Barack Obama Has Had Quite The Transformation
Transformation is the perfect word to describe the many facets of Barack Obama. As a young boy, his family took a transformative cross-country road trip to experience much of the nation that he would one day lead. While visiting Yellowstone National Park and other locations with his family, the future head of state knew this was just the start of his personal growth. "I was going to have to go on some sort of journey in order to find out who I was," he wrote in a Facebook post.
Many years later, when he became the President of the United States in 2008, Obama transformed democracy, especially with his historic nomination as the country's first Black president. While in office, Obama also literally transformed, with his hair quickly turning gray after taking the high-stress position. According to his interview on "Live with Kelly & Michael," Obama's grandfather on his mother's side started getting gray hair in his 30s, so he was bound to lose his hair color anyway. Still, the president confessed that his time in office probably sped up the gray hair by about six months.
Yet, Obama said the sacrifice in looks was worth it. "I earned this gray hair," he once declared before a round of applause at a 2018 rally. As a president who transformed U.S. politics, here's how Obama has himself transformed throughout the years.
Baby Barack Obama had a multicultural childhood
Barack Obama is actually the second person with that name. The former U.S. president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961, and was named Barack Hussein Obama II after his father. Two years after welcoming their son, Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham divorced. Following the separation, young Obama grew up with his mom, Ann, and her parents, Stanley and Madelyn. The family moved even further west to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1967, after Ann remarried a man named Lolo Soetoro, and the couple later welcomed Obama's half-sister Maya in 1970.
It was in Indonesia where Obama began his education in academic subjects and life lessons. "My time here made me cherish respect for people's differences," he said during a 2017 visit to Indonesia (via People). The former attorney even showed off some of his knowledge of their culture by saying, "Indonesia is part of me," in the country's native language.
Looking back, Obama was grateful for his eclectic upbringing and especially credits his mother for starting his journey to one day become president. "My sister Maya and I got early lessons about the struggle for civil rights, the impact of poverty on people around the world, and the importance of respecting other cultures and considering other points of view," Obama explained in an Instagram post, which showed an adorable photo with him sitting in Ann's lap. He added that she "was strong, smart, and marched to her own beat."
Sunshine and hoops for a young Obama
Barack Obama stayed in Indonesia until he was 10 years old and then moved back to Hawaii in 1971 to live with his grandparents. With experience already in both Catholic and Muslim schools as well as homes in America and abroad, Obama had a unique worldliness about him from a young age. After returning to Hawaii, he continued his education at the private college preparatory school, Punahou School, in Honolulu.
While in high school, Obama was like many kids his age, playing sports and going to social events, like his senior prom. As for the athletic part, he wore the No. 23 jersey as a guard on the school's basketball team, which went on to win the state championship in 1979 during his senior year. In those early days, his teammates and coaches referred to the future president as Barry, they told NBC News.
Since he grew up without a father and with his mixed heritage, Obama revealed to Sports Illustrated, "In a community where there weren't a lot of African-Americans, basketball was a refuge, a place where I made a lot of my closest friends, and picked up a lot of my sense of competition and fair play. It was very important to me all the way through my teenage years."
College sparked Obama's interest in politics
Barack Obama wasn't exactly the top of his class while attending school in Hawaii. In fact, he even admitted to experimenting with vices like marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol. Still, he continued with higher education after graduating from Punahou School in 1979 by attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. He took political theory classes with his professor, Roger Boesche, and it was during his time at the college that he first became interested in politics. The president later invited Boesche to the White House in 2009 to thank his former teacher for influencing his path into public policy.
For his junior year in college, Obama transferred to Columbia University in New York City. He studied political science and international relations and examined Soviet nuclear disarmament for his senior thesis. In a city full of endless entertainment, Obama devoted most of his efforts to his education. "I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk," he said (via The New York Times).
In 1983, Obama graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in political science and remained in the city to work as a financial researcher for Business International Corporation. While he only worked for the company for about a year, Obama's time in New York City was still a turning point for him as an adult, giving up his recreational drug use and routinely running three miles every day.
