidents or anyone else with “some stature in the suit game, the tie is the thing that finishes it off,” said Jim Moore, the creative director at large of GQ, who once persuaded Mr. Obama to change the tie he was wearing for a magazine feature. “We love to dress the suit down, but, in the end, respect the suit and wear the tie.”

Failing to do so is, he said, “a bit of a lame attempt.” — to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

For Colm Dillane, the founder of the New York cult label KidSuper, best known for its streetwear, functionality is not the point of a tie. “It’s not much more than a neck belt,” he said. Still, in terms of symbolic value, a tie “does a ton.”

The politicians who gathered tieless for the photo this week looked less casual and relaxed than “a little disheveled,” Mr. Dillane said. That’s something his coaches would never have condoned back when he played soccer at New York University.

“Whenever we traveled, we had to put on a coat and tie for the plane,” he said. “It wasn’t that comfortable, obviously, but it showed that we took whatever we were doing seriously — that this was a bigger deal than just practice.”

Guy Trebay is a reporter for the Style section of The Times, writing about the intersections of style, culture, art and fashion. More about Guy Trebay

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