President of the United States of America

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PEACE NOBLE PRIZE LAUREAT, BARACK OBAMA

In 2008, the United States of America elected Democratic Party’s candidate, former Senator of State Illinois, Barack Obama as its President. For the first time in US history, an African American became the 44^th president of the USA. In the election of 2008, Barack Obama defeated his opponent, Republican John McCain, winning 52.7% of the popular votes and 365 electoral votes.

For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, the International Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded Barack Obama in 2009 the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama became the third president of the United States, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who received Nobel Peace Prize while in office (it was also awarded to ex-president Jimmy Carter).

There is one very precious rarity in my collection: it is a collage with an autograph of the 44^th President of the United States of America, Peace Noble Prize Laureate Barack Obama. In 2010, I was privileged to visit the White House – the official residency of the US President.

Barack Hussein Obama Junior was born on August 4 of 1961 in Honolulu, the capital of the State of Hawaii. The future president’s parents met at the Hawaiian University, in class, where they were studying the Russian language. The father, dark-skinned Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama Senior was a shepherd as a child, but managed to get state scholarship to come to USA to study economics. The mother, white American Stanley Ann Dunham, studied anthropology. When their son turned two years old, Obama Senior left for Kenya alone, where he received the office of a governmental economist. He divorced his wife and until his death in a car accident in 1982 he saw his son only once.

Together with his mother and step-father Lolo Soetoro, Obama went to Indonesia, where he spent four years and attended one of the public schools of Jakarta. Then he returned to Hawaii and lived with his mother’s parents. In 1979, Barack Obama finished a privileged private school Poonahaoe in Honolulu. During his school years he played basketball and won the state’s championship with his Poonahaoe team. In his memoirs, published in 1995, Obama recollected that in high school he smoked marihuana and tried cocaine, so his grades plunged.

After finishing school, Obama studied in Western college in Los Angeles, and then transferred to the Columbian University, from which he graduated in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree (political science and international relationships). In 1985, he took a break from his corporative career and settled down in Chicago, where he worked in one of the church charity organizations. Then, as a “social organizer” for a branch of the Gamaliel Foundation, Obama helped residents of the poor communities of the city: he initiated several programs of building homes for the poor. According to one of Obama’s web-sites, his experiences of working for the charity made him realize that in order to improve people’s lives changes in legislation and in politics were needed.

In 1988, Obama entered the law school of the Harvard University, where in 1990 he became the first black chief editor of the prestigious university periodical Harvard Law Review from the moment of its foundation. At the Harvard Law school this position was the highest for the students. In 1991, Barack Obama received his honorary degree of the Doctor of law and came back to Chicago, where he engaged in judicial practice. Mainly he defended in court victims of different kinds of discrimination. Besides, until 2004, Obama was teaching constitutional law at the law school of the Chicago University.

In 1992, Barack Obama was one of the creators of non-commercial organization to improve the skills of new administrators — Public Allies. From 1993 till 2004, he joined a law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland and continued to participate in charity work. He engaged in judiciary activities until 20002, when his law license expired. At that time, Obama became known as a liberal politician, outspoken opponent of NAFTA – North American Free Trade Agreement, fighter against racial discrimination and supporter of the universal health care insurance system.

Obama’s political career started in the Senate of Illinois State, where he represented the Democratic Party for eight years – from 1997 to 2004. In 2000, Obama attempted to run in the election campaign for the House of Representatives, but lost the primaries to the incumbent congressman Bobby Rush – a former participant of the Black Panthers movement. In the State’s Senate Obama cooperated both with Democrats and Republicans: the representatives of these two parties worked together on state programs to support low-income households by tax cuts. Barack Obama stood up as an active proponent of the development of pre-school education. He supported measures to toughen the control over the investigative authorities. In 2002, Obama became known because of his speech during an anti-war rally in Chicago, when he condemned the plans of George W. Bush’s administration to invade Iraq.

In 2004, Barack Obama stepped into the race for one of the seats in US Senate from the State of Illinois. In the primaries he managed to win a decisive victory over his six opponents. Obama’s chances of success increased, when his Republican opponent Jack Ryan had to withdraw due to scandalous accusations charged against Ryan in the course of his divorce process.

On July 29 of 2004, during the election campaign, Obama made an address to the National Convention of the Democratic Party. His speech that was broadcast on TV brought Obama wide fame in the United States. US Senate candidate called the audience to return to the roots of the American society and make US the country of open opportunities again: the ideal of open opportunities he illustrated by his own biography and the biography of his father.

In the US Senate elections Barack Obama defeated Republican Alan Keyes by a great margin. He stepped into his office on January 4 of 2005 and became the fifth black Senator in the history of US. Obama became a member of several committees: for Environment and Public Works, Veterans’ Affairs and Foreign Relations.

Just as he did earlier in the State’s Senate, Obama cooperated with Republicans on a number of matters; in particular, working on the legislation to make the government activities more transparent. Moreover, together with a well-known republican Senator Richard Lugar, Barack Obama visited Russia: the visit was devoted to the cooperation in the field of non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. As a whole, Obama voted in the Senate according to the liberal line of the Democratic Party. He paid special attention to the idea of developing alternative sources of energy.

Senator Obama managed to quickly win the media’s sympathy and become one of the most prominent figures in Washington. By the fall of 2006, some observers already believed that it was possible for him to run in the next presidential elections. In the beginning of 2007, Obama was placed second after Senator Hillary Clinton in the list of the favorites of the Democratic Party. In January, Obama created an assessment committee to prepare for his participation in the presidential elections. As of February 2007, 15 percent of Democrats were ready to vote for Obama and 43 percent – to support Clinton.

