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Barack Obama
44th President of the United States

3

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Barack Obama

In His Own Words
In this excerpt from one of his speeches, Barack
Obama talks about a time in his life when he“began to notice a world beyond myself ” andabout his desire to be an agent of change. These
remarks were made in a commencement address at Wesleyan University, Middletown,
Connecticut, May 25, 2008.

I

became active in the movement to oppose the apartheid regime of South Africa. I began following the debates inthis country about poverty and healthcare. So that by the time I graduatedfrom college, I was possessed with a crazy idea
— that I would work at a grassroots level tobring about change.
I wrote letters to every organization in the
country I could think of. And one day, a small
group of churches on the South Side of Chicago offered me a job to come work as a community organizer in neighborhoods that had
been devastated by steel plant closings. My
mother and grandparents wanted me to go tolaw school. My friends were applying to jobs
on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization
offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for anold, beat-up car. And I said yes.
Now, I didn’t know a soul in Chicago, and I
wasn’t sure what this community organizing
business was all about. I had always been in-

44th President of the United States
spired by stories of the Civil Rights Movement
and JFK’s [President John F. Kennedy’s] call toservice, but when I got to the South Side, there
were no marches, and no soaring speeches. In
the shadow of an empty steel plant, there were
just a lot of folks who were struggling. And we
didn’t get very far at first.
I still remember one of the very first meetings we put together to discuss gang violencewith a group of community leaders. We waited
and waited for people to show up, and finally,a group of older people walked into the hall.
And they sat down. And a little old lady raised
her hand and asked, “Is this where the bingo
game is?”
It wasn’t easy, but eventually, we made progress. Day by day, block by block, we brought
the community together, and registered newvoters, and set up after-school programs, andfought for new jobs, and helped people live
lives with some measure of dignity.
But I also began to realize that I wasn’t justhelping other people. Through service, I founda community that embraced me; citizenshipthat was meaningful; the direction I’d been
seeking. Through service, I discovered how
my own improbable story fit into the larger
story of America.

Contents
Barack Obama ~ An American Life..........................................

2

Barack Obama’s Vision for the Future.......................................

10...........................................................

12

Meet the Obama Family

Vice President Joseph Biden.....................................................
1

14

Barack Obama ~ An American Life

B

presidential election against Republican candidate Senator John McCain.

arack Obama’s unique biography
and successful campaign for the
U.S. presidency have opened a
new chapter in U.S. politics.

With a polished speaking style, a command of
eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the ability toinspire the enthusiasm of young voters, and thesophisticated use of the Internet as a campaign
tool, Obama was very much a 21st-century candidate. In his campaign, Obama stressed two
overarching themes: changing Washington’s traditional way of conducting the nation’s businessand invoking Americans of diverse ideological,
social, and racial backgrounds to unite for thecommon good.

President Obama, the first African-Americanpresident of the United States, brings a life story
unlike that of any previous U.S. leader. The biracial son of a Kenyan father and a white motherfrom the American heartland, Obama shot tonational prominence with a well-received keynote
speech at the Democratic National Convention
in 2004, the same year he was elected to the U.S.
Senate from the state of Illinois. Just four years
later, he rose to the top of a field crowded with
Democratic heavyweights to clinch his party’s
nomination for the White House and win the

Young Barack with his mother,
Ann Dunham, circa 1963.

“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States ofNine-year-old Barack in Indonesia with hismother; stepather Lolo Soetoro; and halfsister Maya.

2

Barack, age 10, and his Kenyan
father, Barack Obama Sr.

Barack Obama Jr. was born in Honolulu. Twoyears later the senior Obama left his new family,
first for graduate study at Harvard and then fora job as a government economist back in Kenya.
The young Obama met his father again only
once, at age 10.

America,” Obama said in his address to the 2004
Democratic National Convention. “There’s nota black America and white America and Latino
America and Asian America; there’s the UnitedStates of America. … We are one people, all ofus pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, allof us defending the United States of America.”W

hen Obama was six, his mother remarried, this time to an Indonesian oil executive. The family moved to Indonesia, andObama spent four years attending school in thecapital city of Jakarta. He eventually returned to
Hawaii and went to high school there while living with his maternal grandparents.

The Early Years
Obama’s parents came from vastly different
backgrounds. His mother, Ann Dunham, wasborn and raised in small-town Kansas. After her
family moved to the Hawaiian Islands, she met
Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan scholarship student enrolled at the University of Hawaii. The
two married in 1959, and on August 4, 1961,

Barack Obama, center, on his school’s
junior varsity basketball team in
Hawaii, 1977.

