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Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems, and the separation of church and state, right to due process and equality under the law are widely accepted as a common foundation across the spectrum of liberal thought. The main focus of modern liberalism in the United States includes issues such as voting rights for all adult citizens, equal rights, protection of the environment, and the provision by the government of social services, such as: equal education opportunities, access to health care, transportation infrastructure, basic food for the hungry and basic shelter for the homeless. Some American liberals, who call themselves classical liberals, neoliberals, or libertarians, support fundamental liberal ideals but disagree with modern liberal thought, holding that economic freedom is more important than equality of opportunity, and that promoting the general welfare of society exceeds the legitimate role of government.^[1]

Without a qualifier, the term "liberalism" since the 1930s in the United States usually refers to "modern liberalism", a political philosophy exemplified by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and, later, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It is a form of social liberalism, whose accomplishments include the Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Act in 1935, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Community Reinvestment Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

According to Louis Hartz, liberalism in the United States differs from liberalism elsewhere in the world because America never had a resident hereditary aristocracy,^[2] and so avoided the worst of the class warfare that swept Europe.^[3]

History[link]

The origins of American liberalism lie in the political ideals of The Enlightenment.^[4] The Constitution of the United States of 1787 set up the first modern republic, with sovereignty in the people (not in a monarch) and no hereditary ruling aristocracy. However, the Constitution limited liberty by accepting slavery. The Founding Fathers recognized the contradiction, and most expected slavery to wither away. Indeed it was abolished in all the Northern states by 1804, but due to the demand for raw cotton by the Industrial Revolution, plantation slavery continued to flourish in the Deep South.

From the time of the Revolution to the present day, America has extended liberty to ever broader classes of people. The states abolished restrictions on voting in the early 19th century. The Constitution was amended in 1865 to abolish slavery, in 1870 to extend the vote to Black men, in 1920 to extend the vote to women, and in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18. The Jim Crow system of the South between the 1890s and 1960s relegated blacks to second class citizenship, until it was overthrown by the Civil Rights Movement and new federal laws in 1964 and 1965.^[5]

Thomas Jefferson believed that America should remain a nation of small farmers.^[6] As America became more and more a nation of businessmen, liberals began to fear threats to liberty from corruption and monopolies (called "trusts" at the time).^[7][8] Wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few—especially in the new fast-growing cities—raised questions whether political democracy could survive the power of the rich.

The dominance of the Republican Party for most of the era 1860-1932, the Third Party System, and the Fourth Party System, prevented any major reversal of the concentration of wealth. During the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, laws were passed restricting monopolies (the antitrust movement) and regulating railroad rates.^[9][10]

After 1933, modern liberals used the New Deal to provide jobs during the Great Depression. The Social Security act of 1935 provided retirement and disability income for Americans unable to work or unable to find jobs.^[11] In the Social Security Act of 1965, this was extended to provide benefits for Americans unable to work due to illness.

In the 1960s, liberals fought for the rights of blacks and women, and for protection of the environment. They split on the issue of the Vietnam War.

A reaction against modern American liberalism began with Barry Goldwater, which led to the eventual election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The intellectual foundations of this conservative resurgence included the works of free-market economists Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, who argued against central economic planning (with the notable exception of the Federal Reserve), regulation of business, and Keynesian economics. Deregulation began in the mid-1970s and had broad support from both liberals and conservatives. Reagan successfully lowered marginal tax rates, most notably for those at the top of the income distribution, while his Social Security reforms raised taxes on the middle and bottom of the income distribution, leaving their total tax burden unchanged. ^[12] Democratic president Bill Clinton (1993–2001) worked with conservatives, against strong liberal opposition, to end some of the main welfare programs and to implement NAFTA, linking the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Clinton pushed to extend modern liberal ideals especially in the areas of health care (where he failed) and environmental protection (where he had more success).^[13]

According to Louis Hartz, liberalism was the only significant political tradition in the United States. However in the 1970s, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood and J. G. A. Pocock saw republicanism as the main political tradition.^{[clarification needed]} In the 1980s, J. David Green returned to Hartz's thesis, but saw two different types of liberalism in the tradition, which he called humanist and reform. More recently, writers have seen a multitude of traditions, including liberalism, republicanism and protestantism.^{[14][dubious – discuss][clarification needed]}

