Profile: Barack Obama
"Rock
star"
and
"beach
babe"
are
not
labels
normally applied to United States senators.
But few senators have ever generated the kind of buzz
associated with Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois.
He is the first black candidate to become the presidential
candidate of either major US party and if he goes on to
beat Republican John McCain in November's general
election, he will be the nation's first black president.
He clinched the Democratic nomination after a long and
gruelling battle against former first lady, Hillary Clinton - a contest that gripped the US from
January to June 2008.
Speaking after it became clear he won, Mr Obama talked of a "defining moment for our nation".
"I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations," he said.
"But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people."
Media darling
Mr Obama, 47, first shot to national - and international - prominence with a speech that stirred
the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
The son of a Kenyan man and a white woman from Kansas, Mr Obama
emphasised his personal history in a speech reflecting traditional American ideals of self-reliance
and aspirations.
"Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place America, which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come
before," he said.
After his landslide Senate election victory a few months later, he became a media darling and
one of the most visible figures in Washington, with two best-selling books to his name.
He won the backing of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who not only urged him to declare his
candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on her programme but appeared on the
campaign trail with him.
Almost 30,000 people attended a rally in South Carolina in 2007 at which she described Mr
Obama as having an "ear for eloquence and a tongue dipped in the unvarnished truth".
He has also broke all records for fund-raising, by harnessing the internet to collect huge
numbers of small donations, as well as larger sums from corporate donors.
As a senator, he has established a firmly liberal voting record, but has also worked with
Republican colleagues on issues such as Aids education and prevention.
International upbringing
Mr Obama is named after his father, who grew up in Kenya herding goats but gained a
scholarship to study in Hawaii.
There the Kenyan met and married Mr Obama's mother, who was living in Honolulu with her
parents.
When Mr Obama was a toddler, his father got a chance to study
at Harvard but there was no money for the family to go with
him. He later returned to Kenya alone, where he worked as a
government economist, and the couple divorced.
When Mr Obama was six, his mother, Ann, married an
Indonesian man and the family moved to Jakarta.
Although his father and step-father were Muslim, Mr Obama is a
Christian and attended secular and Catholic schools during the
four years he lived in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country.
Barack Obama wowed the
2004 Democratic National
Convention
He then moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend school.
Mr Obama went on to study political science at Columbia University in New York, and then
moved to Chicago where he spent three years as a community organiser.
In 1988 he left to attend Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American
president of the Harvard Law Review.
After Harvard, Mr Obama returned to Chicago to practise civil rights law, representing victims of
housing and employment discrimination.
He is married to a lawyer, Michelle, and they have two young daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Race
The senator attended the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for almost two decades but
broke away from it in May 2008 after controversial sermons by Trinity preachers hit the
headlines.
The Rev Jeremiah Wright was quoted as saying the 9/11 attacks were like "chickens coming
home to roost" and that God should damn America for treating black people as "less than
human".
Seeking to defuse the uproar, Mr Obama tackled the issue of race directly, calling on the US to
move beyond its long history of racial inequality.
"The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without
understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between
the races," he said.
Mr Obama was an early critic of the Iraq war, speaking out against the prospect of war several
months before the March 2003 invasion.
His willingness to talk to Iranian leaders without preconditions has been criticised as reckless by
his Republican rival for the presidency.
Mr Obama has often joked that people are always getting his name wrong, calling him "Alabama"
or "Yo Mama".
With Mr Obama's profile rising ever higher amid the frenetic electioneering, it seems unlikely
that there are many people getting his name wrong now.
Extracted from the website CNN International, 31 August 2008