biography barack obama pdf

Barack Obama

The 44 th president of the United States, Barack Obama is the first Black American who has been elected to the Oval Office. He served from 2009 until 2017.

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Quick Facts

Early life and family, marriage to michelle obama and daughters, illinois political career, 2008 presidential election and inauguration, first term as u.s. president, second term as u.s. president, notable speeches, life after the presidency, how tall is obama, books and grammy, movies about obama.

1961-present

Who Is Barack Obama?

Barack Obama was the 44 th president of the United States and the first Black commander-in-chief. He served two terms, from 2009 until 2017. The son of parents from Kenya and Kansas, Obama was born and raised in Hawaii. He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review . After serving on the Illinois State Senate, he was elected a U.S. senator representing Illinois in 2004. In 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . He and his wife, Michelle Obama , have two daughters, Malia and Sasha .

FULL NAME: Barack Hussein Obama II BORN: August 4, 1961 BIRTHPLACE: Honolulu, Hawaii SPOUSE: Michelle Obama (1992-present) CHILDREN: Malia and Sasha ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu to Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham. He has six half-siblings, including half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng who he grew up with.

Obama’s Parents

Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in Africa and eventually earned a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of going to college in Hawaii.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born on an Army base in Wichita, Kansas, during World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham’s father, Stanley, enlisted in the military and marched across Europe in General George Patton ’s army. Dunham’s mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and after several moves, ended up in Hawaii.

While studying at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Obama Sr. met fellow student Ann Dunham. They married on February 2, 1961, and Barack II was born six months later. As a child, Obama did not have a relationship with his father. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University and pursue a doctorate degree. Obama’s parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. Soon after, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya.

In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, a University of Hawaii student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born in 1970. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son’s safety and education, so at the age of 10, Obama was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and half-sister later joined them.

Obama struggled with the absence of his father, whom he saw only once more after his parents divorced when Obama Sr. visited Hawaii for a short time in 1971. “[My father] had left paradise, and nothing that my mother or grandparents told me could obviate that single, unassailable fact,” he later reflected. “They couldn’t describe what it might have been like had he stayed.”

Life in Hawaii

While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou School. He excelled in basketball and graduated with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three Black students at the school, he became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African American.

Obama later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self: “I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog... and that Santa was a white man,” he wrote. “I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking as I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me.”

Obama’s Half-Siblings

Obama’s family includes six half-siblings located around the world. He shares a mother with half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and has five paternal half-siblings.

According to Oprah Daily , he has maintained a warm and close relationship with half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng. The two grew up together and both graduated from the Punahou School. “He took his job as big brother seriously,” she said of Obama. “Our mother divorced my father, and our grandfather died. So he really ended up being the man of the house.” Soetoro-Ng campaigned for Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, and the two have shared family vacations in Indonesia and Christmases in Hawaii.

Obama’s oldest paternal half-sibling, Malik Obama, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1958, and the two didn’t meet until 1985. Malik told the Associated Press in 2004 he served as the best man at Barack’s wedding and vice versa. However, Malik notably criticized Obama’s presidency in 2016 and announced his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump in that year’s election. He attended the third presidential debate as Trump’s guest.

Barack’s other half-siblings include:

• Half-sister Auma Obama, born 1960 in Nairobi. She and Barack met for the first time when they were in their 20s in Chicago.
• Half-brother Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, born in Nairobi in 1965. He and Barack have met several times following their 1988 introduction in Kenya.
• Half-brother David Ndesandjo, born in 1967. Although it’s not clear when, he died in a motorcycle accident, according to Politico .
• Half-brother George Hussein Onyango Obama, born in 1982 in Kenya. Barack has only spoken to his youngest half-brother a few times.

Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979. After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.

After his undergrad studies, Obama worked in the business sector for two years. He moved to Chicago in 1985, where he worked on the impoverished South Side as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities.

It was during this time that Obama, who said he “was not raised in a religious household,” joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya and paid an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father, who died in a car accident in November 1982, and his paternal grandfather.

“For a long time, I sat between the two graves and wept,” Obama wrote. “I saw that my life in America—the Black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away.”

Returning from Kenya with a sense of renewal, Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met with constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. Their discussion so impressed Tribe that when Obama asked to join his team as a research assistant, the professor agreed. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review . He graduated magna cum laude with his juris doctor from Harvard Law School in 1991.

In 1989, while still in law school, Obama joined the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin as a summer associate. There, he met Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer who was assigned to be his adviser. Initially, Michelle refused to date Barack, believing that their work relationship would make the romance improper. However, she relented not long after, and the couple fell in love.

On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago’s South Side. Barack and Michelle welcomed two daughters several years later: Malia , born in 1998, and Sasha , born in 2001. The couple has stated that their personal priority is their children. The Obamas tried to make their daughters’ world as “normal” as possible while living in the White House, with set times for studying, going to bed and getting up.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer with the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004—first as a lecturer and then as a professor—and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton ’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Obama’s advocacy work led him to run for and win a seat in the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat in 1996. During his years as a state senator, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to draft legislation on ethics, as well as expand health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. He also created a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. As chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases after a number of death-row inmates were found to be innocent.

In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Undeterred, he created a campaign committee in 2002 and began raising funds to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004. With the help of political consultant David Axelrod, Obama began assessing his prospects for a Senate win.

Illinois Senator

Encouraged by poll numbers, Obama decided to run for the open U.S. Senate seat, vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. In the 2004 Democratic primary, he defeated multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes with 52 percent of the vote.

That summer, he was invited to deliver the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama emphasized the importance of unity and made veiled jabs at the George W. Bush administration and the diversionary use of wedge issues.

After the convention, Obama returned to his U.S. Senate bid in Illinois. His opponent in the general election was supposed to be Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, a wealthy former investment banker. However, Ryan withdrew from the race in June 2004 following public disclosure of unsubstantiated sexual deviancy allegations by his ex-wife, actor Jeri Ryan. That August, diplomat and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.

In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70 percent of the vote to Keyes’ 27 percent, the largest electoral victory in Illinois history. With his win, Obama became only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Sworn into office on January 3, 2005, Obama partnered with Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. Then, with Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a website to track all federal spending. Obama also spoke out for victims of Hurricane Katrina, pushed for alternative energy development, and championed improved veterans’ benefits.

In February 2007, Obama made headlines when he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He was locked in a tight battle with then-U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton . On June 3, 2008, Obama became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee after winning a sufficient number of pledged delegates during the primaries.

He campaigned on an ambitious agenda of financial reform, alternative energy, and reinventing education and health care—all while bringing down the national debt. Because these issues were intertwined with the economic well-being of the nation, he believed all would have to be undertaken simultaneously.

On November 4, 2008, Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain , 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent, in the popular vote and won election as the 44 th president of the United States. A historic victory, Obama would soon be the first Black president in the nation’s history.

Obama’s inauguration took place on January 20, 2009. When he took office at age 47, Obama inherited a global economic recession, two ongoing foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the lowest-ever international favorability rating for the United States. During his inauguration speech, Obama summarized the situation by saying, “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious, and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.”

First 100 Days and Nobel Peace Prize

Obama coaxed Congress to expand health care insurance for children and provide legal protection for women seeking equal pay. A $787 billion stimulus bill was passed to promote short-term economic growth in the face of the Great Recession. Housing and credit markets were put on life support, with a market-based plan to buy U.S. banks’ toxic assets. The government made loans to the auto industry, and new regulations were proposed for Wall Street.

Obama cut taxes for working families, small businesses, and first-time home buyers. The president also loosened the ban on embryonic stem cell research and moved ahead with a $3.5 trillion budget plan.

Obama undertook a complete overhaul of America’s foreign policy. He reached out to improve relations with Europe, China, and Russia and to open dialogue with Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. He lobbied allies to support a global economic stimulus package. He committed an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and set an August 2010 date for withdrawal of nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq. (Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to invade Iraq as part of the “war on terror” initiative, saying at an October 2002 rally: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”)

In more dramatic incidents, Obama ordered an attack on pirates off the coast of Somalia and prepared the nation for a swine flu outbreak. He signed an executive order banning excessive interrogation techniques and ordered the closing of the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba within a year—a deadline that ultimately would not be met.

In recognition of his administration’s early work, the Nobel Committee in Norway awarded Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Affordable Care Act

Obama signed his signature health care reform plan, the Affordable Care Act, into law in March 2010. The new law prohibited the denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions, allowed citizens under 26 years old to be insured under parental plans, provided for free health screenings for certain citizens, and expanded insurance coverage and access to medical care to millions of Americans.

Casually known as “Obamacare,” the hallmark legislation faced strong opposition from Congressional Republicans and the populist Tea Party movement even after its passage. In October 2013, a dispute over the federal budget and Republican desires to defund or derail the Affordable Care Act caused a 16-day shutdown of the federal government.

The rollout of the reforms were initially bumpy. October 2013 saw the failed launch of HealthCare.gov, the website meant to allow people to find and purchase health insurance. Extra technical support was brought in to work on the troubled website, which was plagued with glitches for weeks. The health care law was also blamed for some Americans losing their existing insurance policies, despite repeated assurances from Obama that such cancellations would not occur.

The legislation has faced numerous challenges in court and wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court three times. In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which required citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a tax. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that the health care law’s signature provision fell within the taxation power granted to Congress under the Constitution.

In the summer of 2015, the Supreme Court upheld part of the Act regarding health care tax subsidies. Without these tax credits, buying medical insurance might have become too costly for millions of people.

The latest Supreme Court decision about the Affordable Care Act began in 2017 when Congressional Republicans dropped the individual mandate tax penalty to zero. Texas and 17 other Republican states quickly sued to strike down the Affordable Care Act, mainly based on their opposition to its individual mandate. A Texas federal judge ruled in favor of the suit, saying that because there was no longer a tax, the law was unconstitutional.

The case was sent to an appeals court. A final ruling came in June 2021 when the U.S. Supreme Court voted , 7-2, to uphold the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that the objecting states were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision and thus had no standing to bring the challenge to court. As of January 2023, nearly 15.9 million Americans were insured through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

Killing Osama bin Laden

On April 29, 2011, Obama approved a covert operation in Pakistan to track down infamous al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden , the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks who had been in hiding for nearly 10 years. On May 2, an elite team of U.S. Navy SEALs raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and, within 40 minutes, killed bin Laden in a firefight. There were no American casualties, and the team was able to collect invaluable intelligence about the workings of al-Qaeda.

The same day, Obama announced bin Laden’s death on national television. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda,” Obama said. “As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never will be—at war with Islam.”

Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

In 2011, Obama signed a repeal of the military policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prevented openly gay troops from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. He became the first president to voice support for same-sex marriage in May 2012.

2012 Reelection and Second Term Priorities

As he did in 2008, during his campaign for a second presidential term, Obama focused on grassroots initiatives. Celebrities such as Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker aided the president’s campaign by hosting fundraising events.

In the 2012 general election, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden faced Republican opponent Mitt Romney and his vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan . On November 6, 2012, Obama won a second term as president, capturing more than 60 percent of the Electoral College.

Obama officially began his second term on January 21, 2013, when U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office. In his second inaugural address, Obama called the nation to action on such issues as climate change, health care, the federal deficit, and marriage equality. Although he made progress on some of these fronts, he also faced waning public support—his approval rating hit a low of 38 percent in September 2014, according to a Gallup poll —and a divided government, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the final two years of Obama’s administration.

