Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., was born in Kenya on April 4, 1936, married at the age of 18, but then left his wife and young son to go to study at the University of Hawaii, where he met student Stanley Ann Dunham (b. 29 November 1942), with whom he soon marries.

Barack Obama Sr.

In this marriage, on August 4, 1961, the future US President Barack Hussein Obama was born. In January 1964, Obama's parents divorced. Obama's father returns to his Kenyan family after completing his studies. In Kenya, Barack Obama Sr. becomes a major official, but after he published an article in which Obama criticized the national plan for building African socialism in Kenya, his career was destroyed. In 1982, Barack Obama Sr. died in a car accident. It should be noted that after him there were 8 children left from 4 marriages.

Anne Dunham, the mother of Barack Obama Jr., after divorcing his father, married an Indonesian student and Barack Obama spent several years in Indonesia, then returning to Hawaii to live with his grandmother.

In 1972, Anne Dunham separated from her Indonesian husband and devoted herself to raising her son and continuing her education. In 1992, Ann completed her doctorate in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. On November 7, 1995, Barack Obama's mother died of cancer.

After the divorce, Barack Obama saw his father only once (at the age of ten), so the personality of the future US president was formed mainly under the influence of his mother. In his book “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reviving the American Dream” (2006), Barack Obama, talking about his path to God, recalls that considerable credit for this belongs to his mother, even though she was not a believer:

“In our house, the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita stood on the shelf next to books on ancient Greek, Scandinavian and African mythologies. At Easter or Christmas, my mother could take me to church, just as she took me to a Buddhist temple, on a Chinese holiday New Year's Eve, to a Shinto temple and to ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was given to understand that all these attempts at religion did not require strong adherence from me - no effort to dig inside myself or self-flagellation. Religion is an expression of human culture, she explained, not its source, but only one of many ways - and not necessarily the best - in which a person tries to control the unknowable and understand the deep mysteries of life.
In short, my mother looked at religion through the eyes of the ethnologist she later became; This is a phenomenon that must be treated with all respect, but at the same time with appropriate detachment.”
“Yet, despite all her learned worldliness, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person I have ever known. She had an unshakable natural capacity for kindness, mercy and love and very often acted under the influence of this capacity, sometimes To her own detriment. Without the help of religious texts or outside authority, she succeeded admirably in instilling in me the values ​​that many Americans are taught in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, giving up immediate gratification to achieve goals, and hard work. She resented poverty and injustice, and she despised those who were indifferent to this.
First of all, she acutely felt the miracle, was in awe of life, its preciousness and fleetingness. This sense of wonder and reverence for life could rightly be called pious. She would see a picture, read a line of a poem, or hear music, and I would see tears welling up in her eyes. Sometimes, when I was growing up, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to look at a particularly beautiful moon, or make me close my eyes as we walked together in the twilight and listened to the rustling of leaves. She loved to take children - any children - and sit them on her lap and tickle them, or play games with them, or look at their palms, explore the wonder of bones and tendons and skin and rejoice in the truths that could be discovered in them. She saw secrets everywhere and rejoiced in the very strangeness of life.
Only in hindsight, of course, do I fully understand how deeply that spirit of hers influenced me - how it supported me despite the absence of my father in the house, how it helped me navigate the underwater reefs of adolescence and how it invisibly guided me on the path that I would eventually take. finally gone."

Anne Dunham, mother of Barack Obama

After college, Barack Obama took on social work for a group of churches in Chicago:

"Working with pastors and lay people strengthened my resolve to lead a public life, strengthened my racial consciousness, and deepened my faith in the ability of ordinary people to do amazing things. But the experience in Chicago also presented me with a dilemma that my mother never resolved in her entire life." life: I did not belong to any group, did not adhere to common traditions in which my deepest convictions could find support, the Christians with whom I worked recognized themselves in me, they saw that I knew their Scripture, I share their values ​​and sing their songs. But they felt that part of me remained on the sidelines, remained an observer. I realized that without a vessel for my faith, without clearly connecting myself to any particular religious society, at some level I was. I will always remain aloof, free just like my mother, but just as lonely as she was endlessly lonely.”