In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obamadescribes this period of his life as having more

Celebrating his high school graduation with
grandparents Madelyn Payne and Stanley
Armour Dunham in Hawaii, 1979.

3

As a college student at Columbia University in New York,circa1983.

than the usual share of adolescent turmoil, as hestruggled to make sense of a biracial heritage
then still relatively uncommon in the UnitedStates. Being rooted in both black culture andwhite culture may have helped give Obama the
expansive vision he brought to politics years later, one that understands many points of view.

ated from college, I was possessed with a crazyidea — that I would work at a grassroots level tobring about change.”

Called to Public Service
In search of his identity and a purposeful direction in life, Obama subsequently left his job asa financial writer with an international consulting firm in New York and headed to Chicago
in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer for a coalition of local churches on thecity’s South Side, a poor African-American area
hard hit by the transition from a manufacturing
center to a service-based economy.

“Barack has an incredible ability to synthesize
seemingly contradictory realities and make themcoherent,” his law school classmate Cassandra
Butts told New Yorker magazine writer Larissa
MacFarquhar. “It comes from going from a homewhere white people are nurturing you, and thenyou go out into the world and you’re seen as a
black person.”“It was in these neighborhoods that I received
the best education I ever had, and where I
learned the true meaning of my Christian faith,”
Obama recounted years later in the speech announcing his presidential candidacy.

Obama left Hawaii to attend Occidental College
in Los Angeles for two years. He later moved to
New York City and earned a bachelor of arts
degree from Columbia University in 1983. Ina speech given in 2008, Obama described his
thinking at the time: “… by the time I gradu-

At Harvard Law School in Boston,
Massachusetts, circa 1991.

Obama enjoyed some tangible successes inRegistering voters in Chicago, circa 1992.

Barack and Michelle Obama on theirwedding day, October 18, 1992.

Chicago, where he practiced civil rights law andtaught constitutional law at the University of
Chicago. In 1992 he married Michelle Robinson,
another Harvard Law graduate, and worked on
voter registration in Chicago to help Democratic
candidates such as Bill Clinton.

this work, giving South Side residents a voicein such issues as economic redevelopment, job
training, and environmental clean-up efforts.
He viewed his primary role as a community organizer, however, as that of a catalyst mobilizing
ordinary citizens in a bottom-up effort to forge
indigenous strategies for political and economic
empowerment.

With a continuing strong commitment to public
service, Obama decided to make his first run atelective office in 1996, winning a seat from Chicago in the Illinois state senate. In many ways
the race was a logical progression of his earlier
work as a community organizer, and Obama
brought much of that same expansive outlook— the politician as an enabler of citizen-directedgrassroots efforts and a builder of broad-based
coalitions — to his vision of politics.

A

fter three years of such work, Obama concluded that to bring about true improvement in such distressed communities required
involvement at a higher level, in the realm of
law and politics. Accordingly, he attended Harvard Law School, where he distinguished himself by being elected the first black president of
the prestigious Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude in 1991.

“Any African Americans who are only talking
about racism as a barrier to our success are seriously misled if they don’t also come to grips
with the larger economic forces that are creating economic insecurity for all workers —With these credentials, “Obama could have done
anything he wanted,” noted David Axelrod, who
served as his presidential campaign strategist.
Obama returned to his adopted hometown of

Teaching constitutional law at the
University of Chicago Law School,
circa 1993.

Elected to the Illinois state senate as representativefrom Chicago in1996, Obama is reelected three times.

Dreams from My Father, published 1995.

4

5

State Senator Obama, with his family
at his side, concedes defeat in his
bid to be elected to the UnitedStates Congress, 2000.

— whites, Latinos, and Asians,” he said at thetime. Among his legislative accomplishments
over the next eight years in the state senate
were campaign finance reform, tax cuts for theworking poor, and improvements to the state’s
criminal justice system.

party’s primary for the senatorial nomination.
Obama easily captured the Democratic nomination, winning a greater share of the vote — 53
percent — than his six opponents combined.

In 2000 Obama made his first run for the U.S.
Congress, unsuccessfully challenging Bobby
Rush, an incumbent Democrat from Chicago,for Rush’s seat in the House of Representatives.
Dispirited by his lopsided primary loss to Rushand searching for influence beyond the Illinois
state legislature, he sold Michelle on the idea of
his running for the U.S. Senate in a last-shot “upor out strategy” to advance his political career.