The office meet cute between Barack and Michelle
After his years in New York City, Barack Obama settled in Chicago, Illinois to start a more political career path. He worked for the Developing Communities Project to aid impoverished communities on the South side of Chicago. He worked his way up to a director level, and with this experience, he was accepted into Harvard Law School at age 27 in the fall of 1988. One of his classmates recalled that Obama, who was older than many of his colleagues, embodied his varied experiences through childhood, school, and work as a confident student. "He didn't strike us in law school as someone who was searching for himself," she told Harvard Law Today.
After his first year at Harvard, Obama returned to Chicago in the summer of 1989 to work at the Sidley & Austin law firm. "A year earlier I had been working as a community organizer in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, and I struggled with the decision to go to a large firm. But with student loans mounting, the three months of salary they offered wasn't something I could pass up," Obama wrote for Oprah.
As a summer hire, the firm assigned him to be paired with their senior employee, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. "I remember being struck by how tall and beautiful she was," Obama recalled. While she rejected his offer to go out on a date due to the fact she was his adviser, the future First Lady eventually accepted his proposition.
Making history at Harvard
Barack Obama quickly excelled as a student in the Harvard Law School. In 1990, he became the president of the university's student-run law journal, the Harvard Law Review. With this appointment, Obama became the first Black president in the history of the journal. "You could see many of his attributes, approach to politics and ability to bring people together back then," a classmate who worked with Obama at the journal, told Harvard Law Today.
Another one of Obama's few conservative colleagues at the Harvard Law Review even conceded that the future president had remarkable political skills. "He tended not to enter these debates and disputes but rather bring people together and forge compromises," he recalled of Obama. The historic nomination led to an agent approaching Obama, insisting that he write an autobiography about his life. He accepted the offer and released his first autobiography in 1995.
While at law school, Obama participated in protest rallies and was also a research assistant to Professor Laurence Tribe, helping him with an article on physics and constitutional law. According to Professor Tribe, Obama was the most impressive student he ever taught in his career. The attorney graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 with magna cum laude honors. Not forgetting the influence and help from his peers during these years, Obama staffed over 20 of his former Harvard classmates to his transition team after first being elected as POTUS.
The Obamas tied the knot
After Barack Obama insisted that he would quit his job just to go out with Michelle Obama, she finally agreed and the couple went on their first date in Chicago. "I treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb. I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate," he recalled for Oprah. In 1991, the couple grew even closer together, and as Barack explained in a throwback photo post of him and Michelle from that time period, "I knew it way back then and I'm absolutely convinced of it today — you're one of a kind."
After dating for two years, Barack proposed to Michelle in Chicago and they wed in 1992. She posted an adorable photo from their nuptials with each of them wearing frosting on their noses. "This relationship can be one of the most foundational pieces of our identities — bringing us so much joy, meaning, and support every single day," Michelle wrote in the caption, reflecting on the meaning of marriage.
While the photo shows the newlyweds smiling and seemingly as happy as can be, Michelle admitted that she was worried for her fiancé before the ceremony even started. "Barack woke up on our wedding day in October 1992 with a nasty head cold," Michelle remembered in another post. "Somehow, by the time I met him at the altar, it had miraculously disappeared and we ended up dancing almost all night."
They started a family amid Obama's political rise
Barack Obama landed his first political appointment as a member of the Illinois State Senate in 1996. In this role, he joined several committees overseeing important issues like health, welfare, administrative rules, and revenue. In 1998, Obama was reelected to continue serving in his seat. He appeared as a guest at the University of Illinois Springfield that year and explained why he loved to represent Chicago's multicultural 13th district. "The federal government is increasingly providing the states more responsibility and greater latitude in shaping social policy and so I think this is a wonderful laboratory to work in," Obama said about his job in the interview.
It was a huge year for Obama because not long before being elected to a second term, he and Michelle Obama had their first child together, daughter Malia, in 1998. Barack once posted a throwback photo on X, formerly known as Twitter, for his eldest daughter's birthday, captioned, "No matter how sophisticated, accomplished, beautiful, and gracious a young woman you've become — you'll always be my baby. And I will always be here to lift you up."