Barack Obama began to study the African American spiritual tradition:

"Faith was not just a consolation for the despondent or a barrier from death, faith became an active, visible force in the world. In the daily work of the men and women whom I saw every day in church, in their ability to find a way out of a hopeless situation and maintain hope and dignity in the most difficult situations I have seen the Word incarnate.
And probably, precisely thanks to the deep knowledge of suffering, the justification of faith in the struggle, the “black” church gave me a second insight: faith does not mean that you have no doubts or that you renounce everything worldly. Long before it became fashionable among television preachers, mainstream Negro preaching freely acknowledged that all Christians (including pastors) can experience the same greed, resentment, lust and anger as everyone else. Gospel songs, dancing, tears and screams all spoke of releasing, acknowledging and ultimately channeling those emotions. In the black community the line between sinner and saved was more fluid; the sins of those who entered the Church were not so different from the sins of those who did not enter, and were as likely to be spoken of with humor as with condemnation. You had to enter the Church precisely because you are from this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved, you had to accept Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally on your difficult path to level the mountains and valleys and crooked paths make it straight.
It was because of these new discoveries—that religious faith did not require me to stop thinking critically, give up the fight for economic and social justice, or otherwise withdraw from the world I knew and love—that I was finally able to walk through the United Church one day Christ and be baptized. This was the result of a conscious choice, not a sudden revelation; the questions I had didn't magically disappear. But as I knelt under that cross on Chicago's South Side, I felt the spirit of God calling me. I submitted to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."

In the 2008 US presidential election, 53% of religious Americans voted for Obama.

Wife and family

Having found an ally in God, Obama soon received new spiritual support in the person of Michelle Robinson, who became his wife and First Lady of the United States. Michelle was born on January 17, 1964 in Chicago. Michelle, unlike Barack Obama, is a descendant of American slaves. Obama adores his wife and writes about her in his book The Audacity of Hope:

"Most people who meet my wife quickly come to the conclusion that she is wonderful. They are right about that - she is smart, funny and simply charming. She is also beautiful, but her beauty is not the kind that intimidates men and repels women ; this is the natural beauty of a mother and a busy professional, and not the photoshopped image that we see on the covers of glossy magazines. Often, after hearing her speak at an event, or after working with her on a project, people come up to me and say something like: “You know, I have a very good opinion of you, Barack, but your wife... is just great!” I nod, realizing that if she were my competitor in the election, she would win without much difficulty."

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle

It is worth noting that Barack Obama and his wife are probably the tallest couple among the first couples: Barack Obama is 187 cm tall, and Michelle Obama is 182 cm tall.

Barack Obama with his wife and Dmitry Medvedev with his wife

Obama met his future wife in the summer of 1988, when they both worked at the large law firm Sidley Austin. Although Michelle was younger than Barack, she was already a practicing lawyer, while Obama was then a student intern. Michelle was appointed head of Obama's practice. Obama was captivated by his mentor, but she refused a real date for a long time, because... The romance between a mentor and a subordinate did not fit with work ethics. In the end, Obama persuaded Michelle: their first date took place at Baskin-Robbins cafe while eating ice cream. Then Obama kissed his future wife for the first time, tasting chocolate on her lips.
In October 1992, Michelle and Barack got married, and in 1998, on US Independence Day (July 4), their daughter Malia was born. On June 10, 2001, a second daughter, Natasha, appeared in the family.

Barack Obama with family

To summarize the above, it can be noted that Barack Obama’s personality was influenced by good heredity, an intelligent and sensitive mother, the feeling of God as his ally, the support of his wife and family, but the main thing that shaped Barack Obama’s personality and made him what he is now is the audacity of hope. The phrase “the audacity of hope,” once heard by Obama in a sermon, was included in the title of his book:

"The audacity of hope.
This is the best of the American spirit, I thought, to have the audacity to believe, against all odds, that we can bring back togetherness a nation torn by conflict; It is the folly of believing that, despite personal setbacks, job loss, illness of a family member, or a childhood spent in poverty, we can control our destiny—and are therefore responsible for it.
It was precisely this insolence, I thought, that united us into one people. It is this pervasive spirit of hope that has connected my family's story to the story of America, and my own story to the story of the voters I seek to represent."

01/06/2011

Compared to George W. Bush, Barack Obama is a rather ordinary figure. However, there are many interesting things in his biography.