With the Republicans then holding the
100-member U.S. Senate by a razor-thin majority of 51 seats, Democrats saw the senatorial
contest in Illinois as critical to their chances ofretaking the Senate that November (in fact, they
only regained control in 2006). The desire to give
Obama’s campaign a boost through a prominent
convention role, the well-known oratory skills
Obama possessed, and the very favorable impression he already had made on Democraticpresidential candidate John Kerry clinched thedecision to select Obama as the convention’s
keynote speaker.

The 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois had turned
into a free-for-all the year before, when the Republican incumbent, Peter Fitzgerald, announced
he would not seek reelection. Seven Democratsand eight Republicans contested their respective

Obama’s speech, with its soaring, polished language on the need to transcend partisan divisions and its call for a “politics of hope” rather
than a politics of cynicism, did more than rouse
convention-goers; it catapulted Obama into the

The National Stage

State Senator Obama runs forUnited States senator from
Illinois, July 2004.

Still a candidate for U.S. senator, Obama is invited to deliver
the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention,
July 27, 2004.

6

The candidate for U.S. senatorfrom Illinois with wife Michelle anddaughters Sasha, front, and Malia
on Election Day 2004.

national media spotlight as a rising star of the
Democratic Party. He went on to win handily in
the Senate race that autumn, capturing an overwhelming 70 percent of the popular vote. Although the near-total disarray that year among
Republicans in Illinois undoubtedly contributed
to the landslide margin, Obama’s victory was
impressive in its own right, as he won in 93 of
the state’s 102 counties and captured white voters by better than a two-to-one margin.

In the Senate, Obama amassed a voting recordin line with that of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. His criticism of the war in Iraq has been
one of his trademarks, dating back to a speechin 2002, even before the war started, when hewarned that any such military action would bebased “not on principle but on politics.” He also
has worked to strengthen ethical standards inCongress, improve care for military veterans,
and increase use of renewable fuels.

O

Running for President

bama’s reputation as a new breed of politician, one able to overcome traditional racial divides, grew steadily. In a New Yorker profile of Obama, writer William Finnegan, noting
Obama’s talent at “slipping subtly into the idiomof his interlocutor,” said Obama “speaks a fullrange of American vernaculars.” Obama offered
his own explanation why he could connect withwhite voters.

The long Democratic primary election campaign of 2008, with elections or caucuses in all
50 states, was historic in several ways. AfricanAmerican and women candidates had run forthe presidency before, but this time the two
front-runners were a woman and an African
American. As Barack Obama and seven othercontenders for the Democratic presidential
nomination began to organize in 2007, opinion polls consistently put Obama in second
place behind the presumed favorite, New York“I know these people,” he said. “Those are my
grandparents. … Their manners, their sensibilities, their sense of right and wrong — it’s all
totally familiar to me.”U.S. Senator Obama with then chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Senator Joe Biden.

Obama with his Kenyan
grandmother, Sarah Hussein
Obama, in Kogelo village,
Kenya, August 2006.

The Obama family lays wreaths at the
memorial to the victims of the 1998
U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi,
Kenya, August 2006.

Barack Obama, with his family by his side,
announces his candidacy for president,
February 2007.

The Audacity of Hope, published 2006.

7

Senator Hillary Clinton. Obama, however, was

The strategy paid off with the first-in-the-nation
Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, when Obamascored an upset victory over Clinton. The Iowa
win was a game-changer; as the Washington Post
put it, “Beating Clinton … altered the courseof the race by establishing Obama as her chief
rival — the only candidate with the message, organizational muscle, and financial resources tochallenge her front-runner status.”

highly successful in this early stage of the race
at enlisting an enthusiastic cadre of supporters,
especially among youth, creating a nationwide
grassroots campaign organization, and fundraising through the Internet.

W

ith Clinton enjoying greater name recognition, a well-oiled campaign machine,and support at the state level from leading Democrats, the Obama camp devised an innovative
strategy to negate these advantages: targetingstates that used caucuses rather than primaries
to select delegates and focusing on smaller statesthat traditionally voted Republican in the general election. This approach capitalized on theIt paid off once more on “Super Tuesday” — theelections held simultaneously in 22 states on
February 5 — when Obama dueled Clinton to a
tie and swept rural states in the West and South.
And it paid off yet again when Obama went on
to win 10 more consecutive contests in February, cementing a lead in delegates Clinton neveragain could catch.

