Barack Obama

"Obama" redirects here. For other uses, see Obama (disambiguation).

Barack Obama
File:SenatorBarackObama.jpg
Junior U.S. Senator, Illinois
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2005– Serving with Richard Durbin
Preceded by	Peter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by	Incumbent (2011)
Personal details
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Michelle Obama
Signature

Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4 1961; IPA pronunciation: [bəˈɹɑːk oʊˈbɑː.mə]) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois. According to the U.S. Senate Historical Office, he is the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history and the only African American currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996. Four years later, he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives and in 2002 won reelection to the state senate, running unopposed. In 2004 he ran for an open seat in the U.S. Senate. Midway through the campaign, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, raising his national stature. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with a landslide 70% of the vote.

On January 16 2007, Obama announced that he had taken the first step toward becoming a candidate for the 2008 presidential election by forming an exploratory committee. Recent opinion polls rank him as the second most popular choice among Democratic voters for their party's nomination, after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

Early life and career

See also: Dreams from My Father

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 Ph.D. studies, eventually returning to Kenya. His mother married an Indonesian foreign student, Lolo Soetoro, with whom she had one daughter. The family moved to Jakarta where Obama attended local schools from ages 6 to 10. He then 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, 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 me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind." As a young adult, he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Obama writes about using marijuana and 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 and then transferred to Columbia University 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. While working at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP in the summer of 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm.

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.

Obama and Robinson married in 1992, and later had two daughters, Malia (born 1999) and Sasha (born 2001). The Obamas are members of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Of his religious affiliation, Obama has written:

I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. [...] In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world. [...] It was because of these newfound understandings–that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved–that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

State legislature

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from Chicago's 13th District in the south-side neighborhood of Hyde Park. In January 2003, when Democrats regained control of the chamber, he was named chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Among his legislative initiatives, Obama helped to author an Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit that provided benefits to lower-income families, worked for legislation that would support residents who could not afford health insurance, and helped pass bills to increase funding for AIDS prevention and care programs.

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. Rush, a former Black Panther and community activist, charged that Obama had not "been around the first congressional district long enough to really see what's going on." Rush received 61% of the vote to Obama's 30%. After the loss, Obama focused his efforts on the state Senate, authoring a law requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death penalty. He ran unopposed in 2002.

Reviewing Obama's career in the Illinois Senate, commentators noted his ability to work effectively with both Democrats and Republicans, and to build coalitions. In his subsequent campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama won the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, whose officials cited his "longtime support of gun control measures and his willingness to negotiate compromises," despite his support for some bills that the police union had opposed.

Keynote address at 2004 Democratic National Convention

See also: 2004 Democratic National Convention

Midway through his U.S. Senate campaign, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and GI Bill programs, Obama said:

No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

Questioning the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War, Obama spoke of an enlisted Marine, Corporal Seamus Ahern from East Moline, Illinois, asking, "Are we serving Seamus as well as he is serving us?" He continued:

When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Finally he spoke for national unity:

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

The speech was Obama's introduction to most of America. Its enthusiastic reception at the convention and widespread coverage by national media gave him "instant celebrity" status.

Senate campaign

Main article: Illinois United States Senate election, 2004

File:Barack Obama campaign logo.JPG

A campaign banner used by Obama supporters during his 2004 bid for the Senate.

In 2004, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Peter Fitzgerald. In early opinion polls leading up to the Democratic primary, Obama trailed multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes. However, Hull's popularity declined following allegations of domestic abuse.

Obama's candidacy was boosted by an advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon; the support of Simon's daughter; and political endorsements by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. From a crowded field of seven candidates, Obama received over 52% of the vote in the March 16, 2004 primary, emerging well ahead of his Democratic rivals.

Obama was then matched in the general election against Republican primary winner Jack Ryan. However, Ryan withdrew from the race on June 25, 2004, following public disclosure of child custody divorce records containing embarrassing sexual allegations by Ryan's ex-wife. In August 2004, with less than three months to go before election day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan. A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination. Through three televised debates, Obama and Keyes expressed opposing views on stem cell research, abortion, gun control, school vouchers, and tax cuts. In the general election held November 2, 2004, Obama received 70% of the popular vote to Keyes's 27%.

Senate career

Obama was sworn in as a Senator on January 4, 2005. He assembled an unusually seasoned staff for a freshman senator. Obama hired former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle's ex-chief of staff for the same position, and Karen Kornbluh, an economist who was deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, as his policy adviser. In July 2005, Samantha Power, Pulitzer-winning author on human rights and genocide, joined Obama's team. TIME magazine named him one of "the world's most influential people," listing him among twenty "Leaders and Revolutionaries" for his high-profile entrance to federal politics and his popularity within the Democratic Party. An October 2005 article in the British journal New Statesman listed Obama as one of "10 people who could change the world." During his first two years in the Senate, Obama received Honorary Doctorates of Law from Knox College, University of Massachusetts Boston, Northwestern University, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He is a member of the following Senate committees: Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Veterans' Affairs.

