Political Success and Downfall of Barack Hussein Obama II

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th president of the U.S from 2009 to 2017 as a member of the Democratic Party. Barack made history, as he became the first African American to be elected president. Previously, he served as a senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and a state senator from 1997 to 2004.

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961 to Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. His mother; who was white and of English descent and European ancestry, was born in Wichita, Kansas. His father; who was a black male, was born in a village in Siaya County, Kenya called Nyangoma Kogelo. They both met in a class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The pair then married a year later in Wailuku, Hawaii; only months before Barack was born. Obama Sr. eventually obtained a scholarship that permitted him to leave his village and chase his goals; which was going to college in Hawaii. Unfortunately, young Barack did not have a strong relationship with his father as a child. He only saw him once after his parents divorced; and before that, elder Obama was studying in Hawaii and in the U.S. Barack’s parents divorced in 1964 when he was only two years old. Ten years later, elder Obama was involved in a car crash that costed him his legs and his job. Only a year later, he was yet involved in another car accident; but this time it was fatal. He died when Barack was twenty-one years old. In 1965, his mother married an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro. The couple moved to Indonesia with Barack and had a daughter. Concerned for her son’s safety and education, Barack was sent to live with his grandparents when he was ten. Later, his mother and half-sister joined them. Meanwhile, Barack enrolled in a new Academy and transcended in basketball and graduated with academic awards and honors. However, it wasn’t so easy for him, as he became keen of racism as he was one out of three black students at the school. He also dealt with social judgment of his multiracial background and began wondering about who he is and what being African-American is meant like. Barack once said, “I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog—and that Santa was a white man. 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' (Urban Educational Journal, 2019, p. 6).

Following high school, Barack moved to Los Angeles to study at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City and graduated with a B.A. in political science in 1983. Furthermore, he then worked in the business field for two years and later moved to Chicago in 1965. He then helped with the low-income community of the South Side. After visiting Kenya and joining a religious church, he enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1988. There he practiced law and joined a law firm as a summer associate, where he met Michelle Robinson; a fellow attorney. He also became the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review. Afterwards, he returned to Chicago as a civil rights lawyer and taught at the University of Chicago as a lecturer and soon after as a professor. Eventually, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate, representing his district including both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the south side of Chicago. In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008, he ran for president, and despite having only four years of political experience, he won the election. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. He was then re-elected to a second term in November 2012.

The financial agreement of the Barack Obama administration was described by moderate expense increments on higher salary Americans. It was intended to finance healthcare, diminish the government spending shortfall, and the income salary imbalance. His first term included actions intended to report the Great Recession and the Subprime mortgage crisis which started in 2007. These incorporated a significant incentive package, banking management, and a complete healthcare change. As the economy improved and the creation of more work and jobs advanced during his subsequent term, the Bush tax reductions were permitted to lapse for the most elevated pay citizens and their spending sequester was enforced, to further decrease the deficiency back to average recorded levels. Corporate earnings and the stock market arrived at record levels in 2010 and 2013 while expansion and loan fees stayed close to low record breaking levels.

Furthermore, the term Obama Doctrine is every now and again used to illustrate the assorted tactics of the Obama administration‘s foreign policies. Obama rooted both the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, as well as different parts of the War on Terror all of which started during the Bush administration. He managed over the continuous drawdown of US soldiers in Iraq, coming full circle in the close withdrawal of US fighters from Iraq in December 2011. In the wake of expanding the US military occupation in Afghanistan during his first term, Obama pulled back everything except roughly 8400 soldiers from Afghanistan during his second term. In 2011, Obama directed a strategic yet successful mission that led to the finding a killing of Osama Bin Laden; the coordinator and organizer of the September 11 events. The amount of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay confinement camp fell drastically during Obama‘s presidency. However, regardless of Obama’s plans to close the camp, 41 prisoners stayed at Guantanamo when Obama left office. The Obama administration utilized drone strikes, especially in Pakistan, focusing on AL-Qaeda terrorists and leaders. In 2013, Edward Snowden; an American whistleblower, uncovered the presence of a broad government reconnaissance program known as PRISM, which Obama defended as “a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people” (Madison 2013).

In 2010, an array of riots worldwide across North Africa and the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring broke out, ultimately transforming into increasingly extreme types of turmoil and a few other nations. Obama helped compose a NATO-led intercession in Libya, eventually bringing about the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s government. Obama refused to be profoundly engaged in Syria, which experienced a long, multi-party war between the administration of Bashar al-Assad, and the Salafi jihadist organization known as ISIS. In 2014, after Russia adjoined Crimea and interceded in Ukraine, . Obama and other leaders and forced stations that added to a Russian economic catastrophe. Russia later interceded in the Syrian Civil War and impeded in the 2016 US presidential election, winning judgment from the Obama administration. Attempting to move the focal point of US foreign policy to East Asia, Obama composed a multi country FTA known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, yet the TTP was not confirmed by Congress. Minor trade accords with Columbia, South Korea and Panama were affirmed by Congress and went into force. Obama started the Cuban thaw, giving conciliatory acknowledgment to Cuba for the first time since the 1960s. He’s in ministration likewise arrange the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement where Iran consented to hinder its nuclear program.

As a state senator, Barack Obama sponsored 147 bills and co-sponsored 689. As president, he has signed 276 federal executive orders. Some major laws and action Obama executed was his first bill; which became law, known as The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The bill makes it easier for people to challenge unequal pay complaints and is designed to help address the wage gap between men and women (Miller 2019). In addition, he forced companies to set a cap on executive pay, signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, lifted the HIV travel ban, created Obamacare, signed a Wall Street reform, signed Rosa’s law, and more.

At the point when President Obama left office on January 20, 2017, his influence and legacy was indistinct. He will always be known as the first African-American president in US history, and his organization was luminary for its strength. With the Republicans authoritative for both the presidency and the Congress in 2017, nonetheless, a portion of Obama’s most outstanding accomplishments—the Affordable Care Act, the Paris environmental change agreement, and Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals—were toppled or enduring an onslaught. Obama's enduring effect on American life may end up having been the most noteworthy regarding the disasters that didn’t occur. Regardless of wavering on the edge of a financial fiasco, the country didn’t fall into the chasm of a second Great Depression in 2009. In spite of calls for increasingly forceful military activity, the country downsized on its troop engagements as opposed to discharging further wars. To what extent and in what structure Obama‘s policy changes will encounter is not yet clear. Those that relied upon one-sided official activity have been the most delicate, since they can be fixed by consequent conducts by his successors in the administration. Obama's job endorsement rating in surveys of American citizens rose during his subsequent term; peaking out around 60% during his final few months in office. The public additionally appraised him profoundly in correlation with other late presidents. A Quinnipiac University survey issued in late January 2017 found that 29% said he was the best President since World War II, only one point behind Ronald Reagan, who is named by 30%. The black Presidency Scholars who were studied at a similar time concurred. In a C-SPAN review of 91 historians, political researchers, and other presidential researchers, Obama was positioned 12th among all presidents since George Washington for the general nature of his work as chief executive (Drehle 2019). Among his ongoing forerunners, Obama outperformed George W. Bush who positioned 33rd, Bill Clinton 15th, and George H.W. Bush 20th, yet not the president whose past changing legacy Obama once said he needed to mirror; Ronald Reagan, who positioned eighth.