Barack Obama 08' - ProfilesArchive

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Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (born in Alego, a village in Nyanza Province, Kenya,) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. When Obama was two years old, his parents separated and later divorced; his father went to Harvard to pursue PhD studies, eventually returning to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian foreign student, and they had one daughter. The family moved to Jakarta when Obama was six years old. Four years later, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a large, private college preparatory school in Honolulu, which he attended through 12th grade, graduating in 1979. His father died in a car accident in Kenya when Obama was 21 years old. Obama's mother died of cancer a few months after the publication of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. In Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's white American middle class family. His knowledge about his absent black Kenyan father came mainly through family stories and photographs. Of his early childhood, Obama wrote: "That my father looked nothing like the people around meâ€”that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milkâ€”barely registered in my mind." As a young adult, he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Obama writes about smoking marijuana and trying cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind." After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College in California and then transferred to Columbia College in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. After receiving his Bachelors of Arts degree in 1983, Obama worked for one year at Business International Corporation. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to direct a non-profit project assisting local churches to organize job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods. Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he gained national recognition for becoming the first African American to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review. He obtained his Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. On returning to Chicago, Obama directed a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

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2008 CAMPAGIN - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION Obama's keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention sparked expectations that he would eventually run for U.S. President. Speculation on a 2008 presidential run intensified after Obama's decisive U.S. Senate election win in November 2004, prompting him to tell reporters: "I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years." But in an October 2006 interview on the television program Meet the Press, Obama appeared to open the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid. Following Obama's statement, opinion polling organizations added his name to surveyed lists of Democratic candidates. The first such poll ranked Obama in second place with 17% support among Democrats after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who placed first with 28% of the responses. The most recent Rasmussen poll places Clinton and Obama in a "virtual tie" for support among likely Democratic primary voters. In a December 2006 cover story headlined "The Race is On", Newsweek magazine columnist Jonathan Alter asked: "Is America Ready for Hillary or Obama?" Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes were early advocates for a 2008 Obama presidential run. Celebrity television show host Oprah Winfrey and film actor George Clooney have also expressed readiness to campaign for an Obama presidency. Commentators have suggested that Obama's chances to be elected president would be better in 2008 than in 2012 or later. In an October 2006 editorial published in the Chicago Tribune, Newton Minow compared prospects for a 2008 Obama presidential bid to John F. Kennedy's successful 1960 presidential campaign. A December 2006 op-ed by conservative columnist George Will detailed four reasons why he thinks now is a good time for Obama to run for president. In September 2006, Obama was the featured speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, a political event traditionally attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus. In December 2006, Obama spoke at a New Hampshire event celebrating Democratic Party midterm election victories in the first-in-the-nation U.S. presidential primary state, drawing 1,500 people. On January 14, 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported that Obama has begun assembling his team for a 2008 presidential campaign to be headquartered in Chicago. On January 16, 2007, Obama announced that he would be filing paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to establish a Presidential Exploratory Committee and that he expected to make a decision by February 10. CNN reported that sources "who work for Senator Obama" told reporters that Obama could make his first campaign visit to Iowa on the weekend of January 20.

BARACK OBAMA IN 2008

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