Obama’s Political Career
A few of his many accomplishments were passing the Obama Care act in 2010, passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, rescuing the country from the Great Recession and ordering the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Obama grew up in Hawaii, living with his mom and temporarily with his grandparents. Later into his teen years, he left Hawaii to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles for his freshman and sophomore years, then went to Columbia University in New York. He graduated from Columbia with a degree in political science. After graduating, he was offered a job as a community organizer in Chicago’s largely poor and African American side. This job was said to be, by David Mendell, “his first deep immersion into the African American Community he had longed to both understand and belong to.” In 1988, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student. He became president of the Harvard Law Review for one year.
Obama, being the first African American president in the history of the law review, brought an immense amount of media attention to himself. Then, in 1996, Obama took a plunge into his political career when he was elected the Illinois State Senator as a Democrat. Although Republicans did not agree, he grew support from both Democrats and Republicans when he drafted legislation on ethics and health care reform. Obama met his wife Michelle while she was working at the Sidley Austin Law Firm. She is a very successful woman who is a graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She was supportive of Obama throughout his whole presidency. Obama announced his candidacy for president of the United States on February 10, 2007. He ran against Hillary Clinton, who he outlasted with 38% of the vote in a primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in June of 2008. He chooses senator Joe Biden as his running mate. His opponent was Arizona senator John S. McCain who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, who would have been the first female vice president if they had won the election. Leading up to the election, a financial crisis occured which shifted the nations focus to economic issues.
Obama and McClain both worked to show to the nation that they had the most helpful plan for economic improvement. Obama slowly become the front runner in the election, and ended up winning with 66.7 million popular votes and 365 electoral votes. In his presidency, he had many political accomplishments. For example, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, nicknamed “Obama Care” represents healthcare’s most significant expansion of coverage Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Obama Care aims to reduce the amount of uncompensated care the average American family pays for by requiring everyone to have health insurance. This is considered to be Obama’s greatest domestic achievement.
One of the biggest benefits of this act is that it slows down the rise of healthcare costs. This is beneficial to all families in the United States who are struggling to make a living. This act also allows children to stay on their parents’ health insurance up to age twenty six. This allows young adults to start their life and focus on making enough money to pay for their own health insurance. In 2009, Obama passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, nicknamed the Recovery Act. This is an economic stimulus bill that was created to help the United States recover from the economic downfall starting in 2007. This bill provided immediate relief for families, including cutting taxes by 400 dollars for individuals and by 800 dollars for families by withholding tax, giving a 2,500 dollar college tuition tax credit for 2009 and 2010, providing a deduction of sales tax on new cars through 2009, and giving 70 billion dollars to extend the alternative minimum tax shelter.
The bill also modernized federal infrastructure, increased alternative energy production, expanded health care, improved education, invested in science research and technology, and helped small businesses. This bill ultimately ended the Great Recession, but was also complex, and hard to people to understand the true sincerity that it withheld. Obama took action in finding Osama Bin Laden to insecure safety for our county. In August of 2010 United States intelligence sources came across the Abottabad compound in Pakistan. They infer that Bin Laden was living there because of how expensive the home was and the immense amount of security that it had. Later in 2011, after many meetings and discussions, Obama gave the order to raid the compound in search of Bin Laden. In the early morning of May 2, 2011, they arrive outside the compound in two black hawk helicopters. The operation took 40 minutes total, within this time Bin Laden was killed by a gunshot to to his head. Three men living there were also killed, including a son of Bin Laden and a woman. Bin Laden’s body was identified by a blood test, and a facial recognition by one of his wives. Obama decided not to release pictures of Bin Laden’s body for the sake of respecting his privacy. The killing of Osama Bin Laden provided the United States with a sense of security, and knew that he had made the right decision.
After Donald Trump’s Election
After Obama handed over the most important job in the world to Donald Trump, he took some time to relax and fall back into the norm of life. He took his family on a family trip to Indonesia, where he lived for many years as a child. Although he was enjoying his vacation, he could not spend much time away from politics. In April of 2017, he made his first public appearance since leaving office in Chicago, encouraging young students to include themselves in the changing world. Weeks after his speech, Obama and his wife Michelle announced their plans for the Obama Presidential Center in poverty stricken side of Chicago. The purpose of the center is to provide training for the next generation of leadership. Obama also made many speeches throughout the year after he left office, all of which were topics he truly cared for and felt he needed to speak about. Everyone believed that Obama would one day return to politics, seeing how important representation of Democrats is to him.
Obama also went through the hardship of dropping his daughter Malia off at Harvard for her freshman year of college. The family settled down into their new nine bedroom mansion in Washington, where they plan to stay to allow to finish high school. Throughout Obama’s presidency, he truly opened the nations eye’s to the importance of diversity. Speaking about this in 2012, Obama says, “What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.
Obama’s Impact
The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for comes with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.” Obama made a great difference to our country and truly impacted the lives of all Americans.
Sources
- Swaine, Jon. “Barack Obama: The 50 Facts You Might Not Know.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 Nov. 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/3401168/Barack-Obama-The-50-facts-you-might-not-know.html.
- Moynihan, Donald P., et al. “Barack Obama Born in Hawaii, Aug. 4, 1961.” POLITICO, POLITICO, 4 Aug. 2018, www.politico.com/story/2018/08/04/barack-obama-born-in-hawaii-aug-4-1961-752111
- “Who Is Barack Obama? Everything You Need to Know.” Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline, www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/barack-hussein-obama-ii-790.php.
- “Barack Obama.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 18 July 2018, www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369.
- Rvalentwit. “Barack Obama’s Top 5 Political Accomplishments.” Mic, Mic Network Inc., 24 Feb. 2017, mic.com/articles/169480/barack-obama-s-top-5-political-accomplishments#.DP3lE6QYM.