NSA Wiretapping Controversy

In June 2013, after Edward Snowden shared confidential government documents with journalists, the news broke that the National Security Agency’s surveillance program was much broader than American citizens knew. Obama defended the NSA’s email monitoring and telephone wiretapping during a visit to Germany that month. “We are not rifling through the emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anyone else,” he said. Obama stated that the program had helped stop roughly 50 threats.

However, the president suffered a significant drop in his approval ratings, to 45 percent, partially due to the revelations. In October 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel revealed that the NSA had been listening in to her cell phone calls. “Spying among friends is never acceptable,” Merkel told a summit of European leaders.

ISIS Airstrikes

In late summer 2013, Obama was unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade Congress, and the international community at large, to take military action against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad , who had used chemical weapons against his country’s civilians. But there was interest in combatting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which had seized large portions of Iraq and Syria and conducted high-profile beheadings of foreign hostages.

In August 2014, Obama ordered the first airstrikes against the Islamic State on targets in Syria, though the president pledged to keep combat troops out of the conflict. Several Arab countries joined the airstrikes against the extremist group. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force,” Obama said in a speech to the United Nations. “So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.”

Efforts to dismantle the Islamic State have continued after Obama’s presidency. As recently as April 2023, a top ISIS leader was killed in an airstrike. However, U.S. airstrikes have also been responsible for a large civilian death toll. As of December 2021, more than 1,400 people have died, according to military officials. Outside watchdog organizations, like Airwars, estimate the number of casualties could be as many as several thousand.

Iran Nuclear Deal and Other Foreign Diplomacy

In September 2013, Obama made diplomatic strides with Iran. He spoke with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the phone, which marked the first direct contact between the leaders of the two countries in more than 30 years.

This groundbreaking move by Obama was seen by many as a sign of thawing in the relationship between the United States and Iran. “The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program,” reported Obama at a press conference.

In July 2015, Obama announced that, after lengthy negotiations, the United States and five world powers had reached an agreement with Iran. The deal allowed inspectors entry into Iran to make sure the country kept its pledge to limit its nuclear program and enrich uranium at a much lower level than would be needed for a nuclear weapon. In return, the United States and its partners removed the tough sanctions imposed on Iran and allowed the country to ramp up sales of oil and access frozen bank accounts. That year, Obama also traveled to India and reached a civilian nuclear agreement with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that opened the door to U.S. investment in India’s energy industry.

Elsewhere, Obama moved to reestablish diplomatic ties with Cuba in December 2014. He and Cuban President Raul Castro announced the normalizing of diplomatic relations between the countries for the first time since 1961. The policy change came after the exchange of American citizen Alan Gross and another unnamed American intelligence agent for three Cuban spies. However, the long-standing U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, instituted by President John F. Kennedy , remained in effect. On March 20, 2016, Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Cuba since 1928, as part of his larger program to establish greater cooperation between the two countries.

Just prior to the trip, on March 10, 2016, Obama met at the White House with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the first official visit by a Canadian leader in nearly 20 years.

Obama’s Climate Change Policies

In August 2015, the Obama administration announced the Clean Power Plan, a major climate change policy that included the first national standards to limit carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants and called for more renewable energy from sources like wind and solar power. Ultimately, the plan never took effect after facing backlash and lawsuits from business groups, companies, 27 states, and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell , who was then the Republican minority leader. In February 2019, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, to block the plan by putting a hold on regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, mostly from coal power plants. That June, the Clean Power Plan was replaced by with the Affordable Clean Energy rule .

Obama also worked to respond to climate change on the global level. In November 2015, he was a primary player in the international COP21 summit held outside of Paris that resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement requires all participating nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit the rise of global temperatures and also to allocate resources for the research and development of alternative energy sources.

Obama pledged that the United States would cut its emissions more than 25 percent by 2030. On October 5, 2016, the United Nations announced the Paris Climate Agreement had been ratified by a sufficient number of countries—including China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases—to allow it to take effect starting on November 4, 2016. But on June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Supreme Court Nominees

During his presidency, Obama filled two seats in the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor , who was confirmed in 2009 and is the court’s first Hispanic justice, and Elena Kagan , who was confirmed in 2010. Both justices were confirmed under a Democratic-majority Senate.

After the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, Obama once again had an open Supreme Court seat to fill. In March, the president held a press conference at the White House to present 63-year-old U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee for replacing the conservative stalwart. Garland was considered a moderate “consensus” candidate.

Garland’s nomination was immediately rebuffed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others in the Republican Party. They stated their intention to block any nominee put forward by Obama, fearing that such a confirmation would tip the balance toward a more liberal-leaning court. Garland was never granted a Senate confirmation hearing, and the seat sat empty until April 2017 when Neil Gorsuch , nominated by President Donald Trump, was confirmed.

Last Days in Office and Presidential Legacy

On January 19, 2017, Obama’s last full day in office, he announced 330 commutations for nonviolent drug offenders. The presidents granted a total of 1,715 clemencies, including commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning , the U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

Over the course of his administration, Obama led the country away from financial catastrophe as the Great Recession gave away to market stability and a declining unemployment rate. He expanded the country’s diplomatic relations, and the Affordable Care Act marked the biggest health care expansion since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Although he made inroads on immigration reform through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the United States continues to face a broken immigration system.

Obama also struggled to enact the gun control measures he hoped for, such as universal background checks and the resurrection of the federal ban on sales of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Some of the mass shootings during his time include at Sandy Hook Elementary School (20 children and six adult fatalities) in Connecticut; an Aurora, Colorado movie theater (12 fatalities); a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina (9 fatalities); and a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida (49 fatalities).

Ever the optimist, Obama shared these parting words at his last press conference with the White House press corps:

“I believe in this country. I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen. I think there’s evil in the world, but I think at the end of the day, if we work hard and if we’re true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time. That’s what this presidency has tried to be about. And I see that in the young people I’ve worked with. I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

2010 State of the Union

On January 27, 2010, Obama delivered his first State of the Union speech. During his oration, Obama addressed the challenges of the economy, proposed a fee for larger banks, announced a possible freeze on government spending in the following fiscal year, and spoke against the Supreme Court’s reversal of a law capping campaign finance spending.

Obama also challenged politicians to stop thinking of reelection and start making positive changes. He criticized Republicans for their refusal to support legislation and chastised Democrats for not pushing hard enough to get legislation passed.

He also insisted that, despite obstacles, he was determined to help American citizens through the nation’s current domestic difficulties. “We don’t quit. I don’t quit,” he said. “Let’s seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.”

2015 State of the Union

In his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama declared that the nation was out of recession. “America, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back... know this: The shadow of crisis has passed,” he said. He went on to share his vision for ways to improve the nation through free community college programs and middle-class tax breaks.

With Democrats outnumbered by Republicans in both the House and the Senate, Obama threatened to use his executive power to prevent any tinkering by the opposition on his existing policies. “We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or re-fighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system,” he said. “And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, I will veto it.”

2016 State of the Union

On January 12, 2016, Obama delivered what would be his final State of the Union address. Diverging from the typical policy-prescribing format, Obama’s message for the American people was centered around themes of optimism in the face of adversity, asking them not to let fears about security or the future get in the way of building a nation that is “clear-eyed” and “big-hearted.”

This did not prevent him from taking thinly disguised jabs at Republican presidential hopefuls for what he characterized as their “cynical” rhetoric, making further allusions to the “rancor and suspicion between the parties” and his failure as president to do more to bridge that gap.

Farewell Address

On January 10, 2017, Obama returned to his adopted home city of Chicago to deliver his farewell address. In his speech, Obama spoke about his early days in the Windy City and his continued faith in the power of Americans who participate in their democracy.

He called on politicians and American citizens to come together despite their differences. “Understand, democracy does not require uniformity,” he said. “Our founders quarreled, and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity—the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.”

Obama also appealed for tolerance along racial and ethnic lines and curbing discrimination:

“After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. All of us have more work to do. After all, if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.

“If we decline to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we diminish the prospects of our own children—because those brown kids will represent a larger share of America’s workforce. Going forward, we must uphold laws against discrimination... But laws alone won’t be enough. Hearts must change.”

He quoted Atticus Finch, the main character in Harper Lee ’s To Kill a Mockingbird , asking Americans to heed the fictional lawyer’s advice: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Obama concluded his farewell address with a call to action: “My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you,” he said. “I won’t stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days. But for now, whether you are young or whether you’re young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president—the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change—but in yours.”

After leaving the White House, the Obama family moved to a home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to allow younger daughter Sasha to continue school there.

Obama embarked on a three-nation tour in late fall 2017, meeting with such heads of state as President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

National Portrait Gallery

On February 12, 2018, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled its official portraits of Barack and Michelle. Both rendered by African American artists, Kehinde Wiley’s work featured Barack in a chair surrounded by greenery and symbolic flowers, while Amy Sherald’s portrait of the former first lady depicted her in a flowing dress, gazing back at viewers from a sea of blue.

Netflix Content and Podcasts

In May 2018, Barack and Michelle finalized a multi-year deal with Netflix to create exclusive content for the streaming service through their production company, Higher Ground. The fruits of the collaboration first appeared with the August 2019 release of American Factory , an Oscar-winning documentary about the 2015 launch of a Chinese-owned automotive glass factory in Dayton, Ohio, and the clash of differing cultures and business interests.

The Obamas helped produce the 2020 documentary Crip Camp , which was nominated for best documentary feature at the 2021 Academy Awards. Higher Ground’s children’s series Ada Twist, Scientist and We the People each won awards at the inaugural Children’s and Family Emmy Awards in 2022.

Higher Ground has expanded into podcasts, including Renegades: Born in the USA —a series of conversations between Barack and musician Bruce Springsteen about life, music, and their love for America.

Barack Obama Presidential Center

In May 2015, the Barack Obama Foundation announced plans to construct the Barack Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago. The complex would be home to a Chicago Public Library branch, a museum, as well as office and activity spaces for the foundation.

In July 2016, Jackson Park was selected as the host site. Construction began in August 2021, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held the following month with Barack, Michelle, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot all in attendance.

The project has been the subject of two lawsuits from volunteer nonprofit Protect Our Parks, which claimed the city and state of Illinois violated their public trust obligations to protect pubic land in approving the project. They were dismissed by a federal judge in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

The project is expected to be completed by 2025 , according to the Obama Foundation.

Barack Obama Presidential Library

In September 2021, the Barack Obama Presidential Library announced plans to employ a virtual model with records available online, making it the first fully digital presidential library. According to the library, around 95 percent of the Obama administration’s Presidential records were born digital, including photos, documents, tweets, and emails.

According to White House documents , Obama’s physician measured him at 6 feet 1.5 inches tall during a 2016 physical exam.

Obama published his autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance , in 1995. The work received high praise from literary figures such as Toni Morrison . It has since been printed in more than 25 languages, including Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew. The book had a second printing in 2004 and was adapted for a children’s version. The audiobook version of Dreams , narrated by Obama, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word album in 2006.

His second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , was published in October 2006. It hit No. 1 on both the New York Times and Amazon’s best-seller lists.

The first volume of Obama’s presidential memoirs, A Promised Land , was released in November 2020.

Obama is one of the world’s most recognizable basketball enthusiasts. He played during his youth and for the junior varsity and varsity teams at the Punahou School, winning a state championship with the team in 1979.

