ExclusiveBarack Obama: The First Black President

Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories, but here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous and some are obscure, but each person deserves to be discovered because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans The United States of America was built on the principle that all men are created equal. However, during the 250 years of our country's existence, it has taken a series of steps for people from different backgrounds to take different leadership positions. Today, we're going to talk about the first person to serve as U.S. President who came from a definite minority. The 2008 presidential election was noteworthy for two very definite reasons. Firstly, and most memorably, it was the first time that a black person was one of the two major candidates. Barack Hussein Obama was the Democratic candidate for the presidency, but there were a few other minority individuals who also were important in this election. For instance, Obama had to beat out former first lady Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's ticket. Had she been successful in her attempt, she would have been the first woman to be the presidential candidate on a main party ticket. On the other side of the aisle, the Republican candidate John McCain was the typical candidate up to that point, a white male, but his vice presidential running mate was Sarah Palin, an Alaskan congresswoman who was the first woman to be running for vice president on a major party ticket. As these two historical minorities were attempting to run for the office of president and vice president, different belief systems were encountered by various American individuals. The victory of Obama to win the presidency in 2008 is considered one of the great underdog victory stories of the American presidency. Before the 2008 election, Obama wasn't really a common name in the political scene. He had only reached the national level four years earlier, in 2004, when he became a junior senator from Illinois for the first time. Before that, he had served in the Illinois legislature for several years. Besides the fact that he was an African-American, Obama was the first president and the only to date to be born in Hawaii or in either of the states outside of the continental US. He also was the first president and only to date who was born after the time that there were 50 states in the union because, interestingly, the two individuals who have succeeded him have been significantly older. Born in 1961, Obama's background isn't that of the typical black American. His mother was a white woman who was an anthropology student studying in Hawaii and his father, who was also named Barack Obama, was actually an African in descent from Kenya who was an exchange student studying in Hawaii. They married and Obama was born in Hawaii. But when he was only two years old, his parents separated, largely because his mother wanted to go to continue her studies in Seattle. So they separated and eventually got divorced and his father moved back to Kenya and the younger Obama only saw his father one other time after that. After his mother remarried to an Indonesian graduate student, the family moved to Indonesia until the year 1971. After that, he returned to Hawaii and spent most of his formative years there. As a young man, Obama went to college in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University where he studied economics and foreign politics. After that, he spent a few years in New York working for research groups and then he moved to Chicago where he continued working in the private sector before going to Harvard Law School. While he was at Harvard, Obama worked for the Harvard Law Review, first as an editor and then as the president of the publication, making him the first black man to hold either position. After he graduated from Harvard, he began working with a civil rights law firm and it was there that he was mentored by another former law student who was Michelle Robinson, whom he would eventually marry. He spent the next several years alternating between teaching law and practicing law in this civil rights law firm and then from there he went to the Illinois legislature. During this time, he also wrote a book called My Father's Dream. It was in the year 2004 that Obama first showed his potential as a political candidate. At the Democratic National Convention, he made a keynote speech promoting the Democratic candidate that year, John Kerry. This speech has been called the audacity of hope speech and in it, Obama very stirringly talked about his personal background as someone who seems like an unlikely candidate for great things in the nation, but how because of the wonderful opportunities in America, he was able to really make something out of himself and that that hope was something which people of all backgrounds could enjoy. Because of his eloquence and clarity of ideas, people began to notice Obama at this point. Although John Kerry was not successful in his bid for the presidency, that was the beginning of Obama's setting his sights on the White House and then in 2007, he declared his own candidacy. In the 2008 election, leading up to election day, the two candidates had to face many different issues, both foreign and domestic, and prove to the American people why they were the right person to be the next leader. As the country was beginning to face some economic downturns and the Great Recession would officially begin shortly before the election, people were unsure about the leadership which was being given by George Bush and thus there was the usual feeling that when one thing isn't going well, perhaps it would be a good idea to switch to the opposite party. In a series of debates and speeches, the two candidates had to discuss what they would do to help the economy. John McCain was largely believed to not have as clear of an idea and people began to see his response as erratic. Meanwhile, there were lots of rumors about the fact that Obama might be a His foreign-sounding name, the fact that he was born in Hawaii, lots of questions were raised about whether he even was an American citizen and whether he was a safe candidate. Especially because this was not that long after 9-11 and the age of terrorism had begun, people were suspicious of someone who seemed like an outsider or a foreigner who might not have America's best interest at heart. Very notably, at one of his events, John McCain was asking for questions and a woman took the microphone and referred to Obama as a terrorist. John McCain took the microphone and said, let me make one thing clear, Obama is not a terrorist. He is a good man. I just don't happen to agree with his policies. McCain's people and his whole campaign party didn't like that he would say things like that. They wanted him to double down on the terrorist idea but I have to say that I respect McCain and any other politician for not stooping to such base ideas because ultimately there are plenty of things we can find to say about people which are completely honest about their policies. Obviously, the concerns about terrorism and being foreign-born weren't enough to make people not vote for Obama because he and his running mate Joe Biden ended up winning in a significant victory in 2008. One of Obama's main campaign promises was that he would revitalize and reform health care in America. It was his goal for all Americans to have equal, fair access to health care and this certainly is a policy which has been enacted in many countries. However, many more conservative Americans were concerned that this smacked of socialism and they weren't sure whether