His Story

Barack Obama recently sat down with Bill O'Reilly and took part in what will probably be the most thorough grilling he'll receive over the course of the campaign. A lot was said during the interview but one specific point Obama made intrigued me.

From the broadcast transcript.

O'Reilly: They [my viewers] want a president who they can identify with...

Obama: And they should be able to identify with me because my story is your story. My story is your story.

End transcript.

We've heard plenty about John McCain's story and while the DNC was centered on "introducing" America to Barack Obama and by most accounts they didn't do a very good job on that front.

So what is Obama's story?

He was born in 1961 in Hawaii.

His mother was Ann Dunham, an eighteen year-old anthropology major at the University of Hawaii who had moved to Hawaii with her parents in 1959. Her religious views are difficult to discern. Her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, described her mother as an agnostic. In Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote that he, "...was not raised in a religious household." But then, in 2007, on the campaign trail, Obama stated that, "My mother was a Christian from Kansas... I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian."

His father was Barack Obama, Sr. a twenty-five year old student from Kenya. When Obama met Ann Dunham he was already married and had already fathered four children to a wife he left in Kenya while studying in America. According his son Barack, he had abandoned his Islamic faith and had become an atheist by the time he arrived in the states.

Obama and Dunham married in February of 1961 after learning that Dunham was pregnant. Their son, Barack Obama, was born in August. Two years later, Obama's father was accepted to study at Harvard. He left his wife and son and filed for divorce in 1964. He would only see his son once again, when Barack was ten-years old. Barack Obama remarried at Harvard. He and his third wife, Ruth Nidesand would have two children together before divorcing after they moved to Kenya, where he was reunited with his first wife. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.

His mother married Lolo Soetoro in 1967 and they moved to Jakarta, Indonesia which had recently been placed under the rule of Lieutenant Governor Ali Sadikin, a socialist, Islamic dictator. Obama's family would grow in 1970, with the birth of a half-sister, Maya Kassandra Soetoro. During his time in Jakarta he attended Sekolah Dasar Nasional Menteng No. 1 - an Indonesian public school. Little else is known about his time in Indonesia.

Obama returned to Hawaii in 1971 - why he returned to Hawaii is not clear. Some reports say that his mother urged him to return for educational purposes, others suggest the ten-year-old Obama made the choice himself. Regardless, he returned in 1971 to Hawaii to live with his grandmother and grandfather. They enrolled him in the prestigious Punahou School, one of the states' most prestigious schools. His grandmother, the vice president of a bank and grandfather, a salesman, paid for his expensive education.

According to Obama's book "Dreams of my Father," towards the end of his high school career he let his grades slip and used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. Despite his poor grades he was accepted to and began his studies at Occidental College. Two years later he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He earned his BA in 1983.

After graduation he held two jobs in New York city, one with Business International Corporation as a finance analyst for companies operating abroad and the other with the New York Public Interest Research Group - from their website, they describe themselves as, "New York State's largest student-directed consumer, environmental and government reform organization."

He spent four years in New York then moved to Chicago, where he took a job as a community organizer with the Developing Communities Project. He worked for them for three years before beginning his studies at Harvard Law School in 1988. At Harvard, he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1991.

During a summer internship at Chicago's premiere law firm, Sidley Austin, Obama met his wife Michelle. Michelle Obama was born and grew-up on the South Side of Chicago. She earned her degree in sociology from Princeton and went on to study law at Harvard, earning her J.D. in 1988. Michelle worked as a lawyer and mentor for summer interns at Sidley Austin. Barack and Michelle were married in 1992.

Obama left Harvard with a contract and a $40,000 advance to write a book on race relations. In order to work without interruption, he and Michelle travelled to Bali where he wrote for several months. His book was published in 1995.

Between 1992 and 2004, Obama taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He worked for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm specializing in civil rights law. They don't do business as Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland anymore, Davis was drummed out of the firm and off the nameplate due to his ties to Tony Rezko, the Chicago political fundraiser who was one of Obama's first financial contributors and who is under indictment for wire fraud. He served on the boards of the Woods Fund, The Joyce Foundation and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge among others.

He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. He won his primary by disputing the signatures on both his opponents' petitions, both were disqualified and he ran unopposed. In the general election in the heavily Democratic 13th district of Chicago, he won by a large margin.

In 2000, Obama made a democratic primary run for Bobby Rush's House Seat. During the campaign, Rush implicated that Obama was not properly connected to Chicago's black neighborhoods and churches. Though he won among white voters, he was defeated by a vote of 2-to-1.

Catholic priest, Rev. Michael Pfleger was one of the few South-Side clergymen to support Obama's 2000 run. Later that year, Fr. Pfleger's church received a $100,000 earmark from the Illinois State Senate to build a community center.

In 2002 Barack Obama gave a speech to anti-Iraq war protesters in Chicago. He would later use this speech as a footnote to prove that he opposed the war from its start. He rarely mentions that he said that he opposed the war on the grounds that the war was being fought for, "... political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

In January 2003, Obama was named chairman of the Illinois' Senate Health and Human Services Committee. As chairman of this committee Obama heard the testimony of Jill Stanek, a nurse at Christ Hospital who uncovered the truth in relation to babies being born alive and left to die as a form of late-term abortion. Obama voted three times against the bill that would have banned this procedure.

In 2002, Obama began his campaign for the United States Senate. The leading Democrat in the primary, Blair Hull, became embroiled in a domestic abuse scandal. Obama came from behind to win the primary. His republican opponent, Jack Ryan, husband of Jerri Ryan, withdrew from the race after The Chicago Tribune convinced a California court to release the details of allegations made by his wife during their divorce proceedings. The Republican Party replaced Ryan with Alan Keyes, a Maryland native who moved into an Illinois apartment three months before the election. Despite this fact, Keyes managed to garner 27% of the vote to Obama's 70%.

In July 2004, he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In November, 2004 he won election to the United States Senate. He was sworn into office in January, 2005. He announced his run for the Presidency in February, 2007.