1 . In 2006, he won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

2. In 2005, Obama and his wife bought a house in Chicago for more than $1.5 million.

3. According to his wife Michelle Obama, Barack is very romantic and often presents his wife with flowers.

4. Obama doesn't like ice cream because he worked at Baskin-Robbins when he was a teenager.

5. Likes to play Scrabble and poker.

6. Barack's father is Kenyan, his mother is of English, Scottish, Irish and German descent.

7. In my youth I tried drugs, marijuana and cocaine. According to him, he is not at all proud of this and considers it a mistake of his youth.

8. Obama is the first US president since Eisenhower to smoke cigarettes. Quit smoking in March 2010 (this was officially announced in February 2011).

9. He was born in Honolulu, but when his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to Indonesia. There he first tasted dog meat, snake meat and fried grasshoppers.

10. At home every evening, Obama reads Harry Potter to his eldest daughter.

11. Obama’s height is 187 cm. His wife’s height is 180 cm.

12. The authorities of the Caribbean island state of Antigua and Barbuda, after the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election, renamed their highest mountain in honor of Obama.

13. Obama is left-handed.

14. The lichen plant Caloplaca obamae is named after Obama.

15. During an interview with CNBC at the White House, Obama killed a fly that was bothering him with his hand, commenting with the words: “That wasn’t bad, huh? I did it."

16. Barack Obama starred in Discovery's MythBusters in an episode called "Archimedes' Sunbursts." He personally instructs Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to double-check the ancient legend of how the ancient scientist Archimedes burned the Roman fleet with the help of solar rays passing through a system of mirrors.

17. In April 2011, a political scandal broke out involving Republican Marilyn Davenport, a member of the party central committee of Orange County. Davenport privately sent images of Obama as a chimpanzee to colleagues.

18. Barack Obama became a senator at age 33.

19. About ten years ago, Obama released an autobiographical book, “Dreams from My Father,” in which, in particular, he admits that “during difficult times I used drugs.”

20. According to media reports, Brad Pitt and Barack Obama are actually related. According to the New England Historical Genealogical Society, Pitt and Obama are related in the ninth generation .

Text and photo

Americans who love statistical calculations have calculated that in presidential elections in the last hundred years, with a very high degree of probability, the candidate who turned out to be victorious at the time of voting... was heavier and taller than his candidate.

Over the past 100 years, voters have had twenty-six presidential couples to choose from, and only seven times did the principle of “the hardest” fail to prevail. In other cases, the one who was “weightier” came to the White House. Moreover, in entire history, only five times have Americans elected a shorter person!

Based on this principle, the ideal candidate for US President would be the famous basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, weighing 147 kilos and height 216 centimeters. Only our boxer Nikolai Valuev (149 kilos, 213 cm) could fight him on equal terms, but he was born in Russia and has no right to run.

From this point of view, it is not surprising that the 104-kilogram (!) Bill Clinton twice left behind his lighter rivals. But George W. Bush (183 cm, 86 kg) twice managed to perform a miracle: defeat taller opponents - first Al Gore (185 cm, 88 kg), and then John Kerry (193 cm, 84 kg). But this principle was preserved during the victory of the first black candidate, Barack Obama (185 cm, 82 kg) over John McCain (170 cm, 75 kg). Moreover, looking at the list of US presidents, one can easily determine that McCain had no chance of success. The United States has never had a head shorter than 177 centimeters in the last hundred years.

By the way, Obama will be 48 years and 5 months old on Inauguration Day. This is a young age for a US president, but Obama will not be the youngest to hold this post. Theodore Roosevelt became president at 42 years and 10 months, John Kennedy at 43 years and 7 months, Bill Clinton at 46 years and 5 months, and Ulysses Grant at 46 years and 10 months.