Democratic Party’s system of proportional representation — awarding convention delegates ineach state in rough proportion to a candidate’s
share of the vote — as opposed to the Republicans’ system of awarding most or all conventiondelegates to the winner in each state.

Obama, third from right, at a televised debatewith six other candidates for the Democratic
nomination for president, November 2007.

An Obama Presidency
Barack Obama is the among the youngest U.S.
presidents. Born at the tail end of the 1946-1964
baby boom generation, he is also the first presi-

Obama campaigns in the small
town of Peosta, Iowa. Obama
won the Iowa caucus, held on
January 3, 2008.

Celebrating his Super Tuesday victories
with supporters, February 5, 2008.
Debating with chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton.

8dent to have come of age in the 1980s, which of
itself might portend change. The atmosphere inwhich he grew up was markedly different fromthe socially tumultuous 1960s that shaped earlier baby boomers’ outlook. As Obama once said
about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections,contested by candidates from a much earlier cohort of that postwar generation, “I sometimes
felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of
the baby boom generation – a tale rooted in old
grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handfulof college campuses long ago – played out on thenational stage.”

be changed any way but very, very slowly,” shewrote, “Obama is deeply conservative.”
President Obama has broken new ground in
U.S. politics. His candidacy came at precisely
the time when many Americans believed theircountry needed a fundamental transformationin its direction. Washington Post political columnist E.J. Dionne may have summed up perfectly
the serendipitous confluence between Obama’s
candidacy and the American zeitgeist when hewrote:
Change, not experience, was the order of the day.
Sweep, not a mastery of detail, was the virtue mostvalued in campaign oratory. A clean break with thepast, not merely a return to better days, was the promise most prized.

T

he New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar offered one theory on Obama’s noticeable appeal across traditional political lines. “Obama’s
voting record is one of the most liberal in the
Senate,” she observed, “but he has always appealed to Republicans, perhaps because he speaks
about liberal goals in conservative language.”“In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can

Presidential nominee Barack Obama, far
Barack and Michelle Obama at a rally on June 3, 2008.
right, with running mate Joe Biden, far
Primary victories that day assured enough convention
left, and their wives at the Democraticdelegates to win the Democratic nomination.
National
Convention, August 28, 2008.
Talking with reporters on his campaign plane.

9Barack Obama’s Vision for the Future
Excerpts from “The American Moment,” Remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23, 2007

I

believe that the single most important job of any President is to protect the American
people. And I am equally convinced that doing that job effectively in the 21st century
will require a new vision of American leadership and a new conception of our national
security — a vision that draws from the lessons of the past, but is not bound by outdated
thinking.

In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America,
it’s America’s problem too. When poor villagers in Indonesia have no choice but to send chickens
to market infected with avian flu, it cannot be seen as a distant concern. When religious schools
in Pakistan teach hatred to young children, our children are threatened as well.
Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of
weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer
be contained by borders and boundaries.
*****

M

any Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs.

I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must
not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet themwithout America. We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission —we must lead the world, by deed and example.

A

merica is the country that helped liberate a continent from the march of a madman. We
are the country that told the brave people of a divided city that we were Berliners too.
We sent generations of young people to serve as ambassadors for peace in countries allover the world. And we’re the country that rushed aid throughout Asia for the victims
of a devastating tsunami.
Now it’s our moment to lead — our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East.
That this was the time when we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could
destroy the human race. This was the time when we brought opportunity to those forgotten cornersof the world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary
travelers from all over the world to find opportunity, and liberty, and hope on our doorstep.

We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advancethe security of all people. We must lead by marshalling a global effort to stop the spread of theworld’s most dangerous weapons. We must lead by building and strengthening the partnerships
and alliances necessary to meet our common challenges and defeat our common threats.
And America must lead by reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in theworld’s forgotten corners — because while there will always be those who succumb to hate andstrap bombs to their bodies, there are millions more who want to take another path — who want
our beacon of hope to shine its light their way.
10

Above, Barack Obama addresses the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23, 2007.