Unsurprisingly, Obama became a fan of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls during his time living in Chicago. He appeared in The Last Dance , a 2020 documentary profiling Michael Jordan ’s career and final championship season with the Bulls in 1997-98.

Obama was known for playing pickup games during his first presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, with opponents including NBA and WNBA players. According to GQ , Obama also had a basketball-themed 49 th birthday party and invited stars like LeBron James , Chris Paul , Kobe Bryant , Carmelo Anthony , Magic Johnson , and Bill Russell to play for a group of wounded veterans at Washington’s Fort McNair.

Obama also became famous for filling out NCAA men’s and women’s tournament brackets every year in a segment for ESPN called “Barack-etology.” He correctly picked the men’s March Madness champion only once during his presidency: the University of North Carolina Tarheels in 2009.

In 2021, Obama joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner to help promote the league’s community efforts throughout the continent.

Other Hobbies

Obama has said he grew up a huge comic book fan and was particularly fond of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian . He also told students at a 2015 virtual field trip that some of his favorite books included The Hardy Boys , Treasure Island , The Hobbit , and The Lord of the Rings .

As for movies and TV, Obama has cited the first two Godfather movies as his top films, and classics like Casablanca (1942), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) among his favorites . Obama is a fan of the HBO drama The Wire , as well as Mad Men , Entourage , Downton Abbey , House of Cards , and The Knick . According to a 2013 article , he is also a Star Trek fan and enjoyed watching live sports at the White House and aboard Air Force One. In addition to the NBA’s Bulls, Obama is also a fan of Chicago’s MLB team the White Sox.

In terms of music, Obama told Rolling Stone in 2008 he had “probably 30” Bob Dylan songs on his iPod. He also said he listens to The Grateful Dead; Earth, Wind and Fire; Elton John ; and The Rolling Stones. However, his favorite artist of all-time is Stevie Wonder .

Obama isn’t totally old school; he follows contemporary media and releases a yearly list of his favorite books music and television from the prior 12 months.

Barack and Michelle’s first date in Chicago was the focus of the 2016 romantic drama film Southside With You ; Parker Sawyer played Barack.

That same year, Netflix released the film Barry about Obama’s time at Columbia University.

In August 2021, HBO released the documentary series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union in conjunction with the former president’s 60 th birthday.

• Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old.
• We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.
• Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.
• No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another.
• We are a nation that endures because of the courage of those who defend it.
• I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
• So don’t let anyone tell you that change is not possible. Don’t let them tell you that standing out and speaking up about injustice is too risky. What’s too risky is keeping quiet. What’s too risky is looking the other way.
• Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law—for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
• I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.
• It is easier to start wars than to end them.
• We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and strengthen our union once more.
• It’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.
• What Washington needs is adult supervision.
• When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.
• You’ve shown us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good. In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion.
• If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
• My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.
• 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.
• Hope—hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation.
• If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.
• Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.
• And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear... we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words—yes, we can.

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Barack Obama

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 19, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Barack Obama , the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president, was elected over Senator John McCain of Arizona on November 4, 2008. Obama, a former senator from Illinois whose campaign’s slogan was “Change we can believe in” and “Yes we can,” was subsequently elected to a second term over Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. 

A winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Obama’s presidency was marked by the landmark passage of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”; the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six; the Iran Nuclear Deal and the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court.

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. He won a scholarship to study economics at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Wichita, Kansas , whose father had worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Did you know? Not only was Obama the first African American president, he was also the first to be born outside the continental United States. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. He would see his son only once more before dying in a car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta in the late 1960s, where Ann worked at the U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

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. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 with a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Why Was the Election of 2008 Important?

Learn about the events surrounding the historical election of 2008: how Barack Obama became the Democratic presidential contender against Hillary Clinton and how he ultimately beat John McCain to become the first black president in U.S. history.

Inaugural Address: Barack H. Obama

An excerpt from Barack H. Obama’s inaugural address on Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Ted Sorensen, JFK’s 1960 Campaign speechwriter, tells the story of a congratulatory misunderstanding on the campaign trail.

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. For the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.

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. Despite tight Republican control during his years in the state senate, Obama was able to build support among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics and health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs and worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U. S. House of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq . 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars…I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

The Obama Years: A Nine-Part Oral History

The former president and 24 other members of his administration weigh in on their proudest moments, their regrets and the belief that they left it all on the field.

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, shooting to national prominence with his eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively unknown, young senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction .

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , he created a website that tracks all federal spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana , on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets to welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope , in October 2006.

2008 Presidential Campaign

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States. A victory in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the early frontrunner, the former first lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton , whom he outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate for president and served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain , a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build support at the grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life story and inspiring message of hope and change to draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in the U.S. and on a campaign trip abroad. They worked to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they had the best plan for economic improvement. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for office from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds ( Virginia , Indiana) and key battleground states ( Florida , Ohio ) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic nature of his win while reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

Barack Obama’s First Term as President

Barack Obama was sworn in as the first Black president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in the cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the same Bible President Abraham Lincoln used at his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days into office, giving legal protection in the fight for equal pay for women. To address the financial crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto industry and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq. He was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as universal healthcare or “ Obamacare .” Its goal was to give every American access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, but then providing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011,  Osama bin Laden , the mastermind of the September 11 Attacks , was captured and killed by Seal Team Six. No Americans were lost in the operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda .

Barack Obama’s Second Term as President

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Russian proposal that it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of his international diplomacy was his work on the Iran Nuclear Deal , which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit of enriched uranium in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump , withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories, but bound by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny .” 

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Barack Obama: A Pocket Biography of Our 44th President

Related Papers

Comparative American Studies

Julie A Mullaney

Gregoria Petrea

2016 Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture

Kirt Wilson

By analyzing the relationships among three communicative phenomena--the symbolic proposition of President Obama's vision of civil society, commemorative rhetoric about the civil rights movement, and contemporary activism to remediate racial injustice--Dr. Wilson reinterprets the conditions that have led to a pessimistic view of current interracial relations.He claims that the unrealized hopes for Obama's presidency and recent instances of racial conflict invite us to consider what we have forgotten about our past. It is more possible today than it was in 2008 to construct different memories of the black freedom struggle, and these alternatives provide new resources for political action and communication. While some of these memories force us to abandon the ideal of a "perfect union," they may offer a better foundation for creating a just society.

Alessandro Capone

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright

Monia Dal Checco

Howard Journal of Communications

Andre E . Johnson

In this article, the author argues that Obama’s speech after the Zimmerman verdict also signaled a change on how Obama addressed Black audiences. In short, although Obama generally eschewed race after the Gates incident, his messaging to African Americans about race led him to become, as Ta-Nehisi Coates called him, the “scold of Black America.” Therefore, first, the author examines Obama’s rhetoric when talking to or about African Americans after the Gates incident. In short, although some may argue that Obama adopts a prophetic persona and engages in prophetic speech when addressing Black Americans, he suggests that Obama politically engages in a perpetual Sister Souljah moment. Second, he moves to Obama’s rhetoric after the Zimmerman verdict and after a Missouri grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for shooting to death Michael Brown. Specifically, by examining 2 speeches—the 50th anniversary of Selma and the eulogy for the Emanuel Nine as rhetoric of commemoration, the author argue that Obama’s rhetoric of race indeed shifted and issues germane to African Americans found their way into the national spotlight again.

European journal of American studies

Gloria Wekker

American Journal of Public Health

Lisa Bowleg

Jan Hoffmeister

In this paper I argue that the Obama presidency can be understood to mean the end of the African American freedom struggle in two conflicting ways. It can either be seen, namely, as the goal towards which black politics has always been directed, making Obama the legitimate heir to Douglass, Malcolm, and King. Or it can be construed as the finish of the black nationalist tradition in that it has finally aligned the African American community with American civil religion. Both interpretations are valuable and will find supporters. Meanwhile, however, the persistence of nihilistic voices from the hyperghettos underline the fact that black people as a group have not yet put to rest the race question with the same ease with which Obama dealt with his historical heritage.

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Barack Obama: Life in Brief

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States—becoming the first African American to serve in that office—on January 20, 2009.

The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama grew up in Hawaii. Leaving the state to attend college, he earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, where he met and married Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in 1992. Their two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha (Sasha), were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996 and served there for eight years. In 2004, he was elected by a record majority to the US Senate from Illinois and, in February 2007, announced his candidacy for president. After winning a closely fought contest against New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Obama handily defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee for president, in the general election.

When President Obama took office, he faced very significant challenges. The economy was officially in a recession, and the outgoing administration of George W. Bush had begun to implement a controversial "bail-out" package to try to help struggling financial institutions. In foreign affairs, the United States still had troops deployed in difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the first two years of his first term, President Obama was able to work with the Democratic-controlled Congress to improve the economy, pass health-care reform legislation, and withdraw most US troops from Iraq. After the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 2010, the president spent significant time and political effort negotiating, for the most part unsuccessfully, with congressional Republicans about taxes, budgets, and the deficit. After winning reelection in 2012, Obama began his second term focused on securing legislation on immigration reform and gun control, neither of which he was able to achieve. When the Republicans won the Senate in 2014, Obama refocused on actions that he could take unilaterally, invoking his executive authority as president. In foreign policy, Obama concentrated during the second term on the Middle East and climate change.

Obama left the presidency, at age fifty-five, after his constitutionally limited two terms ended on January 20, 2017. He announced plans to remain in Washington, DC, until his younger daughter finished high school and, as a former president, to play a restrained but active role in public affairs. He also devoted energy to raising money and planning for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Michael Nelson

Professor of Political Science Rhodes College

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Barack obama presidency page, barack obama essays, life in brief (current essay), life before the presidency, campaigns & elections, domestic affairs, foreign affairs, family life, impact and legacy, related video.

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President Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to parents Barack H. Obama, Sr., and Stanley Ann Dunham. His parents divorced when he was 2 years old and he was raised by his mother, Ann, and maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His mother later married Lolo Soetoro, and his sister Maya was born in 1970. (He also has several siblings on his father’s side.)

Obama moved with his family to Indonesia in 1967, where he attended local Indonesian schools and received additional lessons via U.S. correspondence courses under his mother’s direction.

He returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents in 1971 and attended Punahou School, from which he graduated in 1979. Obama first attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, before transferring to Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1983.

After graduation, Obama briefly worked as an analyst at Business International Corporation in New York City, before changing his career direction toward community service organizing. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1985 when he accepted a job with the Developing Communities Project. Eventually rising to the role of Director, Obama worked with low-income communities on Chicago’s South Side, often collaborating with local religious organizations and civic groups.

After three years of community organizing, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. After completing his first year, he worked as a summer associate at Chicago corporate law firm of Sidley & Austin, where his mentor was Michelle Robinson, his future wife.

Obama was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, prior to graduating magna cum laude in 1991. He returned to Chicago in 1992 and served as the Illinois Executive Director of PROJECT VOTE!. In 1993, he was hired as an associate at the firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Gallard, where he largely worked on voting rights cases.

Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson were married in 1992 at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. They have two daughters, Malia and Natasha “Sasha.” In the summer of 1995, Obama’s first book was published. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance detailed his personal history and search for identity.

Political Career

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from the thirteenth district. As a State Senator, he served as Democratic Spokesperson for Public Health and Welfare Committee and Co-Chairman of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, in addition to being a member of the Judiciary and Revenue Committees. He also worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago from 1996 until 2004, teaching three courses per year.

