Portal:Chicago/Selected biography/7

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States. He was the first African American to hold the office and the first president born outside the continental United States. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, he spent most of his early life in Honolulu, Hawaii. From ages six to ten, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. He married his wife, Michelle Robinson, in 1992 and has two daughters. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before running for public office and serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was controversially named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He was reelected president in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney.