Barack Obama

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
Overview
Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2009.The son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, he is the first African-American to ascend to the highest office in the land.
He defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in a lengthy and bitter primary battle before defeating Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, in November 2008.
Mr. Obama’s victory came as the economy was in near free-fall, and his term has been shaped by what many have called the Great Recession and the weak recovery that followed.
In his first two years as president, Mr. Obama won passage of a number of sweeping pieces of legislation, notably a health care billthat promises to eventually provide near-universal coverage, a goal that had eluded Democratic presidents for 75 years. However, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the law; a decision is expected in late June 2012, in the midst of the presidential campaign.
Other big victories included the $787 billion stimulus bill, passed in February 2009, meant to shore up a cratering economy, and a financial regulatory reform measure, passed in July 2010, meant to reduce the odds of another Wall Street meltdown.
But his popularity fell steadily into 2010 — from 70 percent to under 50 percent — as unemployment stayed stubbornly high, and conservative anger rose over the health care bill and a steeply rising deficit. And Senate Republicans used filibusters to block many other items on the president’s agenda, most notably a “cap and trade’’ energy bill, meant to reduce the growth of carbon emissions.
A ‘Shellacking’ in 2010 Midterms
On Nov. 2, 2010, Republicans rolled to their greatest midterms gains in 80 years, recapturing the House of Representatives and cutting the Democrats’ majority in the Senate. After what Mr. Obama termed a “shellacking,’' he pronounced himself ready to cooperate with Republicans.
In the lame duck Congressional session that followed, Mr. Obama struck a compromise with Republican leaders on extending the Bush-era tax cuts for top earners, in return for a one-year cut in payroll taxes and an extension of unemployment benefits. To the surprise of many, Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats then rolled up a string of victories in the session’s closing days, including the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell" ban on gays serving openly, the ratification of the New Start treaty with Russia and the approval of a $4.2 billion fund for first responders made ill by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks.
But after a new Congress convened in January 2011, the debate in Washington swiftly came to be dominated by the House Republicans.
Spurred by a bloc of 87 largely conservative freshmen, they brought the federal government to the brink of a shutdown in April before Mr. Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner struck a deal to cut $38 billion out of the last six months of the 2011 fiscal year budget.
Mr. Boehner and his troops then focused on using the need to increase the government’s debt ceiling as a lever for forcing even deeper reductions. Mr. Obama responded by offering a “grand bargain’’ of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, including cuts to core Democratic programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but conservatives in the House balked at the $1 billion in new revenues in the proposal.
Hours before a Treasury Department deadline for avoiding a possible default, Mr. Obama and Republican leaders struck a dealthat would raise the ceiling through 2013 in return for at least $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. The deal was criticized on all sides, and Mr. Obama saw his poll ratings sink to new lows, though not by as much as Mr. Boehner, Republicans and Congress in general. And the failure of the bipartisan Congressional commission, or “super committee,” to agree on a second round of deficit reduction did nothing to burnish reputations on either side of the aisle.
In the wake of that stalemate, and in light of the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Mr. Obama began taking a more aggressive tone. While Republicans blocked almost all of the $447 billion jobs bill he put forward in September and refused to consider his proposals to raise taxes on some wealthy households, they found themselves on the defensive over his call to extend the payroll tax cut agreed to in 2010.
Re-Election Campaign: The Optimism Strategy
Heading into his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama has a new message: America has gotten its groove back.
In ways large and small, Mr. Obama has seized on a narrative of national optimism in early 2012, offering a portrait of a country that, guided by him and powered by the American worker, is making a comeback. It is a narrative with strong echoes of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign and one that is intended to provide a contrast with less sunny Republican candidates.
And, of course, it is meant to suggest that Mr. Obama himself has hit his own stride.
For Mr. Obama, the theme is intended to turn the country into something of a running mate. While Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner and often-unnamed foil in the president’s speeches, may say the country has lost some of its global power and economic might, Mr. Obama remains full of hope and confidence, in a strategy that harks back to his 2008 campaign.
Still, while Mr. Obama has enjoye improving poll numbers and economic data early in 2012, there is danger in the optimism strategy. Things could turn at any moment and make him seem out of touch, with oil prices rising and foreign policy crises looming in Iran and Afghanistan and with European debt. Some liberals argue that the optimistic tone is out of step with the country’s mood and that a campaign highlighting his differences with Republicans on economic issues has more promise.
White House officials say that they are cautious about going too far into the optimism camp and that the president will try to explain the potential for a better future — provided, of course, that the country does not return to Republican policies that he argues helped lead to the crisis.