Varieties of liberalism[link]

Early Liberalism[link]

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The United States of America was the first country to be founded on the liberal ideas of John Locke and other philosophers of the Enlightenment, with no monarchy, no hereditary aristocracy, and no established religion. The American Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen the freedoms advocated by the liberal philosophers: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to gather in peaceful assembly, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and the right to bear arms, among other freedoms and rights. In this sense, virtually all Americans are liberals. However, questions arose, both before and after the country was founded. In the Dred Scott decision of 1856-57, the Supreme Court ruled that these rights only applied to White men, and that Blacks had no rights whatsoever that any White man was obliged to respect. Therefore the constitution was amended several times to extend these rights to ever larger classes of citizens, to all citizens in 1868, then specifically to Blacks in 1870, to women in 1919, and to people unable to afford a poll tax in 1964.

Classical liberalism[link]

Classical liberalism in the United States (also called laissez-faire liberalism^[15]) is the belief that a free market economy is the most productive. It may be represented by Henry David Thoreau's statement "that government is best which governs least." Classical liberalism is a philosophy of individualism and self-responsibility. Classical liberals in the United States believe that if the economy is left to the natural forces of supply and demand, free of government intervention, the result is the most abundant satisfaction of human wants. Modern classical liberals oppose the concepts of social democracy and the welfare state.

Modern liberalism[link]

In 1883 Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) published Dynamic Sociology: Or Applied social science as based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences and laid out the basic tenets of modern American liberalism while at the same time attacking the laissez-faire policies advocated by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner.^[16] Ward was a passionate advocate for a sociology which would intelligently and scientifically direct the development of society.^[17]

Another influential thinker in the Progressive Era was Herbert Croly (1869 – 1930). He effectively combined classical liberal theory with progressive philosophy and founded the periodical The New Republic to present his ideas. Croly presented the case for a mixed economy, increased spending on education, and the creation of a society based on the "brotherhood of mankind." In 1909, Croly published The Promise of American Life, in which he proposed raising the general standard of living by means of economic planning, though he opposed aggressive unionization.^[18] In The Techniques of Democracy (1915) he argued against both dogmatic individualism and dogmatic socialism. As editor of the New Republic, Croly had the forum to reach the intellectual community.^[19]

Changes in liberalism in the United States[link]

The New Deal[link]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945), came to office in 1933 amid the economic calamity of the Great Depression, offering the nation a New Deal intended to alleviate economic want and joblessness, provide greater opportunities, and restore prosperity. His presidency from 1933 to 1945, the longest in U.S. history, was marked by an increased role for the Federal government in addressing the nation's economic and other problems. Work relief programs provided jobs, ambitious projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority were created to promote economic development, and a Social security system was established. The Great Depression dragged on through the 1930s, however, despite the New Deal programs, which met with mixed success in solving the nation's economic problems. Economic progress for minorities was hindered by discrimination, about which the Roosevelt administration did less than subsequent administrations, but more than had been done before. The New Deal provided direct relief for minorities in the 1930s (through the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps and other agencies); and, during World War II, executive orders and the FEPC opened millions of new jobs to minorities and forbade discrimination in companies with government contracts. The 1.5 million black veterans in 1945 were fully entitled to generous veteran benefits from the GI Bill on the same basis as everyone else.^[20]

The New Deal consisted of three types of programs designed to produce "Relief, Recovery and Reform":^[21]

Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Roosevelt expanded Hoover's FERA work relief program, and added the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Public Works Administration (PWA), and starting in 1935 the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In 1935 the Social Security Act (SSA) and unemployment insurance programs were added. Separate programs were set up for relief in rural areas, such as the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration.

Recovery was the goal of restoring the economy to pre-depression levels. It involved "pump priming" (deficit spending), dropping the gold standard, efforts to re-inflate farm prices that were too low, and efforts to increase foreign trade. New Deal efforts to help corporate America were chiefly channeled through a Hoover program, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).