RECORDS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981) 73 kg (177 cm)

Woodrow Wilson (1913 - 1921) 77 kg (185 cm)

Calvin Coolidge (1923 - 1929) 77 kg (178 cm)

Richard Nixon (1969 - 1974) 78 kg (182 cm)

Dwight Eisenhower (1953 - 1961) 78 kg (179 cm)

John Kennedy (1961 - 1963) 79 kg (183 cm)

Barack Obama (2009 - ?) 82 kg (185 cm)

Ronald Reagan (1981 - 1989) 84 kg (185 cm)

Herbert Hoover (1929 - 1933) 84 kg (180 cm)

Franklin Roosevelt (1933 - 1945) 85 kg (189 cm)

George Bush Jr. (2001 - 2009) 86 kg (183 cm)

George Bush Sr. (1989 - 1993) 88 kg (187 cm)

Gerald Ford (1974 - 1977) 88 kg (183 cm)

Harry Truman (1945 - 1953) 91 kg (185 cm)

Theodore Roosevelt (1901 - 1909) 91 kg (178 cm)

Lyndon Johnson (1963 - 1969) 91 kg (191 cm)

Bill Clinton (1993 - 2001) 104 kg (187 cm)

Warren Harding (1921 - 1923) 109 kg (183 cm)

William Taft (1909 - 1913) 151 kg (183 cm)

The heaviest president in US history was William Taft, who ruled a hundred years before Obama. His weight reached 151 kilograms with a height of 183 centimeters. In the White House, a particularly spacious bathtub had to be installed especially for him, and in official portraits Taft was depicted exclusively in a chair in order to hide his excessive corpulence.

The tallest US president was Abraham Lincoln - 194 centimeters. And considering that he never parted with his tall top hat, in which he carried papers and state documents, then to his contemporaries he probably seemed like just a fire tower. Half a century before Lincoln, the shortest President of the States, a contemporary of Napoleon, James Madison (154 cm), ruled. It’s a pity that they never had the chance to meet Bonaparte; together they would have looked harmonious.

CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT

Obama's grandmother will attend Obama's inauguration

And also the Kenyan Boys' Choir

On January 20, at exactly noon, the new US President Barack Obama will be inaugurated in the American capital. This ceremony has already aroused great interest among the public - 5 thousand tickets for the stands from the Capitol building to the White House (the solemn procession will take this route) were sold out within 1 minute from the moment they went on sale. Now an “extra ticket,” which initially cost $25, can only be obtained from resellers at a price that has increased tenfold.

But the majority of guests - about 235 thousand people - will attend the inauguration by special invitation. These are mainly officials, congressmen, politicians, celebrities and members of foreign delegations. Among them will be Barack's grandmother Sarah Obama, who, at his request, was included in the Kenyan delegation. In addition, to please his fellow countryman, a local boys' choir will come from Kenya and perform at a ball dedicated to the first black head of the United States.

However, even those invited to the inauguration will have to try to get directly to the scene. After all, entry to the ceremony is prohibited not only with knives, firearms and pyrotechnics, which is quite logical, but also with thermoses, laser pointers, backpacks, suitcases, and bags. In addition, umbrellas are also banned; they will not be allowed to be carried even if it rains. American intelligence agencies want to minimize the possibility of an assassination attempt on Obama, against whom threats continue to be received.

The “hero of the occasion” himself and his family have already moved to Washington and are exploring the surroundings of their new residence. For now, he settled opposite the White House at the Hay-Adams Hotel, occupying “modest” apartments costing $6,000 per night. He will live there until January 15, and then move next door to the guest residence of the US government, Blair House, from where he will move to the White House on Inauguration Day.

Nikita KRASNIKOV.

MEANWHILE

The tradition of every US president visiting the White House with his pet did not appear yesterday, and sometimes the heads of the States were very extravagant in their choice. Calvin Coolidge had two raccoons living in the White House, although at first he tried to accommodate a lynx, a donkey, and even a pygmy hippopotamus. Apparently, Coolidge wanted to “outdo” the sixth US President, John Adams, who kept a crocodile in the White House bathroom. Harry Truman had a tame goat that grazed right on the lawn in front of the White House. Compared to them, Bill Clinton, who asked to create a personal website for his cat Sox, looks rather banal. The English spaniel Spot became the only dog ​​in history that managed to live in the White House under two presidents at once - Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. Born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu (Hawaii, USA). 44th President of the United States of America. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2009. Before being elected president, he was a federal senator from Illinois. Re-elected for a second term in 2012.

The first African American nominated for the presidency of the United States by one of the two major parties, and the first black president in the national history of heads of state, as well as a president with an African surname and a middle name of Arabic etymological origin.