2012 State of the Union Address
In January 2012, Mr. Obama used his election-year State of the Union address to argue that it is government’s role to promote a prosperous and equitable society, drawing a stark contrast between the parties in a time of deep economic uncertainty.
Mr. Obama asserted that government should work to better balance the scale between the rich and the rest of America — changing the tax code and other policies if Congress would go along, and making the most of his executive powers if Congress would not. People earning more than a million dollars a year should pay an effective tax rate of at least 30 percent and should not receive tax deductions for housing, health care, retirement and child care, he declared.
“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” Mr. Obama said, “or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
By putting a significant accent on taxes, where his differences with Congressional Republicans have always been pronounced, Mr. Obama renewed the pressure on them to extend once again a temporary payroll tax break for most working Americans — and also amplified the attention that had been focused on the wealth of Mitt Romney, one of his leading challengers, who disclosed that he paid less than 15 percent on income of more than $20 million a year.
Mr. Obama fleshed out his populist message with new proposals to spur manufacturing, including tax breaks for companies that “insource” jobs back to the United States; to double-down on clean-energy incentives; and to improve education and job training initiatives, especially for the millions of long-term unemployed.
As 2012 Begins, Economy Gains Some Steam
In January 2012, Mr. Obama received some heartening news as he headed into his re-election campaign. The Labor Department saidthat employers in the United States added 200,000 jobs in December 2011, a report that came on the heels of a flurry of heartening economic news and signaled gathering momentum in the recovery.
Consumer confidence lifted, factories stepped up production and small businesses showed signs of life. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, its lowest level in nearly three years.
It was the sixth consecutive month that the economy showed a net gain of more than 100,000 jobs — not enough to restore employment to prerecession levels but enough, perhaps, to cheer Mr. Obama at the beginning of the election year.
Mr. Obama was likely calculating that he could make a credible argument that he took over a country in an economic disaster and slowly walked it back.
As the Economy Rises, So Do the Polls
In February 2012, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed Mr. Obama’s political standing rising along with voters’ optimism that the economy was getting better.
Consecutive months of job growth, the bullish stock market and improving consumer demand appeared to be benefiting a president who had stated three years previously that his chances for a second term would depend on his ability to persuade the country that its economy was on the mend by that very month.
In what could be a turning point, the percentage of people who said they believed the economic outlook was improving was greater, by double digits, than the percentage of those who said they believed it was getting worse, a reversal from a low point in September 2011, when pessimists outnumbered optimists by more than three to one.
Mr. Obama’s approval rating reached the 50 percent mark in The Times/CBS News poll — an important baseline in presidential politics and his highest approval rating since May 2010 (excepting the brief bump he received after Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011).
Recess Appointments
In January 2012, Mr. Obama defied Congressional Republicans by using a recess appointment to appoint Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Putting Mr. Cordray in place gave the agency the standing to move ahead with new regulation of varied financial entities, authority it had lacked in the absence of a director since its creation in July 2010.
At the same time, Mr. Obama made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, ensuring that the board, which has five seats, would not become paralyzed. The board shrank to two members when the term of a previous Democratic recess appointee expired, and under a Supreme Court ruling, it is not allowed to make decisions with fewer than three members.
The recess appointments seemed deliberately timed, coming a day after the Iowa caucus vote. And they appeared to have the desired effect. Mitt Romney sent out a news release accusing the president of “circumventing Congress.” The statement was just what the White House wanted. It put the Republican presidential front-runner squarely on the side of the Republicans in Congress, a group with toxic poll numbers that the president’s campaign hoped would hurt his rivals for the White House.
Foreign Policy: Iraq and Afghanistan
The crucial issues in foreign policy during Mr. Obama’s first two years in office were what to do about the two ongoing wars involving American troops: Iraq, where he stuck with his pledge to draw down troops, and Afghanistan, where he sent in tens of thousands more.
On Dec. 15, 2011, the American military formally ended its mission in Iraq, one that cost the lives of 4,487 service members, with another 32,226 wounded in action. Soon after the departure of the last American convoy, the country was engulfed in political and sectarian conflict.
In January 2012, a Shiite governor threatened to blockade an important commercial arterial road from Baghdad to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north if Kurdish officials did not hand over Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi to government authorities. The Shiite-led national government accused Mr. Hashimi, a Sunni, of running a sectarian death squad.
The same month, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the Americans had left behind a “budding police state,” with the country’s Shiite leadership increasingly ruling by force and fear. Insurgent attacks surged across the country, and security forces loyal to the Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, pressed a campaign against Sunni politicians.