Obama was elected to a second term in the Illinois State Senate in November 1998. In 2000, Obama made his first run for the U.S. Congress when he sought the Democratic U.S. House seat in Illinois First District. He lost to incumbent Representative Bobby Rush by a margin of more than 2-to-1.

In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, held in Boston, Massachusetts. He was elected as the junior Senator from Illinois in November 2004. While serving as U.S. Senator from Illinois, Obama completed his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , published in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination at Invesco Stadium in Denver, Colorado on August 28, 2008. On November 4, 2008, Obama became the first African-American to be elected President. He resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate on November 16, 2008.

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

Presidential Administration

Domestic policy decisions dominated the first 100 Days of the Obama administration. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which encourages fair pay for all workers and established new methods of protesting unfair paychecks, was the first signed legislation of the administration. To combat the effects of the Great Recession, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (known as the Recovery Act) in February 2009, which outlined a policy to create additional jobs, extend unemployment benefits, and established the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

In March 2010, after announcing his intent for healthcare reform in a 2009 address to Congress, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”), establishing the most sweeping reforms of the American healthcare system in recent history. To improve access to healthcare coverage, the Act included a Patient’s Bill of Rights to end discrimination by insurance companies based on pre-existing conditions. Among its other reforms, the Act strengthened Medicare and required the insurer to cover preventative screenings for cancer, diabetes, and blood pressure disorders.

The Obama administration centered its foreign policy on drawing down the number of American forces stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama also committed to destroying the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) terrorist organization through the administration’s comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, including systematic airstrikes against ISIL, providing additional support to forces fighting ISIL on the ground, increased cooperation with counter-terrorism partners, and humanitarian assistance to civilians.

On May 2, 2011, President Obama announced to the nation that the United States had conducted an operation that resulted in the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Following leads from the intelligence community, the raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was conducted with no American casualties.

President Obama also obtained congressional approval for military action against Syria following the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on civilians. Negotiations with Russia led to the signing of a New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) Treaty, which limited the two countries to fewer strategic arms over the course of seven years through inspections and verification. In 2015, the U.S. and other partners reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which aimed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and committed Iran to further monitoring of all Iranian nuclear activities.

President Obama announced plans to normalize foreign relations with Cuba in conjunction with President Castro, including reopening the U.S. Embassy in Havana in July 2015. The First Family visited Cuba in March 2016, making President Obama the first sitting President to visit the nation in 90 years.

Post-Presidency

President and Mrs. Obama returned to their lives as private citizens on January 20, 2017.

Works Published by Barack Obama

• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance , 1995
• The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , 2006
• Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to my Daughters , 2010
• A Promised Land, 2020

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Politics and ascent to the presidency of Barack Obama

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In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois Senate, where, most notably, he helped pass legislation that tightened campaign finance regulations, expanded health care to poor families, and reformed criminal justice and welfare laws. In 2004 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican Alan Keyes in the first U.S. Senate race in which the two leading candidates were African Americans. While campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Obama gained national recognition by delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. The speech wove a personal narrative of Obama’s biography with the theme that all Americans are connected in ways that transcend political, cultural, and geographical differences. The address lifted Obama’s once obscure memoir onto best-seller lists, and, after taking office the following year, Obama quickly became a major figure in his party. A trip to visit his father’s home in Kenya in August 2006 gained international media attention, and Obama’s star continued ascending. His second book, The Audacity of Hope (2006), a mainstream polemic on his vision for the United States, was published weeks later, instantly becoming a major best seller . In February 2007 he announced at the Old State Capitol in Springfield , Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln had served as a state legislator, that he would seek the Democratic Party ’s presidential nomination in 2008. (For coverage of the 2008 election, see United States Presidential Election of 2008 .)

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Obama’s personal charisma , stirring oratory , and his campaign promise to bring change to the established political system resonated with many Democrats, especially young and minority voters. On January 3, 2008, Obama won a surprise victory in the first major nominating contest, the Iowa caucus , over Sen. Hillary Clinton , who was the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. Five days later, however, Obama finished second to Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, and a bruising—and sometimes bitter—primary race ensued. Obama won more than a dozen states—including Illinois, his home state, and Missouri , a traditional political bellwether—on Super Tuesday , February 5. No clear front-runner for the nomination emerged, however, as Clinton won many states with large populations, such as California and New York . Obama produced an impressive string of victories later in the month, handily winning the 11 primaries and caucuses that immediately followed Super Tuesday, which gave him a significant lead in pledged delegates. His momentum slowed in early March when Clinton won significant victories in Ohio and Texas . Though still maintaining his edge in delegates, Obama lost the key Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Two weeks later he lost a close contest in Indiana but won the North Carolina primary by a large margin, widening his delegate lead over Clinton. She initially had a big lead in so-called superdelegates (Democratic Party officials allocated votes at the convention that were unaffiliated with state primary results), but, with Obama winning more states and actual delegates, many peeled away from her and went to Obama. On June 3, following the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota , the number of delegates pledged to Obama surpassed the total necessary to claim the Democratic nomination.

On August 27 Obama became the first African American to be nominated for the presidency by either major party and went on to challenge Republican Sen. John McCain for the country’s highest office. McCain criticized Obama, still a first-term senator, as being too inexperienced for the job. To counter, Obama selected Joe Biden , a veteran senator from Delaware who had a long resume of foreign policy expertise, to be his vice presidential running mate. Obama and McCain waged a fierce and expensive contest. Obama, still bolstered by a fever of popular support, eschewed federal financing of his campaign and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it coming in small donations and over the Internet from a record number of donors. Obama’s fund-raising advantage helped him buy massive amounts of television advertising and organize deep grassroots organizations in key battleground states and in states that had voted Republican in previous presidential cycles.

The two candidates offered a stark ideological choice for voters. Obama called for a swift withdrawal of most combat forces from Iraq and a restructuring of tax policy that would bring more relief to lower- and middle-class voters, while McCain said the United States must wait for full victory in Iraq and charged that Obama’s rhetoric was long on eloquence but short on substance. Just weeks before election day, Obama’s campaign seized on the economic meltdown that had resulted from the catastrophic failure of U.S. banks and financial institutions in September, calling it a result of the Republican free-market-driven policies of the eight-year administration of George W. Bush .

Obama won the election, capturing nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. Not only did he hold all the states that John Kerry had won in the 2004 election, but he also captured a number of states (e.g., Colorado , Florida , Nevada , Ohio , and Virginia ) that the Republicans had carried in the previous two presidential elections. On election night tens of thousands gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to see Obama claim victory. Shortly after his win, Obama resigned from the Senate. On January 20, 2009, hundreds of thousands turned out in Washington, D.C. , to witness Obama taking the oath of office as president .

In an effort to improve the image of the United States abroad—which many believed had been much damaged during the Bush administration—Obama took a number of steps that indicated a significant shift in tone. He signed an executive order that banned excessive interrogation techniques; ordered the closing of the controversial military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay , Cuba , within a year (a deadline that was not met); proposed a “fresh start” to strained relations with Russia ; and traveled to Cairo in June 2009 to deliver a historic speech in which he reached out to the Muslim world . Largely as a result of these efforts, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize . Yet some left-wing critics complained that he actually had adopted and even escalated most of the war and national security policies of his predecessor. Indeed, when Obama accepted the Nobel Prize in December, he said, “Evil does exist in the world” and “there will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” Notwithstanding that tough talk, there were others who criticized Obama for issuing only a mild condemnation of the Iranian government’s crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents following a disputed election in June 2009. Moreover, the Obama administration’s handling of national security was questioned by some when a Nigerian terrorist trained in Yemen was thwarted in an attempt to bomb an airliner headed for Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

After enjoying soaring popularity early in his term, Obama became the target of increasing criticism , largely due to the slow pace of economic recovery and continued high unemployment rates but also because of widespread opposition to Democratic efforts to reform health care insurance policy, the signature issue of the Obama presidential campaign. Obama had entered office promising to bring an end to partisan squabbling and legislative gridlock, yet, in the wake of the failure to obtain any real bipartisan cooperation, congressional Democrats, according to Republicans, had settled into governing without substantive Republican involvement. Republicans, on the other hand, according to Democrats, had become the “Party of No,” seeking to obstruct Democratic legislative initiatives without offering real alternative proposals. It was in this highly polarized environment that Obama and the Democrats attempted to enact health care insurance reform.

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The Story of Barack Obama: An Inspiring Biography for Young Readers (The Story of Biographies) Paperback – July 28, 2020

Help kids ages 6 to 9 discover the life of Barack Obama―a story about hope, change, and breaking down barriers

Barack Obama was the first African American president of the United States. Before he made history fighting for the environment, healthcare, and civil rights, he was a smart kid who knew he wanted to help others. He worked hard to become a lawyer, a senator, and then president, all so that he could make people's lives better.

With this Barack Obama children's book, you can explore how he went from being a boy growing up in Hawaii to one of the most celebrated leaders in the world. How will his extraordinary journey inspire you?

• Independent reading ―This Barack Obama biography is broken down into short chapters and simple language so kids 6 to 9 can read and learn on their own.
• Critical thinking ―Kids will learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Barack's life, find definitions of new words, discussion questions, and more.
• A lasting legacy ―Find out how Barack Obama progressed from a kid to the president of the United States with a helpful timeline.

If you've been searching for a Barack Obama children's book , The Story of Barack Obama has everything you need!

Discover activists, artists, athletes, and more from all across history with the rest of The Story Of series, including famous figures like: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.

• Part of series The Story of Biographies
• Print length 68 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 1 - 2
• Lexile measure 730L
• Dimensions 5.83 x 0.16 x 8.27 inches
• Publisher Callisto Kids
• Publication date July 28, 2020
• ISBN-10 1647391059
• ISBN-13 978-1647391058
• See all details

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Meet impressive people from across history with more books from The Story Of biography series for kids:

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About the author.

TONYA LESLIE, PhD is an educational consultant, editor, program developer, professional development service provider, and children’s book author. Dr. Leslie has worked with pioneering institutions such as PBS, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Sesame Workshop, and Girl Scouts of the USA. Read more at www.tonyaleslie.com.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Callisto Kids (July 28, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 68 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1647391059
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1647391058
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 6 - 8 years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 730L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 1 - 2
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.83 x 0.16 x 8.27 inches
• #29 in Children's US Presidents & First Ladies Biographies
• #36 in Children's Political Biographies (Books)
• #142 in Children's Multicultural Biographies

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Tonya leslie.

I was in first grade when I wrote my first book. I was probably in third grade when I illustrated my second book. Writing is my happy place. When I write I feel like words sing to me, asking me to release them to the page. I hope that the books I write make a difference to the children who read them.

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Customers find the book easy to read and perfect for little ones. They also say the author does a great job telling the stories of those she writes about.

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"...It was an easy read for him and he enjoyed learning about Barack’s interesting past. He got high scores on his project!" Read more

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• 2024 Elections

A Full Transcript of Barack Obama’s Speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

B arack Obama was the keynote speaker of the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the 63-year-old former President tapped into his renowned oratory skills to honor his former vice president President Joe Biden, warn the party against complacency, and rally support for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.

Read More: ‘Yes, She Can’: A Breakdown of Barack Obama’s 2024 DNC Speech in Support of Kamala Harris

The following transcript was prepared and provided to TIME by Rev , using AI-powered software, and it was reviewed and edited for accuracy by TIME staff.

