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Mar 10, 2023 · Here are 28 of President Obama's biggest accomplishments as President of the United States. 1 – Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over ...
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- Early life
Barack Obama’s parents married while students at the University of Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., a Kenyan, became an economist in the government of Kenya. His mother, S. Ann Dunham, became an anthropologist. They divorced in 1964. Ann then married (and later divorced) another foreign student, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.
Where did Barack Obama attend school?
Barack Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite academy in Honolulu, and then attended Occidental College before transferring to Columbia University and earning (1983) a B.A. in political science. He graduated (1991) magna cum laude from Harvard University’s law school and was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.
What did Barack Obama do for a living?
After working as a writer and editor in Manhattan, Barack Obama became a community organizer in Chicago, lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, worked as a civil rights attorney, and then served in the Illinois Senate (1997–2004), as a U.S. senator (2005–08), and as U.S. president (2009–17).
What did Barack Obama write?
Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a teenage goatherd in rural Kenya, won a scholarship to study in the United States, and eventually became a senior economist in the Kenyan government. Obama’s mother, S. Ann Dunham, grew up in Kansas, Texas, and Washington state before her family settled in Honolulu. In 1960 she and Barack Sr. met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii and married less than a year later.
When Obama was age two, Barack Sr. left to study at Harvard University; shortly thereafter, in 1964, Ann and Barack Sr. divorced. (Obama saw his father only one more time, during a brief visit when Obama was 10.) Later Ann remarried, this time to another foreign student, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia, with whom she had a second child, Maya. Obama lived for several years in Jakarta with his half sister, mother, and stepfather. While there, Obama attended both a government-run school where he received some instruction in Islam and a Catholic private school where he took part in Christian schooling.
He returned to Hawaii in 1971 and lived in a modest apartment, sometimes with his grandparents and sometimes with his mother (she remained for a time in Indonesia, returned to Hawaii, and then went abroad again—partly to pursue work on a Ph.D.—before divorcing Soetoro in 1980). For a brief period his mother was aided by government food stamps, but the family mostly lived a middle-class existence. In 1979 Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite college preparatory academy in Honolulu.
Britannica Quiz
43 Questions About Politics (Mostly in the United States) Compiled from Britannica’s Quizzes
Obama attended Occidental College in suburban Los Angeles for two years and then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where in 1983 he received a bachelor’s degree in political science. Influenced by professors who pushed him to take his studies more seriously, Obama experienced great intellectual growth during college and for a couple of years thereafter. He led a rather ascetic life and read works of literature and philosophy by William Shakespeare, Friedrich Nietzsche, Toni Morrison, and others. After serving for a couple of years as a writer and editor for Business International Corp., a research, publishing, and consulting firm in Manhattan, he took a position in 1985 as a community organizer on Chicago’s largely impoverished Far South Side. He returned to school three years later and graduated magna cum laude in 1991 from Harvard University’s law school, where he was the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review. While a summer associate in 1989 at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin, Obama had met Chicago native Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer at the firm. The two married in 1992.
- The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Perhaps the most important law of the past half-century, the A.C.A. cemented several new principles in American health care.
- The 2009 economic stimulus package. Mr. Obama’s first order of business was to deal with the economic crash of 2008, and he did it by reaffirming Keynesian economics and turning away from the “government is the problem” mantra made popular by President Ronald Reagan.
- The auto industry “bailout.” With General Motors and Chrysler near bankruptcy in late 2008, the incoming Obama administration feared a total job loss near one million, plus a collapse of parts suppliers that would have affected even the relatively healthy Ford Motor Company.
- The Dodd-Frank Act. Mr. Obama proposed reforms to the finance industry in 2009; the following year, Congress passed and he signed this legislation. It creates multiple agencies to monitor financial markets, regulate hedge funds and intervene to avoid a repeat of the 2008 crisis—for example, by dissolving large banks without government bailouts.
- The first African American to be elected POTUS. In November 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate Senator John McCain to claim the highest elected job of the nation.
- Lifted America out of the 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis. Considering the amount of havoc the financial crisis of 2007-2008 caused, it not surprising when reporters and business experts rightly touted it as second only to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- He cracked the whip on rogue Wall Street bankers. The Obama administration also a passed host of measures and laws that were aimed at preventing a similar crisis of that sort from ever occurring.
- Massive Military pull out from Iraq. The Iraq War, which started in 2003 two years after the September 11 attacks, had become a thorn in the flesh of many Americans.
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- Barack Obama’s Early Life. Obama’s father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, as a member of the Luo ethnicity.
- Barack Obama’s Education. At age 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions inherent in his mixed racial background.
- Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney. After a two-year stint working in corporate research and at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project.
- Senator Barack Obama. In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, winning election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat from the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park.
How did Obama shape American life and politics during his presidency? Learn about his achievements, challenges, and ratings from the public and scholars.
Jan 3, 2017 · A list of the most significant achievements of President Barack Obama's two terms in office, from health care reform to climate change. The article also notes the threats to his legacy from the new Republican administration and Congress.