On February 10, at a rally in Springfield, Illinois, Barack Obama announced that he was stepping into the presidential race. In case of his victory, he promised to withdraw the American troops from Iraq. Along with the Iraq campaign, he criticized Bush’s administration for insufficient results in fighting the oil supplies dependence and developing the educational system.

One of the vulnerable spots of candidate Obama was the matter of his belonging to the Afro-Americans. As it turned out, some representatives of the black population, including some most influential ones, were in no hurry to acknowledge Obama as one of their own folks. It was explained by the fact that, unlike the “real” American black, Obama was not a descendant of the slaves who were brought to the American continent from West Africa. Besides, the senator did not share in the struggle for the black people’s rights – unlike most of the American black politicians.

At the beginning of summer, according to the information of sociological studies, Obama’s rating caught up with Clinton’s for a short period, but already in June Hillary managed to break away again (33 percent of Clinton’s supporters against 21 of Obama’s). In the following period Obama fell further behind the leader, and the gap reached 30 percent: Clinton’s rating was up to 50 percent, while Obama’s correspondingly – close to 20 percent. In relation to this, first caucuses in the primaries’ season scheduled in the state of Iowa for January 3, 2008, became of special importance. By December, Obama managed to secure the first place in Iowa, running ahead of Clinton and another rival – former senator John Edwards. At the same time, the gap between the three candidates in Iowa was not large, and a fierce rivalry started in the state. The observers, including an experienced Republican elections expert Carl Rowe, connected Obama’s chances of success in the national race with the Iowa vote.

On January 3 of 2008, the vote in Iowa took place and Barack Obama won a victory: he had 37.6% of votes, ahead of Edwards (29.7 percent) and Clinton (29.5 percent). According to some sociologists, after this vote there could not be any talk about the sole leading of Clinton. Iowa’s victory gave Obama’s campaign a strong impetus. Then, the struggle between Obama and Clinton continued with varying success (Edwards dropped out of the race on January 30), but as early as in March, Obama got in the lead. On June 7, Clinton announced that she would cease her election campaign and called for her supporters to endorse Barack Obama. Virtually, that gave a start to Obama’s campaign as the only candidate from the Democrats against the Republican candidate John McCain.

Obama’s election campaign had several peculiar characteristics. In particular, he strongly rejected to receive donations from any lobbyists, or use budget money that was provided according to the American laws. Obama’s confession of faith had a big impact on Obama’s rating: in March of 2008, fragments of sermons of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright were broadcast on American television, in which he named US foreign policy as one of the reasons of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and uttered the following phrase, “God damn America.” Barack Obama was quick to distance himself from Wright, and in May of 2008, together with his wife, he announced that they came out of that church.

In July of 2008, Obama’s foreign policy program was more or less determined. He publicized his plan to withdraw main forces of American contingent from Iraq within 16 months after he would step into the office of the US President. At the same time, Obama’s plan envisaged retaining some American military personnel to hunt down terrorists, protect US citizens and train Iraqi security services. In 2004, during US Senate campaign, Barack Obama declared that he would support military invasion into Iran only as an extreme measure, but during his presidential campaign he already named Iran as the chief threat to peace in the Middle East.

Unlike McCain, who in particular called for excluding Russia from the G8, Barack Obama tried to avoid harsh rhetoric against Russia, and in his speech concerning the New Strategy in the New World on July 15 of 2008, he even appealed for building up stronger cooperation with Russia. Still, in August 2008, during military actions in South Osetia and Georgia, he made a public address, in which he labeled Russia as the aggressor, and stated that there is no justification for her actions in Georgia, and called for reconsidering American relationships with Moscow.

On the eve of the opening of the Democratic National Convention on August 23 of 2008, Barack Obama announced the choice of his running mate – prospective candidate for the US vice-president’s office from the Democratic Party. The choice was made in favor of Senator Joe Biden. Obama’s and Biden’s candidacies were endorsed at the Party Convention on August 28.

Barack Obama faced McCain three times in the presidential debates – on September 26, October 7 and 15. According to the polls, Obama won all three rounds. Poor performance in the debates, as well as a scandal with investigation of the abusing of authority by Sarah Palin, who was the Republican vice-presidential candidate, caused McCain’s ratings to drop. Some bookmakers even beforehand acknowledged Obama’s victory in the election campaign, and McCain himself announced on October 19 that he was prepared for a possible defeat.

After stepping into the office, Obama managed to get the approval of his anti-crisis plan, which stipulated spending 787 billion US dollars to stabilize US economy. In September 2009, Obama announced reconsidering Bush administration’s plans to build elements of National Missile Defense in Europe. In March of 2010, in spite of the active opposition from the Republicans, Barack Obama was able to pass the law of reforming the health care system, according to which, by 2014, 94 percent of the country’s population would receive health insurance. At the end of August of 2010, the last fighting unit of the American army was withdrawn from Iraq, and Obama officially announced the completion of the military mission of US in Iraq.

In September, 2012, National Democratic Convention nominated Barack Obama for the US presidency candidate in the next elections that had to take place in November of the same year.

In the US presidential elections on November 6, 2012, Obama defeated his opponent Mitt Romney, receiving more than 300 electoral votes.

Barack Obama is married to Michelle Robinson Obama; they have two daughters.

Materials are taken from web-resources.