it would be a good idea. In 2010, Obama's greatest piece of legislature and most lasting contribution was put into action and this was the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act known informally as Obamacare. It didn't fully go into effect until 2013. One of his promises in introducing this health care was that if you already had health care you wouldn't have to lose that health care or buy something else. Your cost wouldn't change. However, that didn't prove to be completely true and many Americans found that either they had to switch to a different more expensive policy or if they hadn't had health care before suddenly they had to get it at personal expense. It also proved unpopular with many different businesses and corporations because suddenly they found themselves having to provide health care at great expense and they would face fines otherwise. This was one of the things which caused Obama's popularity to dip in his second term and lost him some support from unions. Meanwhile, he also was facing the ongoing war on terrorism. It was in 2011 during Obama's first term in office that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was finally killed in Pakistan. This had been a goal throughout the Bush administration. However, at the same time many of Obama's critics were very leery of his non-interventionist policies regarding both the Middle East and Russia since Obama was a diplomat and ultimately he wanted to be a peacemaker and try to neutralize the very tense hostile situation between the United States and these Middle Eastern often terrorist countries. He saw that being friendly and non-aggressive would help to create a more peaceful situation but some of his critics said that because he was reticent to take a strong stance against some of these more hostile nations he didn't support the friendlier nations enough and he allowed some of these more aggressive terrorist groups to gain a stronghold and it was during his presidency that the terrorist group ISIS formed. Beginning in 2008, shortly before his election, the Great Recession began and continued to last for many years being the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Many of the policies which Obama put in place were some of the largest government restructurings which had been done in many decades. At the same time, Obamacare was the biggest restructuring that had been done to health care in America since Medicare was formed in the 1960s. In 2012, Obama went up for re-election against Republican Mitt Romney. While many conservatives supported Mitt Romney's businessman background, Obama was still quite popular at this point so he was able to win re-election. Very shortly into his first term in office, two openings on the Supreme Court came up. So Obama took this opportunity to appoint two female justices which effectively made three women in the Supreme Court for the first time in history. Near the end of his presidency, another opening came up on the Supreme Court and Obama wanted to put in a moderate at this point which would have created a more Democrat or liberal group in the Supreme Court. But conservatives were able to delay this process until after the election since they wanted to get a majority there. In 2014, at the midterm elections, there was growing dissatisfaction with the way the government was going due to the ongoing recession and dissatisfaction with not only Obamacare but some of the foreign policies as well. As a result, Republicans gained a majority not only in Congress but in many of the governorships as well, leading to the largest Republican majority since the 1920s. In contrast to many of the Democrats who came before Obama in recent years, he was very forthright in his advocacy of more liberal social causes which included not only racial issues but also gender identity and other very controversial issues. For instance, in 2015, under his watch, same-sex marriage was effectively made legal throughout the United States which was very unpopular among more conservative groups. But it was one of the policies which Obama had advocated and he also effectively ended the don't ask, don't tell bill which was involving military enrollment. Environmentalism was another issue which was very important to Obama during his presidency. During the latter part of his second term, he used his power of executive order quite freely to override the very staunchly Republican Congress in passing several environmental acts. For instance, he was involved with the Environmental Protection Agency to pass some clean air acts and legislature which would continue to reduce America's carbon footprint specifically by the year 2030. He also was involved with the Paris Climate Change Treaty. This led to more sanctions on different businesses to help reduce the pollution of air and water in the United States and throughout the world. Early in his he attempted to rekindle and repair the relationship between the United States and Cuba, one which had been very contentious since before his birth due to the Cold War situation there. He was the first president since Calvin Coolidge to visit Cuba and his efforts to restore peace with Cuba led to his being given a Nobel Peace Prize. After leaving the White House, Obama penned another book entitled The Audacity of Hope referring to his famous speech and his audio recording of this book won a Grammy Award making him one of only a few presidents to win a Grammy. Many of Obama's speeches and quotes relate to the importance of helping others. For instance, he said we were reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame but rather how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better. Speaking of the importance of individual involvement, he said 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. He also said when times get tough we don't give up, we get up. In his keynote address during the Audacity of Hope speech, he said I stand here today knowing that my story is part of the larger American story that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me and that in no other country on earth is my story even possible. The title of the speech comes from the following excerpt. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores, the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta, the hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds, the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too, the audacity of hope. Obama's whole campaign promise throughout both his terms was summed up in his slogan, yes we can, and he always tried to have that real positive feel-good kind of attitude. His proponents remember him as one of the best presidents in recent years. His detractors consider him one of the worst presidents in recent years, believing that he pushed America closer to socialism with his Obamacare and his non-interventionist policies, plus his giving of money and other goods to underprivileged people. When looking at people like Obama and other politicians or important people of minorities, I think it's important to judge them for who they are as individuals and not feel that we should either support them or not support them because of their backgrounds or their race. I think it's important to judge each individual and each candidate as what kind of a person and what kind of a leader he was. As it now has been several years since he left office, but Obama continues to be a very important figure in the political scene, it's interesting to look at his legacy and see how he continued and continues to shape the American political scene. Thank you for spending this time with me and I hope you'll join me next time for more American Legends.