Legislation

109th Congress

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President Bush signing the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act as bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama look on.

Obama sponsored 152 bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and cosponsored another 427. His first bill was the "Higher Education Opportunity through Pell Grant Expansion Act." Entered in fulfillment of a campaign promise, the bill proposed increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grant awards to help needy students pay their college tuitions. The bill did not progress beyond committee and was never voted on by the Senate.

Obama took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and immigration reform. Beginning in 2005, he co-sponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Obama later added three amendments to S. 2611, the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act," sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). S. 2611 passed the Senate in May 2006, but failed to gain majority support in the U.S. House of Representatives. In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of fencing and other security improvements along the United States–Mexico border. President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step toward immigration reform."

Partnering first with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), and then with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Obama successfully introduced two initiatives bearing his name. "Lugar–Obama" expands the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines. The "Coburn-Obama Transparency Act" provides for a website, managed by the Office of Management and Budget, listing all organizations receiving Federal funds from 2007 onward, and providing breakdowns by the agency allocating the funds, the dollar amount given, and the purpose of the grant or contract. On December 22, 2006, President Bush signed into law the "Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act," marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.

110th Congress

During the first three weeks of the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress, Obama sponsored eight bills and resolutions and cosponsored another 37. His legislative activities during the current session's first days focused primarily on ethics and energy-related bills.

On January 30, 2007, Obama introduced the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007" into Congress. Among other things, the Act calls for capping the level of troops in Iraq at January 2007 levels, and for commencing a phased redeployment of US forces from Iraq "with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008, a date that is consistent with the expectation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group."

Official travel

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Committee member Barack Obama at a Russian base where mobile launch missiles are being destroyed by the Nunn–Lugar program.

During the August recess of 2005, Obama traveled with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The trip focused on strategies to control the world's supply of conventional weapons, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction as a strategic first defense against the threat of future terrorist attacks. Lugar and Obama inspected a Nunn-Lugar program-supported nuclear warhead destruction facility at Saratov, in southern European Russia. In Ukraine, they toured a disease control and prevention facility and witnessed the signing of a bilateral pact to secure biological pathogens and combat risks of infectious disease outbreaks from natural causes or bioterrorism.

In January 2006, Obama joined a Congressional delegation for meetings with U.S. military in Kuwait and Iraq. After the visits, Obama traveled to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. While in Israel, Obama met with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Obama also met with a group of Palestinian students two weeks before Hamas won the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election. ABC News 7 (Chicago) reported Obama telling the students that "the US will never recognize winning Hamas candidates unless the group renounces its fundamental mission to eliminate Israel," and that he had conveyed the same message in his meeting with Palestinian authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama left for his third official trip in August 2006, traveling to South Africa and Kenya, and making stops in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. Obama flew his wife and two daughters from Chicago to join him in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in Kenya's rural west. Newspapers reported enthusiastic crowds at Obama's public appearances. In a public gesture aimed to capitalize on his celebrity and encourage more Kenyans to undergo voluntary HIV testing, Obama and his wife took HIV tests at a Kenyan clinic. In a nationally televised speech at the University of Nairobi, Obama spoke forcefully on the influence of ethnic rivalries in Kenyan politics. The speech touched off a public debate among rival leaders, some formally challenging Obama's remarks as unfair and improper, others defending his positions.

2008 Presidential run

Main article: United States presidential election, 2008

See also: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

File:Obama vs. Hillary.jpg

Newsweek magazine cover story, "Is America Ready?," December 25, 2006 - January 1, 2007

Obama's keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention sparked expectations that he would eventually run for the presidency. Speculation on a 2008 presidential run intensified after Obama's decisive U.S. Senate election win in November 2004. At that time he told 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 (November 2006) ranked Obama in second place with 17% support among Democrats after Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who placed first with 28% of the responses. A Rasmussen poll on January 17, 2007, placed Clinton and Obama in a "virtual tie" for support among likely Democratic primary voters, although in a January 29 report he had slipped down to 19% support. A Zogby Poll released on January 18, 2007, showed Obama leading the Democratic contenders in the first primary state of New Hampshire with 23% of New Hampshire Democrats supporting Obama. Senator Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards were tied for second place with 19% each.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes were early advocates for a 2008 Obama presidential run. 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 a December 2006 cover story headlined "The Race is On", Newsweek magazine columnist Jonathan Alter asked: "Is America Ready for Hillary or Obama?"

