Profile: Barack Obama
Barack Obama has packed a lot into his 47 years
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Friday, 24, Oct 2008 12:15
For millions of Americans, Barack Obama offers political hope in a way not seen in Washington in a generation.
The junior senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democrat party has generated enormous enthusiasm throughout his long campaign leading to November 4th.
So much so that he became the first candidate to break free of the public financing system since it began in the 1970s, raising over $600 million in the process and outstripping the coffers of his Republican rival.
Now Mr Obama, leading in the polls by around five per cent with ten days to go until decision day, is the frontrunner in the race against John McCain.
He is within reach of becoming the first African-American president of the United States. Such a development would be truly historic - and utterly in keeping with his unusual life.
Mr Obama already has experience of being the first African-American president. In 1991 he reached the summit of the Harvard Law Review, by which time his academic prowess was stunningly clear.
After growing up with his white mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia, he moved to New York where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
Mr Obama spent his mid-20s as a community organiser, working in the grassroots of politics in Chicago with a church-based group. The Democrats would make much of his efforts to address crime and unemployment during this period, even if Republican Sarah Palin poured scorn on this so-called 'life experience' in her convention speech.
Her political opponents claim this stage of his life allowed him to apply the values taught to him by his mother - empathy and service. His parents have a political value of their own, even if it is an unusual one for presidential candidates. Mr Obama's grandfather was a domestic servant to the colonial British in Kenya; his father grew up there but won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii where he met Mr Obama's mother. Ann Dunham grew up in Kansas; her small-town roots provide a useful balance to his perceived east coast elitist background.
Mr Obama's background, his identity, is above all African-American however. It would be wrong to state otherwise: race has been a constant theme of the campaign, even if it has developed a momentum of its own. Critics have questioned Mr Obama's background - his time spent at a religious educational institution in Indonesia - and the now infamous "palling around with terrorists" allegation by the Republican smear campaign. In response the New Yorker magazine provoked outrage by publishing a cartoon of him dressed as a terrorist on its cover. Mr Obama himself has won praise for approaching the issue with sensitivity, while largely ignoring it as much as he can.
Another unusual aspect of his background has been the rapidity of his rise. This has not been quite so quick as many make out, however, for the transition from civil rights lawyer in Chicago to Democrat nominee took some years. After getting on to the Illinois state senate for 1996 he attempted to win a seat in the House of Representatives in 2000. That bid failed and it was not until 2004 that he won his place in the Senate, taking him for the first time to national politics.
It was from this point on that the pace of his political career rocketed forwards. He established his reputation for oratory with a stunning address to the 2004 Democrat convention. His two bestselling books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, gave him a higher profile than most of those new to the Washington DC scene. And his high approval ratings made Democrats slowly realise there was a real alternative to the frontrunner for the Democrat nomination, Hillary Clinton, in 2008.
One of the most protracted battles for a party nomination in living memory was to follow before Mrs Clinton finally admitted defeat. The script towards a brokered convention appeared to be followed to the letter throughout the primary campaign, with the momentum shifting first one way, then the next. Mr Obama took a clear advantage as early as Super Tuesday but Mrs Clinton, clinging on, did enough to drag the contest out well into the spring.
The experience, and his battles with Mr McCain since then, have seen him mature as a politician in a way only presidential campaigns can. He has endured some tough moments - most notably over the comments of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright - but has attracted more publicity than his rival. The Republicans, with a 72-year-old at the top of their ticket, have talked a lot about experience. Mr Obama has packed a lot into his life, but he is only 47. And he may just be about to make history.
Alex Stevenson