Obama, Before, During and After Presidency

By · Jul 2, 2020 · 4 min read

President Barack Obama was one of the first in many positions to be African American. Many criticized as well as praised his time in office. He was the president that helped give LGBT people the right to marry and the one to create Obamacare. He was a man of peace and has accomplished a lot during his life before and after his time in office.

Early Life

Barack Hussein Obama II had a fruitful and well-traveled childhood. Born August 4, 1961 from Ann Dunhamm, a white American, and Barack Obama Sr., a black Kenyan, met at the University of Hawaii. His father left and divorced his mother when Obama Jr. was two. Obama later in his presidency had to prove his citizenship by releasing his birth certificate.

His mother remarried Lolo Soetoro. When Obama was six his family moved to his stepfather’s origin country, Indonesia, where he attended religious schools for both Catholics and Muslims.

Obama was sent back to the United States after his mother’s concern for his education grew. He lived with his mother’s parents and stayed in Hawaii until he went off to college in Los Angeles California. This was also shortly after his mother passed in 1995.

After his Graduation from Columbia with a B.A. in Political science with a minor in English literature, He worked at International Business Cooperation and New York Public Interest Group.

He lived and worked in New York four years until deciding to move to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community advisor for Altgeld Gardens to improve the public housing in the city. He did this for three years before realizing that a law degree would help him, and he enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1988.

After graduation in 1991, he was the first African-America to be elected to the Harvard Law Review board.

Early Politics

During his internship at Sidley and Austin law during his first year at Harvard, he met his future wife Michelle Robinson. After graduation, they married and settled in Chicago where they had their first child.

Obama’s first taste in politics was his involvement in marrying his wife who had political ties. He was put on Project Vote and helped get into office the first African-American senator, Carol Braun.

He had his first run for office as Illinois state senator. Beating his predecessor, Alice Palmer, in 1996 after her failed attempt to run for congress, he was both a minority in color and political view. In a predominantly republican legislator, Obama had a rough time passing bills and making allies.

After some time, he began to gain a foothold in his state and was able to pass 300 bills, and in 2000 Obama was eyeing a seat in the US senate. The election would take place in 2004 and he would take the state by a record-breaking margin of 70 percent to 27 percent.

Holding a US senate seat for 5 years, Obama then set his eyes to the top as President of the United States.

First term Presidency

Obama was elected to the presidency in 2009 at the back-end of the 2007 recession from President Bush’s time in office. His major focuses during his first term were fixing the American economy and dealing with the now unpopular war in the middle east.

Addressing the Recession Obama proposed and got congress to approve a $787 million stimulus. This helped extend unemployment benefits and cut taxes. After the economy stabilized in 2009 there was another $179 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment act to further solidify the economic condition.

Though Obama did help with this issue, the middle class was still suffering heavy taxation and income inequality was at its highest point according to pew research.

The war on terror was another issue altogether. The twin towers were still fresh in the minds of many Americans, but they were also tired of the lack of results this war was having. Osama Bin Laden had been labeled as the one in charge of the attack on 9/11 and the US had been hunting him for years.

It was not until 2011 that his whereabouts had been discovered. This was also during the time Obama had ordered most US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. In April of that year the order was given to take out Bin Laden. The operation was successful, and the leader of Al Qaeda was gone.

Obama also reduced the nuclear stockpile of atomic weapons by 24% owned by the US, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize. He also enacted the Affordable care act or Obama care in 2010.

Second Term Presidency

During Obama’s 2nd term after reelection in 2012, he started focusing on the other major issue plaguing American politics and the world, global climate change.

Obama pushed incentives for businesses, citizens and homeowners, incentivizing tax free or paying, to put solar and other renewable sources on or around their homes and businesses. He also restricted and blocked many efforts to expand oil drilling and fracking. Though not entirely opposed, these efforts forced many to see the implications of emissions and benefits of new and inexpensive energy sources.

Obama enacted the Clean Power Plan which required power plants to reduce carbon emission by 30% by implementing renewable energies or other sources. Obama helped modernize the automotive industry with a bailout in 2009, later requiring higher standards for cars that produced less emissions. He also signed the Paris agreement, setting the standard around the world for reducing carbon emissions.

Obama had controversial views on gun control, and after the shooting of Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012 shortly after his election he used this to propose banning “assault weapons.” Though he was outspoken against he saw to the signing of concealed carry on Ametrax for checked baggage and allowed concealed carry in national parks. In fact, no major gun control bill passed during Obama’s presidency.

Close to the end of his presidency Obama also signed the largest trade agreement, The Trans-Pacific Partnership. He got the nuclear peace agreement with Iran signed to reduce the production of enriched uranium, limiting nuclear armament but enough to produce for power plants.

During Obama’s time as president issues like Gay Marriage became legal, and according to PEW many say there was higher equality and brought to light many issues of inequality during his presidency.

One of his final acts as president was to modernize the federal government and fix major technical issues with healthcare.gov. This helped solidify his health care system for his final term in office.

Post Presidency

After running out his second term and unable to rerun for the presidency, Obama took to speaking at major financial conferences in Wall Street and has earned millions from his memoirs in office. He still runs the Obama Foundation and the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance which was founded in 2014.

He has largely stayed out of the political spotlight, only criticizing his successor, Donald Trump, on issues like the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. Even with his former VP, Joe Biden, running for the 2020 presidential election, he has had little hand in this.

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