11

Meet the Obama Familyrian and professor of communications at Rider
University in New Jersey. “She is bright, she isarticulate, and she has professional experiences
in management.”
The Obamas hope that their enthusiasm for
public service and their extensive professional
experience and achievements will help them

Michelle Robinson worked hard in school andlanded a spot in the Princeton University classof 1985. After earning an undergraduate degree
in sociology with a minor in African-American
studies, she attended Harvard Law School.
Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson met in1989 when she, then an associate at the Chicago,
Illinois, law firm Sidley & Austin, was assigned
to mentor Obama, who was a summer intern.
The future president asked her to attend one of
his community organizing sessions in Chicago.
She accepted and attended a meeting, where she
told Newsweek that he spoke to participants
about closing the gap between “the world as itis, and the world as it should be.”Above, Michelle Obama speaks at the Democratic National
Convention, August 25, 2008. Below, The Obamas traveled
together during much of the presidential campaign.

Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama continued to date, and the couple married in 1992. The
Obamas share a passion for public service andhave devoted much of their adult lives to careers
in the public sector.

The Obamas enjoy an Independence Day parade in Butte, Montana, July 4, 2008. From left are Michelle, Sasha, Barack, and Malia.

T

he Obamas are the first AfricanAmerican family to move into theWhite House.

not supposed to be here, standing here. I’m astatistical oddity. Black girl, brought up on theSouth Side of Chicago. Was I supposed to go
to Princeton? No. … They said maybe Harvard
Law was too much for me to reach for. But I
went, I did fine. And I’m certainly not supposed
to be standing here.”

President Barack Obama and his
wife, Michelle, are well aware of the historicsignificance of his election and what it means
to many Americans. In her campaign stump
speech, Mrs. Obama often mentioned a 10-yearold girl she met in a South Carolina beauty shop
who told her that if Barack Obama were electedpresident, “it means that I can imagine anything
for myself.”

The first lady was born Michelle Robinson
and raised in a working-class family in Chicago, Illinois. Her father worked at the municipal water department and was a Democratic
precinct captain, while her mother was a stayat-home mom who took care of her and herolder brother, Craig.

“She could have been me,” Mrs. Obama told
Newsweek magazine. “Because the truth is, I’m
12deal with the challenges ahead. Behind Barack
Obama’s desire to be president and have a positive impact on the world are his young daughters, Malia, born in 1998, and Sasha (short for
Natasha), born in 2001. The girls are the youngest inhabitants of the White House since Amy
Carter, who was nine years old when her father,
Jimmy Carter, was elected president in 1976.

After leaving the corporate law practice where
they met, Mrs. Obama held several positionsin Chicago government, and she was founding
executive director of Public Allies — Chicago, an
organization that encourages young people to pursue
public service jobs. Most
recently, she served as vicepresident of community andexternal affairs at the University of Chicago Medical
Center.

“My life revolves aroundmy two girls,” then Senator
Obama said in a Father’s Day
speech at a Chicago church.
“And what I think about iswhat kind of world I’m leaving them. What I’ve realized
is that life doesn’t count formuch unless you’re willing to
do your small part to leave ourchildren — all of our children— a better world. That is ourultimate responsibility as
fathers and parents.”“She certainly seems to besomeone who would takeadvantage of the podium theWhite House affords her,”said Dr. Myra Gutin, histo13

Vice President Joseph Bidenagreed. Biden voted for the final Senate resolution authorizing a U.S. invasion of Iraq, whereas
Obama (not yet in the Senate at the time) spokeout against it.

During his Senate career, Biden compiled amostly liberal record. Although he is well liked
by Republicans and has worked across party
lines, he mostly has supported his own party.
For example, according to the Washington Post,in his last two years in the Senate, Biden voted
with Democrats 96.6 percent of the time. He “iswidely seen as a liberal-minded internationalist,”
wrote Michael Gordon in the New York Times.
“He has emphasized the need for diplomacy but
has been prepared at times to back it with thethreat of force.”

Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, left, with presidential nominee Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, August 28, 2008.

“I

count my role in helping to end
genocide in the Balkans and in securing passage of the Violence
Against Women Act as my proudest
moments in public life.” So wrote then Senator
Joseph R. Biden, the vice president of the United States, in his 2007 autobiography Promises to
Keep: On Life and Politics.

and is a graduate of Syracuse University Law
School in New York.
The turning point of Biden’s political careercame when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate, representing Delaware, in 1972, when he was
29 years old. A few weeks before he was sworn
into office, his wife and daughter were killed
in an automobile accident. His two young sonssurvived the accident but were seriously injured.
(Biden remarried in 1977, a union that produced
a daughter.) Another calamity occurred in 1988
when he was diagnosed with two potentially fatal brain aneurysms. His recovery was long andpainful. He was absent from the Senate for sevenmonths, bedridden much of that time.