Chicago—it’s good to be home. It is good to be home. And I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up. I am feeling ready to go even if I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama. 

Read More: ‘Hope Is Making a Comeback’: The Key Moments From Michelle Obama’s 2024 DNC Speech

I am feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible; because we have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her, someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you, the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris. 

It’s been 16 years since I had the honor of accepting this party’s nomination for President. And I know that’s hard to believe, because I have not aged a bit. But it’s true. And looking back, I can say, without question, that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best. And that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as Vice President.

Other than some common Irish blood, Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers. And as we worked together for eight—sometimes pretty tough—years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts, his experience; it was his empathy and his decency and his hard earned resilience, his unshakeable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot. And over the last four years, those are the values America has needed most.

At a time when millions of our fellow citizens were sick and dying, we needed a leader with the character to put politics aside and do what was right. At a time when our economy was reeling, we needed a leader with the determination to drive what would become the world’s strongest recovery: 15 million jobs, higher wages, lower healthcare costs. At a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality, we needed a leader who was steady and brought people together, and was selfless enough to do the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country. 

History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding President who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. And I am proud to call him my President, but I am even prouder to call him my friend.

( Crowd chants: “Thank you, Joe!” )

Now, the torch has been passed. Now, it is up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake, it will be a fight. For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, for all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country. A country where too many Americans are still struggling, where a lot of Americans don’t believe government can help. And as we gather here tonight, the people who will decide this election are asking a very simple question: Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future, about my children’s future, about our future together? 

One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over that question. Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.

President Obama: It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that Trump is afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd sizes 🤏 pic.twitter.com/cstJYrpiCg — Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 21, 2024

It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a President, it’s just dangerous. 

The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress that would’ve helped secure our southern border, because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign. He doesn’t—

( Crowd boos. ) Do not boo. Vote. 

He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedom, since it won’t affect his life. And most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided: between us and them, between the real Americans who—of course—support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those other people back in their place. It is one of the oldest tricks in politics, from a guy whose act has—let’s face it—gotten pretty stale.

We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. 

America’s ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris. 

And Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion. As you heard from Michelle, Kamala was not born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got. And she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower. She’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand. 

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse. As an Attorney General of the most populous state in the country, she fought big banks and for-profit colleges, securing billions of dollars for the people they had scammed. After the whole mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my Administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement. It didn’t matter that I was a Democrat, didn’t matter that she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa—she was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.

As Vice President, she helped take on the drug companies to cap the cost of insulin, lower the cost of healthcare, give families with kids a tax cut. And she is running for President with real plans to lower costs even more and protect Medicare and Medicaid and sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions. 

In other words, Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours. As President, she won’t just cater to her own supporters and punish those who refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of every American. That’s who Kamala is. 

And in the White House, she will have an outstanding partner in Governor Tim Walz. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. I love this guy. Tim is the kind of person who should be in politics: born in a small town, served his country, taught kids, coached football, took care of his neighbors. He knows who he is, and he knows what’s important. You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant; they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff. They have been through some stuff. That’s right. 

Together, Kamala and Tim have kept faith with America’s central story: a story that says, “We are all created equal.” All of us endowed with certain inalienable rights. That everyone deserves a chance. That even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other. That’s Kamala’s vision. That’s Tim’s vision. That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next 11 weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision. 

Now, it won’t be easy. The other side knows it’s easier to play on people’s fears and cynicism. It always has been. They will tell you that government is inherently corrupt, that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers, and since the game is rigged it’s okay to take what you want and just look after your own. That’s the easy path. 

We have a different task. Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver. And, and in doing that, we can’t just point to what we’ve already accomplished. We can’t just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this. She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country. That is a priority. And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.

On healthcare, we should all be proud of the enormous progress that we’ve made through the Affordable Care Act, providing millions of people access to affordable coverage, protecting millions more from unscrupulous insurance practices. And I’d noticed, by the way, that since it’s become popular, they don’t call it Obamacare no more.

But Kamala knows we can’t stop there, which is why she’ll keep working to limit out-of-pocket costs. Kamala knows that if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But she also knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of governors like Tim Walz, who said, if you’ve got the skills and the drive, you shouldn’t need a degree to work for state government. 

And in this new economy, we need a President who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country, who wake up every single day to do the essential, often thankless work: to care for our sick, to clean our streets, to deliver our packages. We need a President who will stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions. And Kamala will be that President. 

Yes, she can. 

( Crowd chants: “Yes, she can!” ) Yes, she can. 

A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress. Because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we are all better off. They understand that when every child gets a good education, the whole economy gets stronger. When women are paid the same as men for doing the same job, all families benefit. They understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from their parents. Just like we can keep our streets safe while also building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve and eliminating bias that will make it better for everybody. 

Donald Trump and his well-heeled donors, they don’t see the world that way. For them, one group’s gains is necessarily another group’s loss. For them, freedom means that the powerful can do pretty much what they please, whether it’s fire workers trying to organize a union or put poison in our rivers or avoid paying taxes like everybody else has to do. 

Well, we have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work hard. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours. That’s okay. 

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where “we, the people” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do. 

That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or they don’t bother to vote. 

Now that approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division, but it won’t work for us. To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices. And that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process. 

After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.

And by the way, that does not just matter to the people in this country. The rest of the world is watching to see if we can actually pull this off. No nation, no society has ever tried to build a democracy as big and as diverse as ours before. One that includes people that, over decades, have come from every corner of the globe. One where our allegiances and our community are defined not by race or blood but by a common creed. And that’s why when we uphold our values, the world’s a little brighter. When we don’t, the world’s a little dimmer—and dictators and autocrats feel emboldened, and over time, we become less safe. 

We shouldn’t be the world's policeman and we can’t eradicate every cruelty and injustice in the world. But America can be and must be a force for good: discouraging conflict, fighting disease, promoting human rights, protecting the planet from climate change, defending freedom, brokering peace. That’s what Kamala Harris believes and so do most Americans. 

( Crowd chants: “Yes, we can!” )

I know these ideas can feel pretty naive right now. We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other. 

But here’s the good news, Chicago: All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. Because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone. 

You know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this these past few months because, as Michelle mentioned, this summer we lost her mom, Ms. Marian Robinson. And I don’t know that anybody has ever loved their mother-in-law any more than I love mine. Mostly it’s because she was funny and wise and the least pretentious person I knew. That and she always defended me with Michelle when I messed up. ( Crowd laughs. ) I’d hide behind her. 

But I also think one of the reasons Marian and I became so close was she reminded me of my grandmother, the woman who helped raise me as a child. And on the surface, the two of them did not have a lot in common. One was a Black woman from right here, south side of Chicago, right down the way—( Crowd cheers. )—went to Englewood High School. The other was a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas. ( Crowd cheers. ) Now I know there aren’t that many people from Peru. ( Crowd laughs. )

And yet they shared a basic outlook on life. They were strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regardless of the barriers they encountered—and women growing up in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s, they encountered barriers—they still went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakeable foundation of love for their children and their grandchildren. In that sense, they both represented an entire generation of working people, who through war and depression, discrimination, and limited opportunity, helped build this country. A lot of them toiled every day at jobs that were often too small for them and didn’t pay a lot. They willingly went without just to keep a roof over their family’s heads, just to give their children something better. 

But they knew what was true. They knew what mattered: things like honesty and integrity, kindness, and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things: a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others, and, most of all, seeing their children do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves. 

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between, we have all had people like that in our lives. People like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America. People like Tim’s parents, who taught him about the importance of service. Good, hardworking people, who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.

As much as any policy or program, I believe that’s what we yearn for: a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of, what Lincoln called on the eve of civil war, our “bonds of affection.” An America that taps what he called “the better angels of our nature.” 

That is what this election is about. And I believe that’s why, if we each do our part over the next 77 days, if we knock on doors, if we make phone calls, if we talk to our friends, if we listen to our neighbors, if we work like we’ve never worked before, if we hold firm to our convictions, we will elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States and Tim Walz as the next Vice President of the United States. We will elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we all believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal, and more free. So let’s get to work. 

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

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2024 Election

With humor and hope, obamas warn against trump, urge democrats to 'do something'.

Former US President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on August 20, 2024. Charly Triballeu/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The NPR Network will be reporting live from Chicago throughout the week bringing you  the latest on the Democratic National Convention .

Barack and Michelle Obama, Chicago’s favorite power couple, declared “hope is making a comeback” with Vice President Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket

The former president and first lady headlined the second night of the Democratic National Convention, delivering a message of exhilaration at the possibility of electing the first woman in history to the White House – and the critical importance, they added, of preventing former President Donald Trump from securing a second term.

“We want something better. We want to be better,” Obama said. “And the joy and excitement we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.”

They also warned, from firsthand experience, of the battle ahead to elect Harris – a path marred by what the former president called the “bluster, bumbling and chaos” of Trump on the campaign trail.

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” Michelle Obama said of Trump’s campaign in 2016. “His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” the former first lady quipped to raucous applause.

‘Her story is your story’

Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday in Chicago. Brynn Anderson/AP hide caption

As the opening act to her husband’s keynote address, Michelle Obama was welcomed by a raucous crowd that cheered her loudly throughout her remarks.

The former first lady said hope has, until recently, been in short supply.

Her own feelings of dread about the future were compounded, she said, by her own personal grief – the loss of her mother, who passed in May.

The last time Michelle was in her hometown Chicago, she said, was to memorialize Marian Robinson.

“I still feel her loss so profoundly,” Michelle Obama said. “I wasn’t even sure I’d be steady enough to stand before you tonight. But my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty I feel to honor her memory, and to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future.”

The sense of “hard work, humility and decency” instilled by Robinson in her, she said, was also instilled in Harris by her own mother, who immigrated from India at the age of 19.

“She’d often tell her daughter, ‘Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something!’” Michelle Obama said.

Harris set about to do just that, she said, as a district attorney, as attorney general of California, and as vice president of the United States.

“She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency, and she is one of the most dignified – a tribute to her mother, to my mother, and probably to your mother too, the embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country,” Michelle Obama said.

“Her story is your story. It’s my story. It’s the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life,” she added.

That story stands in sharp contrast, the former first lady said, to the story of former President Trump – a tale she described as “failing forward.”

She took jabs at Trump’s inheritance of generational wealth and his business failures – a marked departure from someone who during the 2016 Democratic convention said, “When they go low, we go high.”

“If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead,” Michelle Obama said. “We don’t get to change the rules so we always win.”

That also means that Americans have to “put our heads down” and power through the “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies” she said Trump will spread on the campaign trail.

“As we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt,” Michelle Obama said. “Let us not forget what we are up against.

“So consider this to be your official ask,” she said. “Michelle Obama is asking, no, telling you, to do something!”

‘We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos’’

Former President Barack Obama hugs his wife Former first lady Michelle Obama during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday in Chicago. Morry Gash/AP hide caption

Former President Obama, too, warned of what to expect from Trump on the campaign trail.

“The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size,” he said while making measuring gestures with his hands. “It just goes on and on.”

“The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day,” Obama said. “From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.”

Watch his full remarks:

But Obama described Americans as a people growing wise to Trump’s antics.

Trump’s bag of old political tricks – spreading an “us and them” mentality – “has gotten pretty stale,” he said.