Barack recalled that Malia was an inquisitive kid, like once asking him if the Obama family was rich. While he explained to her that they were well-off, but by no means rich, Malia responded, "'Well, that's good because I don't want to be really rich. I think I want to live a simple life,'" Barack remembered to People.
The Obama family continued to grow
After serving as a state senator for several years, Barack Obama looked to enter Congress as a Democratic representative for Illinois. His competition in the 2000 election was the incumbent representative, Bobby Rush, who was previously the defense minister for the Black Panthers and ultimately served in Congress for 15 terms. Given Rush's popularity, it's unsurprising that he beat a young Obama by earning more than 60% of votes to remain in his seat. "Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool," Rush said of his competition during the election campaign (via the Chicago Tribune).
While he may have lost the race, Obama was soon a winner in 2001 when he and Michelle welcomed their second daughter Natasha, who goes by Sasha. To celebrate Sasha's birthday, Obama posted a photo of him holding up baby Sasha with her face pressed against his. "I have loved watching you grow into the intelligent, beautiful, and caring young woman you've become. And no matter how old you get — you'll always be my baby girl. Look at those cheeks!" he captioned.
According to the president, Sasha quickly found her footing as a member of the family. "Sasha, is just full of energy and the comedian in the family," he explained to People. Her sister, Malia, once described her little sister — as Barack detailed to InStyle — as "completely confident about her own take on the world and is not cowed or intimidated — and never has been — by anybody's titles, anybody's credentials."
Obama in the early aughts
Just months after having his second child, Barack Obama, like the rest of the world, dealt with the unspeakable tragedy of September 11, 2001. "I remember that I was driving to a state legislative hearing in downtown Chicago when I heard the news on my car radio, that a plane had hit the World Trade Center," he recalled on C-SPAN (via Illinois Public Media). It was Malia's first day of preschool and Obama soon learned more details of the terrorist attack. "It gave you a sense for the first time in my lifetime that our homeland could be vulnerable in that way," he reminisced during a 2015 town hall meeting (via The Washington Post).
As a state senator in Illinois, Obama continued to expand his responsibilities and pass more legislation. For example, in 2003, Obama co-sponsored the Illinois Equal Pay Act, which expanded protection against pay discrimination for 330,000 women in the state. He additionally worked to improve the Illinois health care system, including widening the coverage of the state's KidCare program in 2004.
Outside of politics, Obama continued to shape young minds as a senior lecturer for the law school at the University of Chicago. For eight years starting in 1996, Obama taught three courses every year at the university. The school's dean offered Obama a tenured position, telling The New York Times that he thought the state senator's political career was going nowhere. Obama refused the offer and later stopped teaching when his political career was in fact only getting better.
His rapid ascent to the Senate
After years of success in the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama's political career continued and his presence expanded at a national level. Showing off his impressive public speaking skills, Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, in support of the party's presidential ticket, John Kerry and John Edward. While both men would lose out on occupying the Oval Office, the DNC appearance helped boost Obama's own campaign to join the United States Senate. That November, he secured the election and became the new junior U.S. Senator for Illinois.
By this time, Obama was already working on his next memoir, and in 2006, he released "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." It was part of a huge $1.9 million advance that the senator received to publish three different books. With the book's release date in the fall of 2006, many began to wonder if this was a precursor to Obama announcing his candidacy to be president.
Sure enough, in 2007, Obama declared at a rally in Springfield, Illinois that he would run to be the head of the federal government. "I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington, but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change," he noted to the crowd during his speech.
A historic moment for Obama and for America
Throughout his 2008 presidential campaign, it looked like Barack Obama could win the election, even up against the historical odds. For example, Obama would be the youngest person to hold the office since Bill Clinton and one of the youngest presidents ever at age 47. "I can't believe anyone thought I was old enough to run the country," Obama later said (via Obama.org). Yet, a majority of the country did believe in him, which first showed in his victory at the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
One of the most iconic images from the campaign was the "Hope" poster, which featured a pop-art-like portrait of Obama. Graphic designer Shepard Fairey started it as a simple street poster before being adopted as the official image of Obama's campaign. In the outcome of the election, Obama beat out Republican nominee John McCain, with the next president earning 67.8% of the electoral vote and 52.9% of the popular vote. During his acceptance speech, Obama emphasized his optimism in the face of the country's adversity.
