Barack Obama facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Barack Obama
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Official portrait, 2012
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| 44th President of the United States | |
| In office January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017 |
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| Vice President | Joe Biden |
| Preceded by | George W. Bush |
| Succeeded by | Donald Trump |
| United States Senator from Illinois |
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| In office January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008 |
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| Preceded by | Peter Fitzgerald |
| Succeeded by | Roland Burris |
| Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th district |
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| In office January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004 |
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| Preceded by | Alice Palmer |
| Succeeded by | Kwame Raoul |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Barack Hussein Obama II
August 4, 1961 Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Obama family |
| Education | |
| Occupation |
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| Awards | Full list |
| Signature |  |
| Website | |
Barack Hussein Obama II (
i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician. He was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American to hold the office. Before becoming president, he was a U.S. senator from Illinois and served from 2005 to 2008. He is a Democrat.
Obama left office in January 2017 and was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump. He now lives in Washington, D.C. He is ranked very high in presidential opinion polls.
Obama received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009. He noted that his efforts were humble, but he donated the prize money to several charities.
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Early life
Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children (called Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in 1961) in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was a black exchange student from Kenya named Barack Obama Sr. He died in a motorcycle accident in Kenya in 1982. His mother was a white woman from Kansas named Ann Dunham, who was an anthropologist and died in 1995. He spent most of his childhood in Hawaii and Chicago, Illinois, although he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from age 6 to age 10. He later moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.
Education
From age six to ten, Obama attended Indonesian-language schools: Sekolah Dasar Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary School) for two years and Sekolah Dasar Negeri Menteng 01 (State Elementary School Menteng 01) for one and a half years, supplemented by English-language Calvert School homeschooling by his mother. During his time in Indonesia, Obama's stepfather taught him to be resilient and gave him "a pretty hardheaded assessment of how the world works".
Obama attended Punahou School—a private college preparatory school—with the aid of a scholarship from fifth grade until he graduated from high school in 1979. Obama lived with his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro, in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. Obama chose to stay in Hawaii when his mother and half-sister returned to Indonesia in 1975, so his mother could begin anthropology field work. His mother spent most of the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo Soetoro in 1980 and earning a PhD degree in 1992.
Obama started college at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and graduated from Columbia University in New York City. After taking time off as a community organizer, Obama went to law school at Harvard University. After law school, Obama worked for a law firm in Hyde Park, Chicago.
Family
Obama has been married to Michelle Obama since 1992. She has a law degree from Harvard Law School. She worked as a lawyer. They have two daughters, Malia Ann, who was born in 1998 and Sasha, born in 2001. They were born at University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago. They lived in Chicago, but moved into the White House on January 20, 2009.
Obama has a half sister who is a teacher in Hawaii. His father died from a car accident in Kenya. His mother died of ovarian cancer. His maternal grandmother died just before Obama won the election to become President.
Before becoming president
Obama worked for Alice Palmer, an Illinois state senator. In 1995 she chose not to run for re-election so that she could run for U.S. Congress, and Obama decided to run for her Illinois state senate seat. Palmer lost her election for U.S. Congress, so she tried to keep her seat in the state senate, but she did not have enough time to meet the rules of the election. Obama's team said that she could not be on the ballot, and the election rulemakers agreed. Obama won the election and became an Illinois state senator. He was state senator from 1997 to 2004.
While he was Illinois state senator, he wrote a law that required police to keep records on the race of people they stopped. The law that he wrote also forced police to videotape when they talked to people they suspect of murder. He taught law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School. Judge and political teacher Abner J. Mikva taught Obama politics and became his mentor. During his early political career, Obama would make appearances and debate on Chicago Tonight.
Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. While running for Senate, John Kerry asked him to speak at the Democratic National Convention. He spoke on television. He was a U.S. Senator from 2005 to 2008.
Obama won the presidential election of 2008.
Presidential campaigns
2008 presidential campaign
Obama's presidential campaign for the White House started in early June 2008 when he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton was favored to win but Obama won many smaller state caucuses (local party elections) by having a lot of volunteers. He decided not to accept government money for his campaign so that he could accept more private money under Campaign finance reform in the United States. He raised the most amount of money ever for a presidential campaign.
Obama's campaign theme was that he was a man of hope and change. He was also against the war in Iraq. He was in favor of giving money to American car companies. He was in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan.
During the campaign, some people said that Obama's friends were Tony Rezko, a landlord, and former revolutionary Bill Ayers; Obama said that they were not his friends. Obama also had trouble when his minister at church, Jeremiah Wright, was videotaped criticizing America. During the campaign, Obama said that his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, was just like George W. Bush, something that John McCain said was not true. He ran with Joe Biden as his candidate for Vice President.