Many people in the entertainment community have also expressed readiness to campaign for an Obama presidency, inlcuding celebrity television show host Oprah Winfrey, film actors George Clooney and Halle Berry; and three of the most powerful men in Hollywood, Stephen Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen are inviting Democrats to a February 20, 2007 fundraiser for Obama.

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. His team includes Chicago-based political consultant David Plouffe, who is expected to manage the campaign, and Plouffe's partner, David Axelrod, who is expected to play a major role as media guru. Former Commerce Secretary and Gore campaign chairman William Daley is expected to serve in an as-yet-unspecified senior adviser role. 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 on whether or not to run by February 10.

On January 30 2007, Obama introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 into Congress, becoming the first presidential candidate to introduce binding legislation for the phased redeployment of American forces, and the first to call for withdrawal of American troops (by March 31 2008). According to NewsMax.com, Obama wants to end "a foreign policy disaster," but he stopped short of endorsing a cutoff in funds.

On February 6 2007, Obama announced on his website that he would be officially announcing his presidential campaign at the former Illinois State Capitol where Abraham Lincoln delivered his "House Divided Speech" on February 10th. Following his announcement, Obama will travel to rallies in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Waterloo, Iowa. Followed by rallies in Ames, Iowa and Chicago the following day. On February 12 2007, Obama will travel to the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire for a town hall meeting.

Political advocacy

See also: Political views of Barack Obama

On the role of government in economic affairs, Obama has written: "we should be asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to a dynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility [...] we should be guided by what works." Speaking before the National Press Club in April 2005, Obama defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, associating Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security with Social Darwinism. In a May 2006 letter to President Bush, he joined four other midwest farming state Senators in calling for the preservation of a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

Obama spoke out in June 2006 against making recent, temporary estate tax cuts permanent, calling the cuts a "Paris Hilton" tax break for "billionaire heirs and heiresses." Speaking in November 2006 to members of Wake Up Wal-Mart, a union-backed campaign group, Obama said: "You gotta pay your workers enough that they can actually not only shop at Wal-Mart, but ultimately send their kids to college and save for retirement."

Obama began podcasting from his U.S. Senate web site in late 2005. He has responded to and personally participated in online discussions hosted on politically-oriented blog sites. In a June 2006 podcast, Obama expressed support for telecommunications legislation to protect network neutrality on the Internet, saying: "It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it."

He was an early opponent of Bush administration policies on Iraq in times when other Democratic leaders supported the legislation that led to the war. In the fall of 2002 during an anti-war rally at Chicago's Federal Plaza, in a speech alongside Jesse Jackson, Obama notably said:

I know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors... I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

Speaking before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, he said: "The days of using the war on terror as a political football are over. [...] It is time to give Iraqis their country back, and it is time to refocus America's efforts on the wider struggle yet to be won." In his speech Obama also called for a phased withdrawal of American troops starting in 2007, and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran.

During his first year as a U.S. senator, in a move more typically taken after several years of holding high political office, Obama established a leadership political action committee, Hopefund, for channeling financial support to Democratic candidates. Obama participated in 38 fundraising events in 2005, helping to pull in $6.55 million for candidates he supports and his own 2010 re-election fund. The New York Times described Obama as "the prize catch of the midterm campaign" because of his campaigning for fellow Democratic Party members running for election in the 2006 midterm elections. Hopefund gave $374,000 to federal candidates in the 2006 election cycle, making it one of the top donors to federal candidates for the year.

Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious people, saying, "if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at—to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own—we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse." In December 2006, Obama joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier. Obama encouraged "others in public life to do the same" to show "there is no shame in going for an HIV test." Before the conference, pro-life groups called on Warren to rescind the invitation saying, in regards to Obama's support for the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, "If Senator Obama cannot defend the most helpless citizens in our country, he has nothing to say to the AIDS crisis."

On January 25 2007, Obama spoke about his position on health care at Families USA, a health care advocacy group. Obama said, "The time has come for universal health care in America . . . I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country." Obama went on to say that he believed that it was wrong that forty-six million Americans are uninsured, noting that taxpayers already pay over 15 billion dollars annually to care for the uninsured.

Books authored

Obama's 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, is a memoir of his youth and early career. The book was reprinted in 2004 with a new preface and an annex containing the text of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech. The audio book edition earned Obama the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

In December 2004, Obama made a $1.9 million deal for three books. The first, The Audacity of Hope, was published in October 2006, and discusses Obama's political convictions. The book has remained at or near the top of the New York Times Best Seller list since its publication. The second book covered under the publishing contract is a children's book to be co-written with his wife Michelle and their two young daughters, with profits going to charity. The content of the third book has yet to be announced.