Obama is mulatto, but, unlike most black Americans, he is not a descendant of slaves, but the son of a student from Kenya and a white American woman, Stanley Ann Dunham.

A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was also the first African American editor of the university's Harvard Law Review. Obama also worked as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer.

He taught constitutional law at the Chicago Institute of Legal Sciences from 1992 to 2004 and was simultaneously elected to the Illinois State Senate three times, from 1997 to 2004.

After an unsuccessful run in 2000 for the US House of Representatives, he ran for the US Senate in January 2003. After winning the primaries in March 2004, Obama gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create laws to regulate conventional weapons and increase transparency in the use of government budgets. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe (including Russia), the Middle East and Africa.

While serving in the 110th Congress, he helped create laws relating to voter fraud, lobbying, climate change, nuclear terrorism and discharged US military personnel.

Obama announced his desire to run for president in February 2007 and in 2008, in the presidential primaries at the Democratic National Convention, he was officially nominated as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate along with his vice presidential candidate, Senator Joseph Biden from Delaware.

In the 2008 presidential election, Obama beat the ruling Republican Party's candidate, John McCain, with 52.9% of the popular vote and 365 Electoral College votes against McCain's 45.7% and 173.

Barack Obama - curiosities

On October 9, 2009, he received the Nobel Peace Prize with the wording “for extraordinary efforts in strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

In the 2012 presidential election, Obama beat Republican candidate Mitt Romney with 51.1% of the popular vote and 332 Electoral College votes to Romney's 47.2% and 206.

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, State of Hawaii. His parents met in 1960 while studying at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. At the same time, during the election campaign in the United States, rumors circulated that Obama was born outside the United States, which would deprive him of the right to be elected to the presidency.

On March 1, 2012, Arizona Sheriff Joseph Arpaio announced that Barack Obama's birth certificate may be a computer-generated forgery; he made a similar statement regarding the military registration form filled out by the future president in 1980.

Father - Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (1936-1982) - Kenyan, son of a healer from the Luo people. The mission school paid for his studies in Nairobi and sent him to study econometrics at the University of Hawaii, where he organized the Foreign Students Association and became the top of his class.

Mother - Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995) - born on a military base in Kansas into a family of Christian Americans, but later became an agnostic. She is of English, Scottish, Irish and German descent. Barack Obama also has Cherokee ancestry through her mother, Madeleine Lee Payne. The surname Dunham itself belongs to the American aristocracy and comes from the pioneer Richard Singletary and his son Jonathan (1639/40-1724), who, for reasons that are not entirely clear, changed his surname to Dunham. Family legend traces him to the owners of Dunham Castle in Scotland, which was allegedly criminally disinherited by relatives in infancy.

Stanley Ann was studying anthropology at the University of Hawaii when she met Obama Sr. Grandmother Madeleine Lee raised Obama for a long time, they were very attached to each other. Obama paused his presidential campaign to visit her in the hospital. Madeleine Lee Payne Dunham died on November 2, 2008.

Obama Sr.'s father and Dunham's parents were against the marriage, but they got married on February 2, 1961. Two years after Barack was born, his father went to continue his studies at Harvard, but Dunham and Obama Jr. soon returned to Hawaii. Barack's parents divorced in January 1964.

While studying at Harvard University, Obama Sr. met the American teacher Ruth Nidesand, with whom, after completing his studies in the United States, he went to Kenya. This was his third marriage, which produced two children. Upon returning to Kenya, he worked for an oil company and then received a position as an economist in the government apparatus. He last saw his son when he was 10 years old. In Kenya, Obama Sr. was involved in a car accident, as a result of which he lost both legs, and later died in another car accident.

Soon after the divorce, the mother met another foreign student, Indonesian Lolo Sutoro, married him and in 1967 left with him and little Barak for Jakarta. From this marriage, Barack had a half-sister, Maya. Barack's mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995.

Barack Obama as a child

In Jakarta, Obama Jr. studied in one of the public schools from 6 to 10 years old. After that, he returned to Honolulu, where he lived with his mother's parents until he graduated from the prestigious private school Panahou in 1979.