The turmoil came at a time when Iraqis had hoped their leaders would be emboldened by their new independence to tackle the nation’s multitude of problems — finally confronting the social, economic and religious divisions that were papered over by the presence of American troops.
But while there remained hope that Iraqis could still unite, the country was far from the “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” place that President Obama described at the time of the American military withdrawal.
In June 2011, President Obama declared that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion an aggressive timetable for the withdrawal of American troops by 2014.
The military’s plans for 2012 emphasized deploying American and allied military trainers directly within Afghan security units, which could lessen the direct combat role of NATO.
In a major milestone, in February 2012, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.
Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.
Meanwhile, according to a classified report from mid-January 2012, American and other coalition forces were being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fought alongside and trained. The report made clear that these killings had become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides.
Also in early 2012, the Taliban gave its first public sign that it was ready for peace talks. On Jan. 3, the Taliban announced that it had struck a deal to open a peace mission in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The step was a sharp reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that it was involved or interested in any negotiations to end its insurgency in Afghanistan.
In a statement, a spokesman for the Taliban said that along with agreeing to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be released.
But in February, angry protests broke out and shock rippled through Afghanistan as accounts emerged of NATO personnel setting fire to bags filled with Korans at Bagram Air Base. The incident sparked nearly a week of virulent anti-American demonstrations in which at least 30 people, including four American troops, were killed, and many were wounded.
In an attempt to quell the anger, President Obama sent a letter of apology to President Karzai. “The error was inadvertent,” Mr. Obama said in the letter. “I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”
The fury does not appear likely to abate soon.
The Middle East
In September 2010, Mr. Obama convened a new round of Middle East peace talks, bringing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to the White House. But the talks quickly foundered over a Palestinian demand that Israel extend a moratorium that had stopped most building in occupied areas of the West Bank, and the Palestinians focused instead on a plan to seek recognition as a nation from the United Nations in September 2011. The effort stalled in the Security Council.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met again in Jordan in January 2012, in an effort to revive moribund peace talks, although none of the sides involved suggested any reason to view the meeting as a sign of significant progress. Palestinian officials reported little or no progress in the meetings and, on Jan. 25, Mr. Abbas said that discussions had ended.
When rebellions broke out across the Arab world in January 2011, Mr. Obama responded initially with caution but eventually used American air power as part of a NATO effort to keep Libya’s dictator, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, from violently ending a rebellion there. Mr. Qaddafi fell from power in August and was captured and killed in October.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was the clear winner in Egypt’s first parliamentary elections, which concluded in January 2012. The Salafis, an alliance of ultraconservative Islamists, won the next largest share of seats.
The relatonship between the Egyptian government and the United States grew increasingly strained, culminating in the indictment in February 2012 of 16 Americans in a criminal investigation into the foreign financing of nonprofit groups. The military government’s prosecution of the nonprofit groups put American aid to Egypti n jeopardy. The trial opened, adjourned and was postponed. In face-saving move, the Americans were allowed to leave the country.
In Yemen, after more than a year of antigovernment protests and violent clashes in the street, President Ali Abdullah Salehdullah handed over power to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was sworn in as president in February 2012, after a single-candidate election.
A pro-democracy uprising was brutally crushed in Bahrain; the United States, which bases its Navy’s Fifth Fifth Fleet there, looked the other way.
Syria was engulfed in protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The United Nations and countries around the world condemned the crackdown and President Assad, but President Obama remained keenly aware of larger forces at play — namely, Iran and Russia — and of the dangers of intervening in another Arab country.
Iran and Nuclear Weapons
Concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapons program escalated with the publication in November 2011 of a report by United Nations weapons inspectors that they said makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way.
Mr. Obama responded by signing new legislation that could penalize buyers of Iranian oil. The European Union agreed to an oil embargo. In January 2012, pressure on Iran mounted, with the United States saying it was determined to isolate the country’s central bank.
Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States Navy threatened back. Government officials said the administration was relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the strait was a “red line” that would provoke an American response.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, vowed to retaliate over oil sanctions and threats of military action by the West, warning that the United States in particular would face severe damage to its interests if any strike were carried out against its nuclear sites.
The pointed remarks by Mr. Khamenei were the most public response by him to mounting tension between Western powers and Iran. They came amid increasing concern among American officials that Israel may strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In late February, another report by United Nations nuclear inspectors stated thatIran was moving rapidly to produce nuclear fuel at a deep underground site. The U.N. inspectors found in their visits over the previous three months that Iran had tripled its production capacity for a type of fuel that is far closer to what is needed to make the core of a nuclear weapon.
