Barack Obama elected president
The son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother becomes the first Black president, two centuries after the Constitution counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person.
- Barack Obama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System — Pew Research Center (2022)
Barack Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois born in Hawaii in 1961, won the 2008 election amid the worst financial crisis since the Depression, with a campaign of “hope” and “Yes we can”. On election night crowds wept in Chicago’s Grant Park and in Black churches across the country. As president (2009–2017) he steered the economy out of recession, passed the Affordable Care Act and ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
- Barack Obama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
His presidency also exposed deep divisions. A false conspiracy theory that he was not born in the United States, promoted by Donald Trump among others, was believed by a large share of Republicans, and partisan hostility rose steadily through his two terms. The country that elected him then elected Trump in 2016.
- Barack Obama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System — Pew Research Center (2022)
For many, his victory showed that the American promise could be fulfilled within a lifetime of Jim Crow, and his health reform, the Affordable Care Act (2010), extended insurance to millions.
- Barack Obama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Conservatives saw his health law and stimulus as government overreach and mobilised in the Tea Party movement; some on the left felt he was too cautious on Wall Street, war and immigration, deporting record numbers of people.
- Barack Obama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System — Pew Research Center (2022)
Why it matters today
Obama's election was a moment of joy and tears for many Americans, especially Black Americans who never expected to see it. Some hoped it meant a "post-racial" America; instead, the reaction to his presidency, from the Tea Party to the "birther" conspiracy theory, became part of the story of today's polarisation.