Popular culture

File:TIME Magazine 23 October 2006 Barack Obama.jpg

TIME magazine cover story, "The Fresh Face," October 23, 2006

Supporters describe Obama's broad appeal as a cultural rorschach test, an ink spot on which his fans can project their personal histories and aspirations. Obama's own self-narrative encourages diverse multiethnic affinities. In Dreams from My Father, he links his maternal family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War. Speaking to an elderly Jewish audience during his 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate, Obama likened the linguistic roots of his East African first name Barack to the Hebrew word baruch, meaning blessed. An article in The Nation analyzed Obama's ability to "transcend race" with predominantly white audiences. Conversely, New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch comments: "When black Americans refer to Obama as 'one of us,' I do not know what they are talking about."

Media sources have mirrored and amplified Obama's everyman image. An October 2006 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show highlighted the ethnic diversity of his extended family. Noting that his half-Indonesian half-sister is married to a Chinese-Canadian, the program cited descriptions by Obama's African American wife of family holiday gatherings as a "mini-United Nations." An article by commentator David Sirota carried the headline Mr. Obama Goes to Washington, inviting comparisons between Obama's first year as a U.S. Senator and the popular 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Folk rock musician Neil Young and urban hip hop artist Common have referenced Obama's presidential prospects in popular song lyrics.

A New York Times op-ed by David Brooks, published during Obama's promotion of his bestselling book The Audacity of Hope and campaigns for Democratic candidates before the November 2006 midterm election, was noted by an article in the online magazine Slate as evidence of Obama's potential popularity among moderate Republicans and independents. But in a December 2006 Wall Street Journal editorial headlined "The Man from Nowhere", former Ronald Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan criticized Brooks and other political commentators for becoming too quickly excited about Obama's still early political career. Agreeing with Obama's own assessment that "people project their hopes on him", Noonan attributed some of Obama's popularity to "a certain unknowability."

In his October 2006 Time magazine cover story, Primary Colors author Joe Klein compared the cultural sources of Obama's rapid rise and crossover appeal to those of U.S. celebrity icons Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. Asked to comment, Obama said: "Figures like Oprah, Tiger, Michael Jordan give people a shortcut to express their better instincts [...] I think it's healthy, a good instinct. I just don't want it to stop with Oprah. I'd rather say, If you feel good about me, there's a whole lot of young men out there who could be me if given the chance."

References

• Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Times Books, 1995. Reprint edition, 2004; ISBN 1-4000-8277-3
• Obama, Barack.The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Crown, 2006. ISBN 0-307-23769-9. Summary at Wikisummaries.

Further reading

• Finnegan, William (24 May 2004). "The Candidate: How the Son of a Kenyan Economist Became an Illinois Everyman". New Yorker.
• Klein, Joe (October 23, 2006). "The Fresh Face". TIME magazine.
• Lizza, Ryan (September 2004). "The Natural: Why is Barack Obama Generating More Excitement Among Democrats Than John Kerry?". Atlantic Monthly.
• Senior, Jennifer (October 2, 2006). "Dreaming of Obama". New York Magazine.
• Wallace-Wells, Benjamin (November 2004). "The Great Black Hope: What's Riding on Barack Obama?". Washington Monthly.
• Weisberg, Jacob (September–October 2006). "The Path to Power". Men's Vogue.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)

External links

Official sites

• U.S. Senate Office of Barack Obama
  • Podcasts
  • Speeches
• Obama 2010 Senate Re-Election Campaign
  • Video
• Obama Presidential Exploratory Committee
• Hopefund—Senator Barack Obama, Chair; PAC
• United States Congress. "Barack Obama (id: O000167)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Interviews and speeches

• "Barack Obama at the DNC Winter 2007 Meeting" (video). Democratic National Committee. February 2, 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "GMU Students Hold Rally For Obama". NBC 4 (Washington, DC). February 2, 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Full speech in video format. Retrieved on 2007-02-05.
• Obama Comments on Testing the Waters for a White House Run and Discusses his New Book, Tavis Smiley Show, October 23, 2006
• Obama Talks with Bob Herbert About His Book, The Audacity of Hope, ForaTV, October 20, 2006
• Senator Barack Obama: Illinois, Active Living Network
• First Year Academic Convocation, Front Row: Boston College Magazine, September 16, 2005
• Oprah's Cut with Barack Obama, The Oprah Winfrey Show, November 2004

Topic pages and databases

• Times Topics: Obama, Barack, New York Times
• Obama Watch, Chicago Tribune
• Senator Barack H. Obama (D-IL), KnowMore.org
• Barack Obama, Congresspedia
• Barack Obama on the Issues, OnTheIssues.org
• Senator Barack H. Obama (IL), Project Vote Smart
• U.S. Congress Votes Database: Members of Congress / Barack Obama, Washington Post
• Barack Obama: Campaign Finance/Money - Career Profile, Center for Public Integrity
• 2008 Presidential Candidates: Barack Obama, Open Directory Project

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