President Barack Obama
Biography By: Kristah Nowell
President Barack Obama was born august 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His
parents were Stanley Dunham, a white woman and Barack Obama Sr. a black
man. When Barack was six years old he moved to Indonesia were his mother
remarried. Years later he moved back to Hawaii, went to Columbia University
and Harvard University. Few years after graduating form Harvard he married
Michelle and had two children.
In 1995, Obama began campaigning for a seat in the Illinois Senate. He won the
November 1996 race and took office in 1997. In the state Senate, he focused on
such issues as health care, poverty, crime, ethics, and education. Obama’s ideas
were shut down many times but he did have some successes in the Illinois
Senate, in ethics reform and criminal justice issues. In 2003, Obama cooperated
with law enforcement officials and conservative legislators to reform police
procedures. They enacted new rules requiring the police to videotape
interrogations and confessions in death penalty cases. The new rules came after
reports showed that many inmates on death row had been innocent of their
crimes.
In 2003, Obama decided to run for a U.S. Senate seat that was held by a
retiring Republican. He easily won the Democratic nomination in 2004. In
the November election, Obama faced Alan Keyes, a conservative
commentator who had been living in Maryland. Obama won the election
with 70 percent of the vote. He took office in January 2005, becoming
the only African American in the Senate.
In August, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Obama
formally became the party’s presidential nominee. At Obama’s request,
the delegates nominated Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as their
candidate for vice president. Obama and Biden faced the Republican
nominees McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. In the November
election, Obama defeated McCain and was elected the nation’s 44th
president.