“We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos,” Obama added. We’ve seen that movie. And we all know that the sequel’s usually worse.”

America is ready for a new chapter, Obama said, led by “President Kamala Harris.”

Obama declared Harris is ready for the job. He said she spent her career as a prosecutor fighting for victims of sexual abuse and, fighting big banks and for-profit colleges, and as vice president, helping to cap the price of insulin and lower health care costs.

“She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower,” he said. “She’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.”

And in Walz – “I love this guy,” Obama said – Harris has found the perfect running mate, he added.

“A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired old debates that keep stifling progress, because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we’re all better off,” he said.

The former president also paid homage to his vice president, President Biden, who he said “history will remember … as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger.”

In closing, the former president quoted former President Abraham Lincoln, who on the eve of the Civil War, called for a restoration of “‘our bonds of affection.”

“An American that taps into what (Lincoln) called ‘the better angels of our nature,’” Obama said. “That’s what this election is about.”

• From Live Coverage
• election 2024

‘Let's get to work': Watch and read the full text of Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention

The former president made a forceful case for vice president kamala harris, while spurning former president donald trump., published august 20, 2024 • updated on august 21, 2024 at 11:01 am.

Editor's note: The text of the speech below is as prepared. His actual delivery may have varied.

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Hello, Chicago! It is good to be home.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up! I’m feeling ready to go – even if I’m the only person stupid enough to speak right after Michelle Obama… 

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I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible. Because we have the chance to elect someone who’s spent her whole life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you: the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris. 

It's been sixteen years since I had the honor of accepting this party’s nomination for president. I know it’s hard to believe since I haven’t aged a bit, but it’s true. And looking back, I can say without question that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best – and that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as Vice President. 

Other than some common Irish blood, Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers. And as we worked together for eight years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts and experience, but his empathy and his decency; his hard-earned resiliency and his unshakable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot.  

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Over the last four years, those are the values America has needed most.

At a time when millions of our fellow citizens were sick and dying, we needed a leader with the character to put politics aside and do what was right. At a time when our economy was reeling, we needed a leader with the determination to drive what became the world’s strongest recovery – with 15 million jobs, higher wages, and lower health care costs. And at a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality, we needed a leader who was steady, and brought people together, and was selfless enough to do the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country.

History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend. 

Now the torch has been passed. Now it’s up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake: it will be a fight. For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country – a country where too many Americans are still struggling, and don’t believe government can help. 

And as we gather here tonight, the people who will decide this election are asking a very simple question: 

Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about  my  future; about my  children’s  future – about  our  future together?

One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over these questions. This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about  his  problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size. It just goes on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. 

From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous. The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to  his  ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help  him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal that would’ve helped secure our southern border because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt  his  campaign. He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedoms since it won’t affect  his  life.

Most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided between  us  and  them ; between the real Americans who support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you just give  him  the power to put those “other” people back in their place.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics – from a guy whose act has gotten pretty stale. We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie – and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse. 

America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. 

We are ready for a  President  Kamala Harris. 

And Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion. As you heard from Michelle, Kamala wasn’t born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got, and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower – she’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand. 

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse. As Attorney General of the most populous state in the country, she fought big banks and for-profit colleges, securing billions of dollars for the people they had scammed. After the home mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement. Didn’t matter that I was a Democrat or that she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa – she was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.  

As Vice President, she helped take on the drug companies to cap the cost of insulin, lower the cost of health care, and give families with kids a tax cut. And she’s running for president with real plans to lower costs even more, protect Medicare and Social Security, and sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own health care decisions. 

Kamala Harris won’t be focused on  her  problems – she’ll be focused on  yours . As president, she won’t just cater to her own voters and punish those who refuse to bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of  every  American.

That’s who Kamala is. And in the White House, she will have an outstanding partner in Governor Tim Walz. 

I love this guy. Tim’s the kind of person who  should  be in politics – somebody who was born in a small town, served his country, taught kids, coached football, and took care of his neighbors. He knows who he is and what’s important. You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some consultant, they come from his closet, and they’ve been through some stuff. 

Together, Kamala and Tim have kept faith with America’s central story – a story that says we’re all created equal, that everyone deserves a chance, and that, even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other. 

That’s Kamala’s vision. That’s Tim’s vision. That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next eleven weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision. 

It won’t be easy. The other side knows it’s easier to play on people’s fears and cynicism. They’ll tell you that government is corrupt; that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers; and that since the game is rigged, it’s ok to take what you want and look after your own. 

That’s the easy path. We have a different task. Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver. And we can’t just point to what we’ve already accomplished or only rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. 

Kamala understands this. She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units, and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that have made it harder to build homes for working people in this country. And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.  

On health care, we should all be proud of the enormous progress we’ve made through the Affordable Care Act – providing millions of people access to affordable coverage and protecting millions more from unscrupulous insurance practices. But Kamala knows we can’t stop there, which is why she’ll keep working to limit out of pocket costs.

Kamala knows that if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of governors like Tim Walz who’ve said that if you’ve got the skills and the drive, you shouldn’t need a degree to work for state government. And in this new economy, we need a president who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country who wake up every day to do the essential, often thankless work to care for our sick and clean our streets and deliver our packages – and stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Kamala will be that president.

A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired old debates that keep stifling progress, because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when  everybody  gets a fair shot, we’re  all  better off. They understand that when every child gets a good education, the whole economy gets stronger; that when women are paid the same as men, all families benefit. We can secure our border without tearing kids away from their parents, just like we can keep our streets safe while also building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.

Donald Trump and his well-heeled donors don’t see the world that way. For them, one group’s gain is another group’s loss. For them, freedom means that the powerful can do what they please, whether its fire workers trying to organize a union or poison our rivers or avoid paying taxes like everybody else has to do.

We have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work; the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life – how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that  other  people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours.

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in. An America where “We the People” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws. It’s the values we live by, and the way we treat each other – including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do.

That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics has become so polarized these days that all of us, across the political spectrum, seem quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or don’t bother to vote at all.

That approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division. But it won’t work for us. To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices; and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidate, we need to listen to their concerns – and maybe learn something in the process.

After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. 

That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority. And by the way, that doesn’t just matter to people in this country. The rest of the world is watching to see if we can actually pull it off. 

No nation, no society, has ever tried to build a democracy as big and diverse as ours before – one where our allegiances and our community are defined not by race or blood, but by a common creed. That’s why when we uphold our values, the world’s a little brighter. When we don’t, the world’s a little dimmer, dictators and autocrats feel emboldened, and over time we become less safe. We shouldn’t be the world’s policeman, and we can’t eradicate every cruelty and injustice in the world. But America can be, must be, a force for good – discouraging conflict, fighting disease, promoting human rights, protecting the planet from climate change, defending freedom. That’s what Kamala Harris believes – and so do most Americans.

I know these ideas can feel pretty naïve right now. We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last – money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones; we build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time know each other – and in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.

But here’s the good news. All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry, in churches and mosques and synagogues, and share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. Because the vast majority of us don’t want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to  be  better. And the joy and excitement we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this these past few months because, as Michelle mentioned, this summer we lost her mom.

I don’t know that anybody has ever loved their mother-in-law any more than I loved mine. Mostly it’s because she was funny and wise and maybe the least pretentious person I knew. That and she always defended me with Michelle when I messed up.

But I also think one of the reasons we became so close was she reminded me of my grandmother, the woman who raised me as a child. On the surface, the two of them didn’t have a lot in common – one was a Black woman from Chicago, the other a white woman born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas. And yet, they shared a basic outlook on life – strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regardless of the barriers they encountered, went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakable foundation of love for their children and grandchildren.

In that sense, they both represented an entire generation of working people who, through war and depression, discrimination and limited opportunity, helped build this country. Many of them toiled every day at jobs that were often too small for them and willingly went without just to give their children something better. But they knew what was true and what mattered. Things like honesty and integrity, kindness and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies, and they didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they found pleasure in simple things – a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others and seeing their children do things and go places that they would have never imagined for themselves.

Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between, we’ve all had people like that in our lives. People like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America. People like Tim’s parents, who taught him about the importance of service. Good, hardworking people who weren’t famous or powerful, but who managed, in countless ways, to leave this country a little better than they found it.

As much as any policy or program, I believe that’s what we yearn for – a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of what Lincoln called, on the eve of civil war, “our bonds of affection.” An America that taps what he called “the better angels of our nature.” That’s what this election is about. And I believe that’s why, if we each do our part over the next 77 days – if we knock on doors and make phone calls and talk to our friends and listen to our neighbors – if we work like we’ve never worked before – we will elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States, and Tim Walz as the next Vice President of the United States. We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free.

So let’s get to work. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-michelle-obama-speaks-at-2024-democratic-national-convention

WATCH: Michelle Obama speaks at 2024 Democratic National Convention

Former first lady Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, a night devoted to bringing “bold vision” to America’s future and a new generation of Democratic leadership.

Obama opened with a tribute to her late mother, expressing that the foundational values instilled within her by her mother are the very same ones that Vice President Kamala Harris’ mother passed on.

READ MORE: Democrats make case for Harris at party’s convention with the Obamas taking center stage

“[Harris] is one of the most dignified. A tribute to her mother, to my mother and to your mother, too. The embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country,” Obama said. “Her story is your story. It’s my story. It’s the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life.”

Obama also jabbed at former President Donald Trump for the ways he had targeted President Barack Obama.

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. His limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Obama said. “Who’s going to go tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Throughout her speech, Obama urged the audience to take direct action across the next 11 weeks to ensure as many people as possible vote for Harris in the upcoming November election.

“Michelle Obama is asking you, no, I’m telling y’all to do something,” said Obama, inspiring an audience chant of “DO SOMETHING!” in return.

The phrase “do something,” she reminded audiences, comes from Harris’s own mother, an immigrant from India who encouraged Harris to not complain about what was wrong in the world but instead to “do something.”

• Live fact check: Night 2 of the Democratic National Convention

“This is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right, to stand up not just for our basic freedoms, but for decency and humanity, for basic respect, dignity, and empathy, for the values at the very foundation of this democracy,” Obama said. “It’s up to us to remember what Kamala’s mother told her: ‘Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.'”

Later in the week, Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will formally accept their nominations as the party’s candidates.

Find more of our DNC 2024 coverage

• Live updates: The Obamas and Doug Emhoff are set to speak on Day 2 of the DNC
• 7 takeaways from DNC Day 1
• Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump
• WATCH: What delegates and protesters want from Harris on Gaza
• WATCH: ‘The future is here,’ Hillary Clinton says in 2024 Democratic National Convention speech
• WATCH: How Democrats could expand the Senate map in November, according to Sen. Gary Peters

Vivian Hoang is PBS News' Jim Lehrer Fellow.

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Full Transcript of Michelle Obama’s Speech at the Democratic Convention

The former first lady spoke for just over 20 minutes and told the convention that “hope is making a comeback.”

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By The New York Times

• Aug. 21, 2024

OK. We got a big night ahead. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. OK. There you go.

Hello, Chicago! Yeah. All right. Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it? You know, we’re feeling it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across this country we love. A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.

The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day. The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for.

America, hope is making a comeback.

Yeah. But, to be honest, I am realizing that, until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. And maybe you’ve experienced the same feelings, that deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future.

And for me, that mourning has also been mixed with my own personal grief. The last time I was here in my hometown was to memorialize my mother — the woman who showed me the meaning of hard work and humility and decency, the woman who set my moral compass high and showed me the power of my own voice.

