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Barack Obama 's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, he ...
- Timeline of the Barack Obama presidency - Wikipedia
Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, was elected...
- Barack Obama - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barack Hussein Obama II ( / bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə / (...
- Timeline of the Barack Obama presidency (2016–2017) - Wikipedia
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Barack...
- Timeline of the Barack Obama presidency - Wikipedia
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney, to win re ...
- Overview
- The ascendance of Barack Obama
- President Obama’s domestic policies
- President Obama’s foreign policy
- What do you think?
Learn about the domestic and foreign policies of Barack Obama, president of the United States from 2008 to 2016.
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of a white American mother from Kansas and a black African father from Kenya. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree at Harvard. He served three terms in the Illinois Senate before being elected to the US Senate as the junior senator from Illinois. He went on to win the Democratic Party presidential primary against challenger Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.
Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign prominently featured the themes of hope and change, and he contrasted himself with President George W. Bush on a number of issues, particularly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the use of foreign detention centers to interrogate suspected terrorists. Obama garnered the support of a broad coalition of Democrats and independents, especially college students, single women, and African Americans, and he triumphed over Republican rival John McCain by a healthy margin. On November 4, 2008, Obama made history by becoming the first African American ever to be elected president of the United States.1 He was reelected in 2012.
President Obama came into office during the Great Recession and his administration immediately enacted relief measures to mitigate the negative effects of the economic crisis. He signed legislation aimed at stimulating the economy by extending unemployment benefits and tax cuts, and authorizing federal spending on education, green energy, and infrastructure in an attempt to create jobs and to provide temporary relief programs. Though these measures helped stave off economic catastrophe, they also significantly raised the federal debt and the federal budget deficit.2
President Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as “Obamacare." The law mandated health insurance coverage for US citizens and made it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against patients with preexisting conditions. It provided federal subsidies to insure lower-income Americans, and extended coverage to millions. However, there were some negative unintended consequences of Obamacare. Many previously-insured Americans saw their premiums skyrocket, while others lost coverage completely. Still others had to purchase plans that did not cover their prior healthcare providers.3
Other domestic achievements of the Obama administration include the extension of civil rights to the LGBTQ community. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 made it legal for openly homosexual men and women to serve in the US armed forces, while the Obama administration filed briefs with the US Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and legalize same-sex marriage.4
[What does LGBTQ mean?]
Although Obama’s presidential campaign had been sharply critical of George W. Bush’s approach to the Global War on Terror, once he came into office, Obama continued many of the anti-terrorism policies adopted by Bush after September 11th. Drone strikes targeting suspected terrorists in countries like Pakistan and Yemen, with which the United States was not officially at war, continued and even escalated. Moreover, due to domestic opposition, Obama was unable to fulfill his campaign pledge to close the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
President Obama withdrew US forces from Iraq and announced in August 2010 that the US combat mission there had officially ended. After the US withdrawal, the insurgency intensified and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) captured major cities in Iraq, including Mosul and Tikrit. Although Obama had also hoped to end US involvement in the war in Afghanistan, the deteriorating security situation ultimately convinced him to indefinitely prolong the US combat mission there.5
On May 2, 2011, the Obama administration enjoyed a major success in the War on Terror when US Navy Seals captured and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Other notable foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration were the renewal of diplomatic relations with Cuba after half a century of estrangement, and the negotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
What were President Obama’s greatest achievements in office? What were his biggest shortcomings?
How would you characterize President Obama’s foreign policy? How does it compare to the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration?
What were the pros and cons of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?
[Notes and attributions]
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in United States history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and as a community service organizer ...