He described his childhood memories in his book. "My Father's Dreams". As an adult, he admitted to smoking marijuana and taking cocaine and alcohol in school, which he told voters at the Presidential Campaign Civic Forum on August 16, 2008, and described it as his lowest moral low point.

After high school, he studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years and then transferred to Columbia University, where he majored in international relations. By the time he received his bachelor's degree in 1983, Obama was already working at the International Business Corporation and the New York Research Center.

In 1985, when he moved to Chicago, he began working as a community organizer in disadvantaged areas of the city. In 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School, where in 1990 he became the first African-American editor of the university's Harvard Law Review.

Obama is left-handed.

Obama's height is 185 cm.

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate.

He served as a senator from 1997 to 2004, representing the US Democratic Party. Re-elected twice: in 1998 and 2002. As a senator, he collaborated with both Democrats and Republicans: he worked with representatives of both parties on programs to support low-income families through tax cuts, acted as a supporter of the development of preschool education, and supported measures to tighten control over the work of investigative agencies.

In 2000, he attempted to run for election to the US House of Representatives, but lost the primaries to the incumbent black congressman Bobby Rush.

In 2004, he entered the race for nomination to one of the seats from Illinois in the US Senate. He won a convincing victory over six opponents in the primaries.

Sworn in as a United States Senator on January 4, 2005, becoming the 5th African American U.S. Senator in the country's history.

At the end of August 2005, as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, he flew to Russia to inspect Russian nuclear facilities together with Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

During the trip on August 28, upon departure at Perm Bolshoye Savino airport, an incident occurred: the senators were detained for three hours due to their refusal to “comply with the demands of the border guards” to inspect the plane, which had diplomatic immunity. Later, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed regret “in connection with the misunderstanding that arose and the inconvenience caused to the senators.” In his book, Obama regarded the incident as one of the moments during his trip "that recalled the days of the Cold War."

While a senator, he visited the White House several times at the invitation of President George W. Bush.

The nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on an analysis of all Senate votes from 2005-2007. National Journal recommended him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of elected votes during 2007.

In 2008, Congress.org ranked him as the 11th most powerful senator.

On February 10, 2007, in front of the old Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. The location was symbolic because it was there that Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic “House Divided” speech in 1858. Throughout the campaign, Obama advocated for a quick end to the Iraq War, energy independence and universal health care. His campaign slogans are "Change We Can Believe in" and "Yes We Can!" (The song Yes We Can, recorded by a number of famous artists using words from Obama's campaign speech, received great fame and a Webby Award).

During the first half of 2007, the Obama campaign raised $58 million. Small donations (less than $200) accounted for 16.4 million of that amount. The number set a record for presidential campaign fundraising in the first six months of the calendar year before an election. The size of the small portion of the donation was also quite significant.

In January 2008, the campaign set another record with $36.8 million, the most ever raised by a presidential candidate in the Democratic primary.

Obama is the first and, as of 2012, the only US presidential candidate to refuse public funding of his election campaign. On November 4, 2008, Obama secured the support of 338 of the 538 electors with the required 270 votes, which meant he would take office on January 20, 2009. At the same time, voter turnout reached a record of 64%.

On January 22, 2009, he signed an order to close the prison for suspected terrorists at the American military base at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) within a year.

On January 29, the US Congress supported the plan to stimulate the American economy proposed by the US President. The plan involves an injection of $819 billion. On February 10, the US Senate approved Obama's emergency anti-crisis plan at a cost of $838 billion. When implementing the plan, up to 4 million new jobs should be created in 2 years. The plan also contains provisions for direct investment in the healthcare, energy, and education sectors.

On February 17, Barack Obama sent an additional 17 thousand troops to Afghanistan, and also signed a $787 billion anti-crisis plan adopted by the US Congress in Denver.

On July 6-8, Barack Obama made an official working visit to Moscow. During the visit, bilateral agreements were signed, including on the transit of American military cargo to Afghanistan through Russian territory.

On October 9, 2009 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Members of the Nobel Committee considered Obama's efforts "in strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between people" worthy of the award. Obama became the third US president, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while in office (it was also awarded to former President Jimmy Carter).

According to Obama himself, he has not yet earned this award. According to many experts, Obama received the award largely due to his promise to reduce nuclear arsenals, made in early 2009.