Folks, I still feel her loss so profoundly. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be steady enough to stand before you tonight, but my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty that I feel to honor her memory. And to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future.

You see, my mom, in her steady, quiet way, lived out that striving sense of hope every single day of her life. She believed that all children, all — all people have value. That anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. She and my father did not aspire to be wealthy. In fact, they were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed. They understood that it wasn’t enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning.

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Here’s Barack Obama’s Speech At The DNC In Full

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Former President Barack Obama added to his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris during a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, saying the U.S. was “ready for a new chapter” while criticizing former President Donald Trump.

Obama mocked former President Donald Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes” while speaking in ... [+] Chicago.

Obama praised President Joe Biden, who he said did the “rarest thing in politics” by ending his reelection bid and called him an “outstanding president.”

While describing Trump’s political career, Obama said “it’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances” that is “getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” adding, “We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos.”

The former president also jabbed at Trump’s “childish nicknames,” his “crazy conspiracy theories” and “this weird obsession with crowd size.”

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Here’s The Full Speech

Chicago—it’s good to be home. It is good to be home. And I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up. I am feeling ready to go even if I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.

I am feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible; because we have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her, someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you, the next president of the United States of America, Kamala Harris.

It’s been 16 years since I had the honor of accepting this party’s nomination for president. And I know that’s hard to believe, because I have not aged a bit. But it’s true. And looking back, I can say, without question, that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best. And that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as vice president.

Other than some common Irish blood, Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers. And as we worked together for eight—sometimes pretty tough—years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts, his experience; it was his empathy and his decency and his hard-earned resilience, his unshakeable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot. And over the last four years, those are the values America has needed most.

At a time when millions of our fellow citizens were sick and dying, we needed a leader with the character to put politics aside and do what was right. At a time when our economy was reeling, we needed a leader with the determination to drive what would become the world’s strongest recovery: 15 million jobs, higher wages, lower healthcare costs. At a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality, we needed a leader who was steady and brought people together, and was selfless enough to do the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country.

History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. And I am proud to call him my president, but I am even prouder to call him my friend.

Now, the torch has been passed. Now, it is up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake, it will be a fight. For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, for all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country. A country where too many Americans are still struggling, where a lot of Americans don’t believe government can help. And as we gather here tonight, the people who will decide this election are asking a very simple question: Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future, about my children’s future, about our future together?

One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over that question. Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.

It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.

The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress that would’ve helped secure our southern border, because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign.

He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedom, since it won’t affect his life. And most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided: between us and them, between the real Americans who—of course—support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those other people back in their place. It is one of the oldest tricks in politics, from a guy whose act has—let’s face it—gotten pretty stale.

We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.

America’s ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.

And Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion. As you heard from Michelle, Kamala was not born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got. And she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower. She’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse. As an Attorney General of the most populous state in the country, she fought big banks and for-profit colleges, securing billions of dollars for the people they had scammed. After the whole mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my Administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement. It didn’t matter that I was a Democrat, didn’t matter that she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa—she was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.

As vice president, she helped take on the drug companies to cap the cost of insulin, lower the cost of healthcare, give families with kids a tax cut. And she is running for president with real plans to lower costs even more and protect Medicare and Medicaid and sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions.

In other words, Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours. As president, she won’t just cater to her own supporters and punish those who refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of every American. That’s who Kamala is.

And in the White House, she will have an outstanding partner in Governor Tim Walz. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. I love this guy. Tim is the kind of person who should be in politics: born in a small town, served his country, taught kids, coached football, took care of his neighbors. He knows who he is, and he knows what’s important. You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant; they come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff. They have been through some stuff. That’s right.

Together, Kamala and Tim have kept faith with America’s central story: a story that says, “We are all created equal.” All of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights. That everyone deserves a chance. That even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other. That’s Kamala’s vision. That’s Tim’s vision. That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next 11 weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision.

Now, it won’t be easy. The other side knows it’s easier to play on people’s fears and cynicism. It always has been. They will tell you that government is inherently corrupt, that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers, and since the game is rigged it’s okay to take what you want and just look after your own. That’s the easy path.

We have a different task. Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver. And, and in doing that, we can’t just point to what we’ve already accomplished. We can’t just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this. She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country. That is a priority. And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.

On healthcare, we should all be proud of the enormous progress that we’ve made through the Affordable Care Act, providing millions of people access to affordable coverage, protecting millions more from unscrupulous insurance practices. And I’d noticed, by the way, that since it’s become popular, they don’t call it Obamacare no more.

But Kamala knows we can’t stop there, which is why she’ll keep working to limit out-of-pocket costs. Kamala knows that if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But she also knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of governors like Tim Walz, who said, if you’ve got the skills and the drive, you shouldn’t need a degree to work for state government.

And in this new economy, we need a president who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country, who wake up every single day to do the essential, often thankless work: to care for our sick, to clean our streets, to deliver our packages. We need a president who will stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions. And Kamala will be that president.

Yes, she can.

A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress. Because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we are all better off. They understand that when every child gets a good education, the whole economy gets stronger. When women are paid the same as men for doing the same job, all families benefit. They understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from their parents. Just like we can keep our streets safe while also building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve and eliminating bias that will make it better for everybody.

Donald Trump and his well-heeled donors, they don’t see the world that way. For them, one group’s gains is necessarily another group’s loss. For them, freedom means that the powerful can do pretty much what they please, whether it’s fire workers trying to organize a union or put poison in our rivers or avoid paying taxes like everybody else has to do.

Well, we have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work hard. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours. That’s okay.

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where “we, the people” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do.

That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or they don’t bother to vote.

Now that approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division, but it won’t work for us. To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices. And that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process.

After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.

And by the way, that does not just matter to the people in this country. The rest of the world is watching to see if we can actually pull this off. No nation, no society has ever tried to build a democracy as big and as diverse as ours before. One that includes people that, over decades, have come from every corner of the globe. One where our allegiances and our community are defined not by race or blood but by a common creed. And that’s why when we uphold our values, the world’s a little brighter. When we don’t, the world’s a little dimmer—and dictators and autocrats feel emboldened, and over time, we become less safe.

We shouldn’t be the world's policeman and we can’t eradicate every cruelty and injustice in the world. But America can be and must be a force for good: discouraging conflict, fighting disease, promoting human rights, protecting the planet from climate change, defending freedom, brokering peace. That’s what Kamala Harris believes and so do most Americans.

I know these ideas can feel pretty naive right now. We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.

But here’s the good news, Chicago: All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. Because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.

You know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this these past few months because, as Michelle mentioned, this summer we lost her mom, Ms. Marian Robinson. And I don’t know that anybody has ever loved their mother-in-law any more than I love mine. Mostly it’s because she was funny and wise and the least pretentious person I knew. That and she always defended me with Michelle when I messed up. I’d hide behind her.

But I also think one of the reasons Marian and I became so close was she reminded me of my grandmother, the woman who helped raise me as a child. And on the surface, the two of them did not have a lot in common. One was a Black woman from right here, south side of Chicago, right down the way went to Englewood High School. The other was a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas. Now I know there aren’t that many people from Peru.

And yet they shared a basic outlook on life. They were strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regardless of the barriers they encountered—and women growing up in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s, they encountered barriers—they still went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakeable foundation of love for their children and their grandchildren. In that sense, they both represented an entire generation of working people, who through war and depression, discrimination, and limited opportunity, helped build this country. A lot of them toiled every day at jobs that were often too small for them and didn’t pay a lot. They willingly went without just to keep a roof over their family’s heads, just to give their children something better.

But they knew what was true. They knew what mattered: things like honesty and integrity, kindness, and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things: a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others, and, most of all, seeing their children do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between, we have all had people like that in our lives. People like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America. People like Tim’s parents, who taught him about the importance of service. Good, hardworking people, who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.

As much as any policy or program, I believe that’s what we yearn for: a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of, what Lincoln called on the eve of civil war, our “bonds of affection.” An America that taps what he called “the better angels of our nature.”

That is what this election is about. And I believe that’s why, if we each do our part over the next 77 days, if we knock on doors, if we make phone calls, if we talk to our friends, if we listen to our neighbors, if we work like we’ve never worked before, if we hold firm to our convictions, we will elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States and Tim Walz as the next vice president of the United States. We will elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we all believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal, and more free. So let’s get to work.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

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National Politics | Obama made his DNC debut 20 years ago. He’s…

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National politics | 49ers wr aiyuk agrees to massive extension, solidifying super bowl hopes, national politics, national politics | obama made his dnc debut 20 years ago. he’s returning to make the case for kamala harris.

FILE - President Barack Obama stands on stage after addressing the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., hugs his wife, Michelle Obama, after giving his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, Aug. 28, 2008.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves with his family and his running mate's family after his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, Aug. 28, 2008.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - President Barack Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - Former President Barack Obama, with President Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, participates in a fundraising event with Stephen Colbert at Radio City Music Hall, Thursday, March 28, 2024, in New York. Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE – Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., wave after Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 28, 2008, in Denver. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

FILE - Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gives his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, Aug. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Barack Obama  was days shy of his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the U.S. Senate when he stepped onto a Boston stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

A state lawmaker from Illinois, he had an unusual profile to be a headline speaker at a presidential convention. But the self-declared “skinny kid with a funny name” captivated Democrats that night, going beyond a requisite pitch for nominee John Kerry instead to introduce the nation to his “politics of hope” and vision of “one United States of America” not defined or defeated by its differences.

Kerry lost that November to Republican President George W. Bush. But Obama etched himself into the national consciousness, beginning a remarkable rise that put him in the Oval Office barely four years later. And now, eight years removed from the presidency, Obama returns Tuesday night to  the Democratic convention  as the elder statesman with a different task.

Speaking in his political hometown of Chicago, the nation’s first Black president will honor President  Joe Biden’s  legacy after his  exit from the campaign  while making the case for another historic figure, Vice President  Kamala Harris . It’s poised to be a significant moment as she takes on former President  Donald Trump  in a matchup that features the same cultural and ideological fissures Obama warned against two decades ago.

“President Obama is still a north star in the party,” said Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who credits the 44th president with helping her become her state’s first Black woman lieutenant governor.

Besides Harris herself on Thursday, Stratton said, no voice this week is more integral to stirring Democrats, reaching independents and cajoling moderate Republicans than the former president.

“He knows how to get across the finish line,” she said.

Former first lady Michelle Obama, who is popular enough in her own right that some Democrats floated her as an alternative to Biden, will be speaking Tuesday night as well.

Laying the groundwork

Barack Obama’s two decades in public life have been defined by seminal speeches. His body of work features a range of tone and purpose — an array of choices as he seeks to strike the right balance for Harris as she tries to become the first woman, second Black person and first person of South Asian descent to reach the presidency.

In 2004, Obama used his invitation from Kerry and then-Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe to mix lofty themes with storytelling, humor and his biography as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.

“Let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” Obama told delegates and a national television audience.

McAuliffe, however, remembered Obama as an obvious rising star. “I’d known him … done events for him” as he ran for U.S. Senate, McAuliffe said in an interview. Still, no one could have foreseen Obama’s performance and the reaction — because he’d never been on such a stage.

“It was an electrifying moment,” McAuliffe recalled. “It obviously laid the groundwork for him to be successful, the nominee and candidate in 2008.”