Israel’s increasingly urgent warnings on the need to halt Iran’s nuclear progress continued to prompt concerns that Israel might unilaterally mount a military strike.
In early March, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and urged him to to give diplomacy and economic sanctions a chance to work before resorting to military action on Iran.
The meeting, held in a charged atmosphere of election-year politics and a deepening confrontation with Tehran, was nevertheless “friendly, straightforward, and serious,” a White House official said. But it did not resolve basic differences between the two leaders over how to deal with the Iranian threat.
Mr. Netanyahu, the official said, reiterated that Israel had not made a decision on striking Iran, but he expressed deep skepticism that international pressure would persuade Iran’s leaders to forsake the development of nuclear weapons.
Mr. Obama, an official said, argued that the European Union’s impending oil sanctions and the blacklisting of Iran’s central bank could yet force Tehran back to the bargaining table — not necessarily eliminating the nuclear threat but pushing back the timetable for the development of a weapon.
The Problem of Pakistan
In one of Mr. Obama’s greatest accomplishments while in office, in May 2011, he announced that American special forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a nighttime raid deep inside Pakistan.
As a result, the antiterrorism alliance between the United States and Pakistan, always complicated and often shaky, was plunged into a crisis. The fact that Bin Laden had been hiding for yearsalmost in plain sight in a medium-size city that hosts numerous Pakistani forces an hour’s drive from the capital underscored questions about whether elements of the Pakistani spy agency knew the whereabouts of the leader of Al Qaeda.
In the months since then, both sides have leveled angry criticism of the other. In July, the Obama administration suspended and, in some cases, canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military. But the administration remains dependent on Pakistan’s military for help in reining in the militant groups that are driving the conflict in Afghanistan but find shelter across the border — not only the Taliban but also the Haqqani terrorist network.
American-Pakistani relations took a turn for the worse in late November 2011 when a NATO air attack killed 26 Pakistani soldiersin strikes against two military posts at the country’s northwestern border with Afghanistan. Pakistan halted joint operations and intelligence sharing on the border. Within the country, friction between the military and civilian leaders intensified.
Supreme Court
Mr. Obama has placed two justices on the Supreme Court. WhenJustice David H. Souter retired in 2009, Mr. Obama nominated the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice. In May 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens also announced that he would be stepping down. Mr. Obama chose his solicitor general, Elena Kagan, as the successor to Justice Stevens, who had been the court’s most liberal member.
Barack Obama on Education

(based on 400 ratings)
by Education.com
August 1, 2008
Americans voted in Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States in an election weighted down with the harsh realities of a down-turning economy and two costly wars. Now that the dust is beginning to settle, many Americans are wondering what the new president will do to improve their children's education.
Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama has said he plans to take a fresh, objective look at the age-old debate over education issues. “A truly historic commitment to education – a real commitment will require new resources and new reforms,” Obama says. “It will require a willingness to break free from the same debates that Washington has been engaged in for decades – Democrat versus Republican; vouchers versus the status quo; more money versus more accountability. And most of all, it will take a President who is honest about the challenges we face – who doesn’t just tell everyone what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.” Where does Obama stand specifically on the most pressing education issues? Here’s our cheat sheet on education according to Obama:
Standardized Testing
Standardized testing is stuck in the crossfire in the debate over accountability, and Obama has stepped up to take aim. He says that too often standardized tests fail to provide valuable or timely feedback. Meanwhile, “creativity has been drained from classrooms, as too many teachers are forced to teach to fill-in-the-bubble tests,” Obama says. He doesn’t go so far as to say he’ll drop testing completely; it should be one of the “tools that we use to make sure our children are learning. It just can’t dominate the curriculum to an extent where we are pushing aside those things that will actually allow children to improve and accurately assess the quality of the teaching that is taking place in the classroom.” How does he plan to revamp testing? “I will provide funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments that can evaluate higher-order skills, including students’ abilities to use technology, conduct research, engage in scientific investigation, solve problems, present and defend their ideas,” says Obama.
School Choice
Obama says his focus is on providing good schools for all kids, and that's why he does not support vouchers that allow parents to use public school money for private school. “We need to invest in our public schools and strengthen them, not drain their fiscal support,” he says. “In the end, vouchers would reduce the options available to children in need. I fear these children would truly be left behind in a private market system.” Obama is more open to charter schools working within the public school system, calling them “important innovators” which improve healthy competition among public schools. However, Obama says there need to be strong accountability measures in place.
No Child Left Behind

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