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," he said during his victory speech. Obama was then sworn in as the 44th President of the United States with 1.8 million people in attendance for his inauguration.
His momentous first term
As president, Barack Obama quickly got to work on making lasting changes in the country. Just over a week after being sworn into office, Obama signed his first bill called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to address disparities in wages between men and women in the workforce. In 2009, Obama earned the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
Even with the accolades and previous victories in office, nothing compared to the centerpiece of Obama's campaign, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Often referred to as Obamacare, the law went into effect in March of 2010, which provided health care coverage to an additional 32 million people in the country, meaning 95% of America would be eligible for the program. "Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics," Obama said during a press conference after the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill.
In 2011, months before the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Obama announced that former Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed. In an address to the nation and the world, Obama explained that he authorized the U.S. operation to take out Bin Laden after discovering that he was hiding in Pakistan. This momentous occasion came at an opportune time for Obama, who had announced his bid for reelection just the month before.
Obama extended his time in the White House
In his second attempt at becoming president, Barack Obama went up against Republican candidate Mitt Romney. While it was a closer margin of victory than his first election, Obama won again in 2012 to continue his time in office another four years alongside Vice President Joe Biden. "Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward," Obama said during his victory speech after winning the election.
In his second go around as president, Obama, of course, took every national matter with utmost respect, but he also leaned into his charismatic side. For example, every year he would pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving, but not before addressing spectators and delivering what he called a "corny-copia" of dad jokes. As a college basketball fan, Obama shared his prediction bracket for the winners of the Men's NCAA basketball tournament every year. Another annual tradition was to release a summer playlist and year end recap of his favorite songs.
On January 10, 2017, Obama went back to Chicago — where he first blossomed as a politician — to fittingly deliver his farewell address after two terms of being the President of the United States. "This is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved and they get engaged, and they come together to demand it. After eight years as your President, I still believe that," he said.
Life after leaving the Oval Office
After leaving his post as president for good, Barack Obama continued to stay prevalent in both politics and entertainment. In 2020, he released the first of a two-part volume discussing his time in the White House. In the memoir, "A Promised Land," Obama recounted in great detail his childhood leading up to the back end of his first term. Sticking with tradition, he also continued to put out his popular end-of-the-year lists, which included his favorite songs, books, and movies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, students across the world had virtual graduations or modified ceremonies to adhere to public health guidelines. To still inspire graduates, even if virtually, Obama recorded a commencement speech to all classes of 2020. He recommended that all the new grads should take photos, no matter where they are. "Although, when I look at my graduation pictures, the main thing I realize is that I should have gotten a haircut more often," Obama joked about his appearance.
Later in 2020, Obama once again gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, this time in support of his former vice president, Joe Biden. Obama called Biden his "brother" and a man who treated everyone with respect. The former president also took the opportunity to condemn the sitting president Donald Trump. After Biden and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, won the 2020 election, Obama issued a statement congratulating both politicians.
What Obama does in his free time
Finished with elected positions, Barack Obama enjoys his time outside of traditional government politics, even though he still has opinions on the state of the world. For example, he appeared as a guest on the popular "Pod Save America" podcast in 2023 to discuss his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He also teamed up with legendary musician Bruce Springsteen for a series of talks about their lives in the podcast, "Renegades: Born in the USA."
Beyond podcast appearances, Obama and his wife, Michelle, have continued their relationship, often posting cute photos with one another on their wedding anniversary. "Miche, After 30 years, I'm not sure why you look exactly the same and I don't. I do know that I won the lottery that day — that I couldn't have asked for a better life partner," he captioned in an Instagram post showing a now-and-then photo of the couple. The pair also attended the 2023 US Open together to cheer on Coco Gauff, the women's singles winner.
Still, politics is forever part of Obama. In 2023, he hosted the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum. "I have always believed that the ideas of a now 62-year-old, gray haired, although still relatively fit, ex-president are less relevant than the ideas and insights of you, a new generation of leaders," he said at the event (via Medium). Self-deprecating humor aside, Obama said that he and Michelle came up with the idea for the event to empower and connect the influential trailblazers of tomorrow.