In  16 minutes  — shorter than a typical nomination acceptance, inaugural address or State of the Union — Obama told his origin story, framed the 2004 election and talked up Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards. Obama was short on policy, but his sweeping indictment of divisive politics struck a chord.

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said in perhaps the most well-remembered passage. “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”

Two-and-a-half-years later, Obama reprised that theme when he  launched his presidential campaign  before thousands of supporters gathered outside the Illinois capital of Springfield. His campaign motto: Hope and Change.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the first Black person to occupy his office in the commonwealth, recalled watching that winter scene as a high school student. “That was the moment that clicked with me,” Davis said and, later on, “helped me to believe that I could achieve these things that I’ve achieved.”

A different tone

If idealistic, even nebulous themes brought Obama to the White House door, it was bare-knuckled politics and ice-water realism that got him through it.

In March 2008, then-candidate Obama was being pilloried for his friendship with his Black pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had a record of critiquing the nation’s history of white supremacy. At issue, in part, was a video clip of Wright declaring “God, Damn America” from the pulpit of Obama’s home church.

This time, soaring rhetoric wouldn’t do. Obama hand wrote a nearly 38-minute address explaining his relationship with Wright, with the context of U.S. history and race relations in the early 21st century.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the Black community,” Obama said, while rejecting Wright’s “view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.”

The speech, titled  “A More Perfect Union,”  was rife with nuance — a risk in presidential politics. But it worked.

Obama’s  convention address  that August certainly featured his characteristic promises of hope and change. The venue and crowd — 84,000 people in the Denver Broncos’ football stadium — affirmed his celebrity status. Another takeaway, though, was Obama’s blitz on Republican nominee John McCain. Having spent weeks resisting calls from Democrats to go after the Vietnam war hero, Obama hammered the Arizona senator as a rubber-stamp for the outgoing Bush administration, out-of-step with most Americans and weak on the world stage.

“You know, John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow (9/11 mastermind Osama) bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” Obama said at one point.

It would preview Obama’s most unsparing speech, his 2020 appearance at Democrats’ virtual convention. Speaking on behalf of Biden, his onetime vice president,  Obama framed Trump  as fundamentally unfit for office. It was the most scathing indictment of a sitting president by one of his predecessors in modern U.S. history.

“This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win,” Obama said, almost five months before Trump’s supporters  attacked the U.S. Capitol  in an effort to prevent Biden’s certification as the 2020 election winner.

Weight of history

McAuliffe said Obama’s role Tuesday, in part, is to reinforce the message of multiple presidents:  Biden spoke  Monday and President Bill Clinton speaks Wednesday.

“They’re going to talk about what happens when you get a Democratic president,” McAuliffe said, especially on the economy. It’s Obama’s turn, McAuliffe said, to join Clinton as “explainer in chief” — a nod to Clinton’s 2012 convention speech when Obama was seeking reelection. The idea, McAuliffe said, is to set up Harris as the natural Democratic successor.

For her part, Stratton said she expects to see the man she has seen connect with voters individually and en masse. A volunteer on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, she remembers the then-president visiting his campaign’s Hyde Park office in Chicago on Election Day.

“He was funny and down to earth” as he shook hands with volunteers and then began calling voters himself, she recalled.

Four years earlier, Stratton and her four daughters were among the throngs in Chicago’s Grant Park for Obama’s first presidential victory speech. “Strangers were hugging and crying,” she said. “We saw this Black family come out, knowing they were headed to the White House. It was a remarkable moment.”

On Tuesday, she said, there is space for Obama to bring heat on Trump, talk directly to American voters and honor the magnitude of Harris’ moment.

“He was a historic candidate and president. He knows what this is like,” Stratton said. “There will be this sweet moment of the first Black president passing the baton.”

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Watch CBS News

Watch: Michelle Obama's full speech at the 2024 DNC

By Jennifer Earl

Updated on: August 21, 2024 / 11:32 AM EDT / CBS News

Former first lady Michelle Obama delivered a roughly 20-minute speech  Tuesday night at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, telling Americans that "hope is making a comeback" with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on the Democratic ticket. In the speech, Obama honored her late mother, Marian Robinson, saying she believes Harris holds similar values. 

Obama also drew a stark contrast between Harris and former President Donald Trump, saying the Republican candidate "did everything in his power to try to make people fear us." She also took a dig at Trump's "Black jobs" comment made in his June debate with President Biden.

"Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those 'Black jobs'?" Obama asked. 

The electric speech drew applause from the crowd and prompted her husband, former President Barack Obama to joke in his speech  afterward that he's "the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama."

Read a full transcript of Obama's prepared 2024 DNC remarks below.

Hello Chicago! 

Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it? 

Not just here in this arena… but spreading all across this country we love… a familiar feeling that's been buried too deep for too long. 

You know what I'm talking about? 

It's the contagious power of hope! 

The anticipation… the energy… the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day. 

The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division, and hate that have consumed us… and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation—the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. 

America, hope is making a comeback!

To be honest, I'm realizing that until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. 

Maybe you've experienced the same feelings… a deep pit in my stomach… a palpable sense of dread about the future. 

And for me, that mourning has been mixed with my own personal grief. 

The last time I was in Chicago was to memorialize my mother—the woman who showed me the meaning of hard work, humility, and decency… who set my moral compass high and showed me the power of my voice. 

I still feel her loss so profoundly… I wasn't even sure I'd be steady enough to stand before you tonight. 

But my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty I feel to honor her memory… and to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future. 

You see, my mom, in her steady, quiet way, lived out that striving sense of hope every day of her life. 

She believed that all children — all people — have value… that anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. 

She and my father didn't aspire to be wealthy… in fact, they were suspicious of those who took more than they needed. 

They understood that it wasn't enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning. 

So my mother volunteered at the local school… she always looked out for the other kids on our block. 

She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations, has strengthened the fabric of this nation. 

The belief that if you do unto others… if you love thy neighbor… if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off—if not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren… those values have been passed on through family farms and factory towns… through tree-lined suburbs and crowded tenements… through prayer groups and National Guard units and social studies classrooms. 

Those were the values my mother poured into me until her very last breath. 

Kamala Harris and I built our lives on those same foundational values. 

Even though our mothers grew up an ocean apart, they shared the same belief in the promise of this country. 

That's why her mother moved here from India at 19. 

It's why she taught Kamala about justice… about our obligation to lift others up… about our responsibility to give more than we take. 

She'd often tell her daughter, "Don't sit around and complain about things—do something!"

So with that voice in her head, Kamala went out and worked hard in school, graduating from an HBCU… earning her law degree at a state school… and then she went on to work for the people. 

Fighting to hold lawbreakers accountable and strengthen the rule of law… fighting to get folks better wages… cheaper prescription drugs… a good education… decent health care, childcare, and elder care. 

From a middle-class household, she worked her way up to become Vice President of the United States of America. 

Kamala Harris is more than ready for this moment. 

She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency… and she is one of the most dignified—a tribute to her mother, to my mother, and probably to your mother too… the embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country. 

Her story is your story… it's my story… it's the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life. 

Kamala knows, like we do, that regardless of where you come from, what you look like, who you love, how you worship, or what's in your bank account… we all deserve the opportunity to build a decent life… all of our contributions deserve to be accepted and valued. 

Because no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American… no one!

Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open for others. 

She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward… we will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. 

If we bankrupt a business… or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third, or fourth chance. 

If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead… we don't get to change the rules so we always win. 

If we see a mountain in front of us, we don't expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. 

No, we put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something. 

And throughout her entire life, that's exactly what we've seen from Kamala Harris: the steel of her spine… the steadiness of her upbringing… the honesty of her example… and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light. 

It couldn't be more obvious… of the two major candidates in this race, only Kamala Harris truly understands the unseen labor and unwavering commitment that has always made America great.

Unfortunately, we know what comes next… we know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth. 

My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. 

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. 

His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black. 

Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those "Black jobs"?  

It's his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people's lives better. 

You see, gutting our health care… taking away our freedom to control our bodies… the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did—those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers, and daughters. 

Shutting down the Department of Education… banning our books—none of that will prepare our kids for the future. 

Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love—that doesn't make anybody's life better. 

Instead, it only makes us small. 

And let me tell you… going small is never the answer. 

Going small is the opposite of what we teach our children. 

Going small is petty… it's unhealthy… and quite frankly, it's unpresidential. 

Why would we accept this from anyone seeking our highest office? 

Why would we normalize this type of backward leadership? 

Doing so only demeans and cheapens our politics… it only serves to further discourage good, big-hearted people from wanting to get involved at all. 

America, our parents taught us better than that… and we deserve so much better than that. 

That's why we must do everything in our power to elect two of those good, big-hearted people… there is no other choice than Kamala Harris and Tim Walz!

But as we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt… let us not forget what we are up against.

Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great right now… they're packing arenas across the country… folks are energized… we're feeling good. 

But there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome… who are ready to question and criticize every move Kamala makes… who are eager to spread those lies… who don't want to vote for a woman… who will continue to prioritize building their wealth over ensuring everyone has enough.

No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is still going to be an uphill battle… so we cannot be our own worst enemies. 

No, the minute something goes wrong… the minute a lie takes hold, we cannot start wringing our hands. 

We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. 

We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.

Kamala and Tim have lived amazing lives… I am confident they will lead with compassion, inclusion, and grace. 

But they are still only human. They are not perfect. And like all of us, they will make mistakes. 

But luckily, this is not just on them. 

No, this is up to us—all of us—to be the solution we seek… it is up to all of us to be the antidote to all the darkness and division. 

I don't care how you identify politically… whether you're a Democrat, Republican, independent, or none of the above… this is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right. 

To stand up not just for our basic freedoms but for decency and humanity… for basic respect, dignity, and empathy… for the values at the very foundation of this democracy. 

It's up to us to remember what Kamala's mother told her: Don't just sit around and complain — do something! 

So if they lie about her, and they will, we've got to do something! 

If we see a bad poll, and we will, we've got to put down that phone and do something! 

If we start feeling tired… if we start feeling that dread creeping back in… we've got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our faces, and do something!  

We have only two and a half months to get this done… only 11 weeks to make sure every single person we know is registered and has a voting plan. 

So we cannot afford for anyone to sit on their hands and wait to be called upon… don't complain if no one from the campaign has specifically reached out to ask for your support… there is simply no time for that kind of foolishness.

You know what we need to do.

So consider this to be your official ask: Michelle Obama is asking you to do something!

Because this is going to be close. 

In some states, just a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner. 

So we need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt… we need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us. 

Our fate is in our hands. 

In 77 days, we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division, and smallness of the past. 

We have the power to marry our hope with our action. 

We have the power to pay forward the love, sweat, and sacrifice of our mothers and fathers and all those who came before us. 

We did it before and we sure can do it again. 

Let us work like our lives depend on it… 

Let us keep moving our country forward and go higher — yes, higher — than we've ever gone before… 

As we elect the next President and Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz!

And now it is my honor to introduce somebody who knows a whole lot about hope… someone who has spent his life strengthening our democracy… please welcome America's 44th president and the love of my life… Barack Obama! 

• Obama Administration
• Michelle Obama
• Barack Obama

Jennifer Earl is the Vice President of Growth & Engagement at CBS News and Stations. Jennifer has previously written for outlets including The Daily Herald, The Gazette, NBC News, Newsday, Fox News and more.

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