In 2010, Obama, despite Republican opposition, achieved the passage of a health care reform law.

In 2011, the US army, on Obama's orders, participated in the NATO intervention in Libya.

On April 4, 2011, Barack Obama confirmed his desire to run for a second presidential term, began raising money for the election campaign and announced the start of the presidential race.

Obama's opponent was Republican Mitt Romney. The intrigue of the elections continued until the last moment. As a result, Obama received a noticeable advantage in the electoral votes (303 versus 206 for Romney), but overall he was supported by about half of voters.

Personal life of Barack Obama:

Since 1992, Barack Obama has been married to Michelle Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964), a practicing lawyer. They have two daughters - Malia Ann (born in 1998) and Natasha (“Sasha”; born in 2001).

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama

Barack and Michelle Obama with children

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. His parents met at the University of Hawaii. Father, black Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama Sr., came to the United States to study economics. His mother, white American Stanley Ann Dunham, studied anthropology. When Barack was still a baby, his father went to continue his studies at Harvard, but due to financial difficulties he did not take his family with him. When his son was two years old, Obama Sr. went alone to Kenya, where he received a position as an economist in the government apparatus. He divorced his wife.
When Barack was six years old, Anne Dunham remarried, again to a foreign student, this time an Indonesian. Together with his mother, half-sister and stepfather Lolo Soetoro, the boy went to Indonesia, where he spent four years. He studied at one of the public schools in Jakarta. Then he returned to Hawaii and lived with his mother's parents.

In 1979 he graduated from the privileged private school Punahou School in Honolulu. A school that is proud of its famous alumni - actors and athletes. During his school years, Obama's big hobby was basketball. He won the 1979 state championship with the Punahaou team. In the same 1979, Barack Obama graduated from school, and now he honorably occupies not the last place in the lists of famous graduates of this school. In his memoirs, published in 1995, Obama himself recalled that in high school he used marijuana and cocaine, and his grades declined.

After school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles, then transferred to Columbia University, where he graduated in 1983, where Obama began to emerge as a politician and public figure.

In 1983, with a Bachelor's degree, Barack Obama began working for a large International Business Corporation as an editor in the financial information department. Obama will work there for a year, his first job out of college.

After that, in 1985 he settled in Chicago and worked in one of the church charity groups. As a “social organizer” he helped residents of disadvantaged areas of the city. It was his experience working in charity that made him realize that changes in legislation and policy are needed to improve people's lives.

In 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School, where in 1990 he became the first black editor of the university's Harvard Law Review. This is not all of Obama's successes at Harvard in 1990. The New York Times will write about the news that he has become the first black president of the Harvard Lawyers' Club in its one hundred and four-year history. In 1991, Obama graduated and returned to Chicago. He began practicing law, mainly defending victims of various types of discrimination in court. In addition, Obama worked at the headquarters of the Democratic Party, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, and worked on election law issues at the small law firm Miner, Barnhill and Galand. Obama became known as a liberal, an opponent of the creation of NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Area, a fighter against racial discrimination, and a supporter of a universal health insurance system.

In 1993, Barack Obama began teaching a course on Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama will work there until 2004. Until the year of his election to the US Senate.

In 1995, Obama would write and publish his first book, Dreams From His Father. A book that will bring glory to the future senator.

In 1996, Obama would win the Illinois Senate election. And subsequently, making a political review of the senator’s work, an article in the Washington Post newspaper will note Obama’s ability to unite the Democratic and Republican opposing parties in his work.

Obama's political career began in the Illinois State Senate, where he represented the Democratic Party for eight years, from 1997 to 2004.

In 2000, Obama attempted to run for election to the House of Representatives, but lost the primaries to the incumbent black congressman Bobby Rush, a former member of the Black Panther movement. In the state Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans, working together on government programs to support low-income families through tax cuts. Obama acted as an active supporter of the development of preschool education. He supported measures to tighten control over the work of investigative bodies. In 2002, Obama condemned the George W. Bush administration's plans to invade Iraq.

In 2004, Obama entered the race for one of the Illinois seats in the US Senate. In the primaries, he managed to win a convincing victory over six opponents. Obama's chances of success increased when his Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, was forced to withdraw his candidacy due to scandalous allegations brought against Ryan during his divorce proceedings.

