Early life and career :
Early life and career
Slide 3:
Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Childrenin Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas.
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.Obama graduated with a B.A.from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors.
Obama directed Illinois' Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African-Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.
Political positions :
Political positions
Slide 5:
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza,speaking out against the war.On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Obama addressed the largest Chicago anti-Iraq War rally to date in Daley Plaza and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.
In November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran. In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although not ruling out military action. Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions.Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.
Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups.In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier.He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" and not be ashamed of it. Before the conference, eighteen anti-abortion groups published an open letter stating, in reference to Obama's support for legal abortion: "In the strongest possible terms, we oppose Rick Warren's decision to ignore Senator Obama's clear pro-death stance and invite him to Saddleback Church anyway.
Transcript of Sen. Barack Obama's speech, as provided by Obama's campaign :
Transcript of Sen. Barack Obama's speech, as provided by Obama's campaign Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight wasn't what people have come to expect from a Barack Obama speech. It wasn't filled with lofty rhetoric or grand cadences. It did not induce tears or euphoria. It didn't have the forced, kitschy call and response tropes — "and that's the change we need!" — that defaced nearly every other major speech at this convention. At 43 minutes, nailing his dismount at 10:53 pm, it wasn't even very long. It was lean, efficient, practical and very very tough.
It was the perfect speech for a skeptical nation. In some ways, the heart of it was near the end, when Obama directly confronted a country that has lost faith in government — and an opposing party that preys on that cynicism:
"I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.
You make a big election about small things.
And you know what — it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.
I get it."
Slide 7:
"The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.
So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first."
But Barack Obama laid down an important marker at Invesco Field — and he may have convinced more than a few white working-class skeptics to give him a closer look when the debates roll around. He stood there not as an orator, but as a plausible chief executive. His message was as tight as a power-point presentation, but far more elegant. And tough — above all, tough: not an egghead, not Adlai Stevenson. No, tonight Barack Obama was a politician from the south side of Chicago, ready for the brawl of his life.