Key to understanding this self-appraisal is Biden’s
background. He is an Irish Catholic, born under modest circumstances in 1942 in Scranton, amostly working-class city in northeastern Pennsylvania. His mother was a homemaker; his father, a car salesman. The family moved to thestate of Delaware when Biden was 10. He was
the first in his family to obtain a college degree
14

Prior to voting for the final resolution, however,Biden worked with Republican Senator Richard
Lugar of Indiana to pass a resolution authoriz-

In his early years in the Senate, Biden concentrated on domestic issues, particularly civil liberties, law enforcement, and civil rights. He became a member of the Judiciary Committee in1975 and was its chair from 1987 to 1995. Biden’s
most significant legislative accomplishment during this time was the landmark Violence Against
Women Act (1994), which he authored. It provides billions of dollars in federal funds to address gender-based crimes. But Biden sometimes
departed from the conventional liberal view. He
was a strong advocate, for example, of tougher
drug sentencing laws. He also opposed busing
to achieve racial integration of schools while underlining his commitment to civil rights.

Senator Biden, seated at right, with fellow members of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, August 1986.

ing military action only after the exhaustion of
diplomatic efforts. Biden voted to authorize
the war after that resolution was rejected. But
he also voted against an amendment that would
have required the Bush administration to seek
further authorization before invading Iraq. By
2005, Biden called his vote on Iraq “a mistake.”
In a joint appearance in Springfield, Illinois, after Obama selected Biden as his running mate,
Obama said Biden is “an expert on foreign policy
whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the
middle class.” Obama also called Biden “a powerful critic of the Bush-McCain foreign policy and avoice for a new direction that takes the fight to theterrorists and ends the war in Iraq responsibly.”

A Foreign Affairs Perspective
Biden distinguished himself in the Senate in foreign affairs. He was a member of the influential
Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1975
and its chair from 2001 to 2003 and from 2007
until 2009. Barack Obama was assigned to thiscommittee after he was elected to the Senate in2004 and got to know Biden well as they worked
together. Obama headed the Europe subcommittee, formerly chaired by Biden. On a key foreign
policy issue, however, Obama and Biden dis15

I dosolemnly swear

U.S. Senators, from left, John Kerry, Joseph Biden, and Charles Hagel in Islamabad, Pakistan, February 2008.

During his time on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Biden traveled
widely overseas and is on first-nameterms not only with many foreign leaders, butalso with their deputies and top aides — as well
as opposition leaders. He has dealt with suchsignificant issues as arms control, nuclear proliferation, NATO enlargement, superpower rivalry,and U.S. relations with the Third World. He also
has been a strong advocate of the Global AIDS
Initiative and an early supporter of international
efforts to rein in carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. (Biden first drafted climate control
legislation two decades ago.) He also has generally backed free trade treaties. The long-term
senator has taken a particular interest in Africa.
He was an early critic of the apartheid regime inSouth Africa. In Darfur, he has advocated stronger action to stem the bloodshed there.

Biden’s most significant foreign policy accomplishment, according to most observers, was his
effort to combat hostilities in the Balkans during
the 1990s. Biden was said to be an influential
voice urging the Clinton administration to takeaction against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
In their Springfield appearance, Obama said that
Biden “helped shape policies that would end thekilling in the Balkans.” Specifically, Biden urged
intervention to stop ethnic cleansing of Muslims
in Bosnia. He later supported the NATO bombing campaign to force Serbia to leave Kosovo.

to faithfully execute the office ofPresident of the United States,
and to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend theConstitution of the United States.
So help me God.
U.S. Presidential Oath of Office

Biden has twice run for the presidency — in 1988
and again in 2008. Both times he was unsuccessful. The Obama campaign said that Biden was
selected as a running mate for many reasons but
prominently cited the Delaware senator’s expertise and record on foreign policy. Biden is thefirst Catholic vice president and the first vicepresident from Delaware.

Photos All photos © AP Images except: Front cover: Courtesy of the Office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama. Front & back cover(insets): U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Page 4 (left): Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Production Executive Editor
George Clack. Managing Editor Anita N. Green. Contributors Domenick DiPasquale, David Pitts, Kelly Bronk. Editor Rosalie Targonski.
Designer Tim Brown. Photo Researcher Ann Monroe Jacobs.

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