On July 29, 2004, during the election campaign, Obama addressed the Democratic National Convention. His speech, which was broadcast on television, brought Obama wide fame in the United States. The senatorial candidate urged listeners to return to the roots of American society and once again make the United States a land of “open opportunity”: he illustrated the ideal of open opportunity through the example of his own biography and the biography of his father.

In the Senate elections, Obama defeated Republican Alan Keyes by a large margin (70% to 27%). He took office on January 4, 2005 and became the fifth African-American senator in US history. Obama served on several committees: Environment and Public Works, Veterans Affairs, and Foreign Relations.

As he previously did in the state Senate, Obama collaborated with Republicans on a number of issues, including work on government transparency legislation. In addition, together with the famous Republican Senator Richard Lugar, Obama visited Russia: the trip was dedicated to cooperation in the field of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In general, Obama voted in the Senate in accordance with the liberal line of the Democratic Party. He paid special attention to the idea of ​​developing alternative energy sources.

Senator Obama managed to unusually quickly win the sympathy of the press and become one of the most prominent figures in Washington. By the fall of 2006, observers already considered it quite possible for him to be nominated in the next presidential election. At the beginning of 2007, Obama was in second place after Senator Hillary Clinton on the list of Democratic Party favorites. In January, Obama created an evaluation committee to prepare for the presidential election. As of early February 2007, 15 percent of Democrats were ready to support Obama, and 43 percent were ready to support Clinton. Data at the beginning of June 2007 exceeded the most optimistic forecasts of Obama supporters - the gap was only 3 percent in favor of Hillary Clinton.

In January 2007, Obama faced scandalous accusations. Information began to spread in the press that while living in Indonesia, he allegedly studied at an Islamic school-madrasa, where representatives of the radical Muslim sect of the Wahabbits preached. These accusations were denied, but left a significant negative imprint on Obama's image.

On February 10, at a rally in Springfield, Illinois, Obama announced his entry into the presidential race. If he wins, he promised to withdraw American troops from Iraq by March 2009. Along with the Iraq campaign, he criticized the Bush administration for insufficient progress in combating oil dependence and developing the education system. Soon, on February 13, at another rally in Iowa, Obama made a reckless statement. Criticizing Bush's Iraq policy, he said the lives of American troops killed in Iraq were "wasted." He had to repeatedly apologize and explain that he had expressed his thoughts poorly. Obama's stance on Iraq and his plans to withdraw troops were critically received by Bush supporters not only in the United States, but also abroad. One of the American president's allies, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, announced that Obama's plans play into the hands of terrorists.

In February 2007, Obama was supported by David Geffen, one of the founders of the film company DreamWorks, in the past one of Bill Clinton's prominent supporters. Geffin said that Hillary Clinton is too controversial a figure and will not be able to unite Americans in difficult times for the country. Together with other Hollywood celebrities, Geffin organized an event to raise donations in favor of Obama - the amount raised reached $1.3 billion. Geffin's harsh comments about Clinton were associated with a narrowing of the gap between the former first lady and Obama: at the end of February the difference was 12 percent. 36 percent of Democrats were ready to vote for Clinton, and 24 percent for Obama.

One of the vulnerabilities of candidate Obama was the question of his affiliation with “African-Americans.” As it turned out, some representatives of the black population, including the most influential representatives of this minority, were in no hurry to recognize Obama as one of their own. The fact is that, unlike a “real” American Negro, Obama is not a descendant of slaves brought to the American continent from West Africa. In addition, the senator did not have the opportunity to participate in the fight for the rights of blacks - unlike most African-American American politicians. The situation worsened when, in early March 2007, the press reported that Obama's maternal family included slave owners.

Obama has been married to lawyer Michelle Robinson Obama since 1992. They have two daughters: Malia and Sasha. Official biographies report that Obama and his wife are parishioners of one of the Christian churches in Chicago - Trinity United Church of Christ. Barack Obama is the author of two books: in 1995, he published the memoir “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” which we already mentioned, and in 2006, the book “The Audacity of Hope” ( The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream). The audio version of the first book won a Grammy Award in 2006. Both of Obama's books became bestsellers.