He defeated McCain in the election on November 4 by a wide electoral majority of 365 to 173, meaning that he won the most votes in enough states to send 365 people to officially elect him. The popular vote (based on the total number of votes across the country) was closer, with Obama winning 53%, McCain 46%.
2012 presidential campaign
Obama announced he was running for president again in April 2011 when he posted a video on his website. Because he was already the president, there were very few other Democrats who tried to oppose him. He won the democratic nomination easily. Their opponents in the Republican party this time were Mitt Romney, who was running for president, and Paul Ryan, who was running for vice president.
In the election on November 6, Obama and Joe Biden defeated Romney and Ryan by a majority of 332 to 206 electoral votes. This meant that, even though it was still large, his majority was smaller than in 2008. In terms of the popular vote, Obama won 51.1% and Romney won 47.2%.
Presidency (2009–2017)
Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 as the first African American mixed-race president. At that time the United States was battling a tough recession. Obama asked Congress to spend an extra $787 billion ($787,000,000,000) to try to end the recession. He called the plan the stimulus bill. The stimulus bill funded many road projects, gave money to schools, gave tax credits to many Americans, and funded many science and research projects.
He continued the financial bailout that George W. Bush started, giving billions of dollars to car companies and banks so that they would not go bankrupt. He signed an act written by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd which would regulate Wall Street (the financial industry) to try to prevent another recession like this from happening again.
Obama ended US participation in the Iraq War, having prepared the country to defend itself. The al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was in office. Also, he contributed to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often called "Obamacare") which changed many health care laws. He also enacted many acts to create public works jobs to help the economy. He became the first president to openly express support for gay marriage.
He was reelected in 2012. During his second term, the government partially shut down. He was able to renew diplomatic relations with Cuba. In 2015, the United States joined the Paris Climate Agreement.
Post-presidency (2017–present)
As it is not possible for a person to be president for three terms, Obama could not run for president again. He was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump in early 2017. He left office with a 60% approval rating.
Even though he is not the president anymore, Obama still owns a house in Washington, D.C.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, spend time making speeches and attending events. They also run a charity called the Obama Foundation, and own Higher Ground Productions, a company which makes movies. The company was hired by Netflix to make documentaries. One of their documentaries, American Factory, won an Academy Award for being the best documentary of 2019.
He released his presidential memoir, A Promised Land, on November 17, 2020.
Obama wrote a presidential memoir, in a $65 million deal with Penguin Random House. The book, A Promised Land, was released on November 17, 2020.
In February 2021, Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen started a podcast called Renegades: Born in the USA where the two talk about "their backgrounds, music and their 'enduring love of America.'" In late 2021, Regina Hicks had signed a deal with Netflix, in a venture with his and Michelle's Higher Ground to develop comedy projects. On March 4, 2022, Obama won an Audio Publishers Association (APA) Award in the best narration by the author category for the narration of his memoir A Promised Land.
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On April 5, 2022, Obama visited the White House for the first time since leaving office, in an event celebrating the 12th annual anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act.
In June 2022, it was announced that the Obamas and their podcast production company, Higher Ground, signed a multi-year deal with Audible.
In September 2022, Obama visited the White House to unveil his and Michelle's official White House portraits.
Awards and honors
Obama received the Norwegian Nobel Committee's Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, The Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education's Ambassador of Humanity Award in 2014, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2017, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award in 2018. He was named TIME Magazine's Time Person of the Year in 2008 and 2012. He also received two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album for Dreams from My Father (2006), and The Audacity of Hope (2008) as well as two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator for Our Great National Parks (2022), and Working: What We Do All Day (2023). He also won two Children's and Family Emmy Awards.
Interesting facts about Barack Obama
- Obama is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.
- As a child, he spent four years in Jakarta, Indonesia. As a result, he was able to speak Indonesian fluently.
- In high school, Obama used the nickname "Barry", which he got in Indonesia after being enrolled in St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary School as "Barry Soetoro".
- Obama promised his daughters that the family would get a dog if he was elected president. In April 2009, Senator Ted Kennedy, the brother of former President John F. Kennedy, gave Obama one of his dogs, a Portuguese water dog named Bo.
- In 2022, he narrated the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks, which later won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator.
- The Barack Obama Presidential Center is Obama's planned presidential library. It will be hosted by the University of Chicago and located in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago.
- In 2009 the saying "thanks, Obama" first appeared in a Twitter hashtag "#thanksobama". It was later adopted satirically to blame Obama for any socio-economic ills. Obama himself used the phrase in video in 2015 and 2016.
Barack Obama quotes
- "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
- "You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you."
- "When times get tough, we don't give up. We get up."
- "If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate."
- "Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world."
- "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."
See also
In Spanish: Barack Obama para niños
