President Obama History

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

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

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

Post from Erica Sagrans's Blog:

David Plouffe to OFA Volunteers: "The path may be more difficult now, but we're going to get this done."

By Erica Sagrans - Jan 28th, 2010 at 7:12 pm EST

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Before the President's speech last night, Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe spoke on a conference call with OFA supporters about where we’re at and what’s up next. Here are some highlights from the call:

On the fight for health reform:

You've done great work. Over a couple million of you have taken action on health care, we've had hundreds of thousands of people on single days call Congress, you've held thousands of press events, you guys were all over the town hall meetings throughout August. You've done great work, and without that, I think that health reform would be absolutely dead on arrival.

I'm here to tell you tonight, and the President is gonna say it, that we are still going to get health care done. So for all of you that got involved in the campaign because you believed in that issue, all of you that worked hard, obviously we've had a little bit of a hiccup here, but presidents have tried to do this for a hundred years. The President is going to make clear tonight that health care is a jobs issue. We are not going to have a strong economy without it. We are not going to have a strong country unless people have the guarantee of coverage, unless we rein in insurance industry abuses. The path may be more difficult now, but we're going to get this done.

On the 2010 midterm elections:

[2010] is an election year, and I think many of you indicated that you'd like to get involved in local elections... A lot of campaigns historically have not had great grassroots organizations, we can help fix that, or at least make it better. We have over 15 million people who voted for the first time in 2008, many of you on the phone probably fit in that category, and a lot of these people have never voted in an off-year election... We gotta go out there and talk to these first time voters. You clearly indicated an interest to do that, and we'll be working with you to make sure we facilitate that. A lot of you helped register a lot of voters, and it was a big part of why we won. We directly registered over 5 million voters as a campaign, there's tens of millions out there eligible to vote in these states in 2010 who aren't registered, so that's another reason.

And on changing Washington:

What's going on here is a belief that, well, everybody in America is having to make some sacrifices and change the way they do their business, but Washington really hasn't changed. There's still too much special interest influence, there's not enough transparency, there's a lack of trust. Barack Obama ran to try and change Washington. He can't do it alone, but that fight, that he's delivered a lot of things on, needs to continue... This town is not working for the American people. I know that Democrats control Congress, but the fact of the matter is not enough change has come and we've gotta have more change come.