Reform was based on the assumption that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy, and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Reform measures included the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), regulation of Wall Street by the Securities Exchange Act (SEA), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) for farm programs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance for bank deposits enacted through the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (also known as the Wagner Act) dealing with labor-management relations. Despite urgings by some New Dealers, there was no major anti-trust program. Roosevelt opposed socialism (in the sense of state ownership of the means of production), and only one major program, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), involved government ownership of the means of production.^[22]

In international affairs, Roosevelt's presidency was dominated by isolationism until 1938, followed by an increasingly central role in World War II, especially after America's formal entry into the war in 1941. Anticipating the post-war period, Roosevelt strongly supported proposals to create a United Nations organization as a means of encouraging mutual cooperation to solve problems on the international stage. His commitment to internationalist ideals was in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, architect of the failed League of Nations,^[23] and led to his support for the establishment of the United Nations, with the proviso that the U.S. would have a veto power.^[24][25]

Liberalism during the Cold War[link]

U.S. liberalism of the Cold War era was the immediate heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and the slightly more distant heir to the Progressives of the early 20th century.^[26] Sol Stern wrote, "Cold War liberalism deserves credit for the greatest American achievement since World War II — winning the Cold War."^[27]

The essential tenets of Cold War liberalism can be found in Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (1941): of these, freedom of speech and of religion were classic liberal freedoms, as was "freedom from fear" (freedom from tyrannical government), but "freedom from want" was another matter. Roosevelt proposed a notion of freedom that went beyond government non-interference in private lives. "Freedom from want" could justify positive government action to meet economic needs, a concept more associated with the concepts of Lincoln's Republican party, Clay's Whig Party, and Hamilton's economic principles of government intervention and subsidy than the more radical socialism and social democracy of European thinkers or with prior versions of classical liberalism as represented by Jefferson's Democratic-Republican and Jackson's Democratic party.

In the 1950s and '60s, both major U.S. political parties included liberal and conservative factions. The Democratic Party had two wings: on the one hand, Northern and Western liberals, on the other generally conservative Southern whites. Difficult to classify were the northern urban Democratic "political machines". The urban machines had supported New Deal economic policies, but would slowly come apart over racial issues. Some historians have divided the Republican Party into liberal Wall Street and conservative Main Street factions; others have noted that the GOP's conservatives came from landlocked states (Robert Taft of Ohio and Barry Goldwater of Arizona) and the liberals tended to come from California (Earl Warren and Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey), New York (Nelson Rockefeller), and other coastal states.

Opposing both communism and conservatism, Cold War liberalism resembled earlier "liberalisms" in its views on many social issues and personal liberty, but its economic views were not those of free-market Jeffersonian liberalism nor those of European social democrats. They never endorsed state socialism, but did call for spending on education, science, and infrastructure, notably the expansion of NASA and the construction of the Interstate Highway System. Their progressive ideas continued the legacy of Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Most prominent and constant among the positions of Cold War liberalism were:

• Support for a domestic economy built on a balance of power between labor (in the form of organized unions) and management (with a tendency to be more interested in large corporations than in small business).
• A foreign policy focused on containing the Soviet Union and its allies.
• The continuation and expansion of New Deal social welfare programs (in the broad sense of welfare, including programs such as Social Security).
• An embrace of Keynesian economics. By way of compromise with political groupings to their right, this often became, in practice military Keynesianism.

At first liberals generally did not see FDR's successor Harry S. Truman as one of their own, viewing him as a Democratic Party hack. However, liberal politicians and liberal organizations such as the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) sided with Truman in opposing communism both at home and abroad, sometimes at the sacrifice of civil liberties.^[28] Hubert Humphrey, for example, in 1950 put before the Senate a bill to establish detention centers where those declared subversive by the President could be held without trial. It did not pass.

Liberals were united in their opposition to McCarthyism.^[29]

The liberal consensus[link]

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By 1950, the liberal ideology was so intellectually dominant that the literary critic Lionel Trilling could write that "liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition... there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in circulation."^[30]

For almost two decades, Cold War liberalism remained the dominant paradigm in U.S. politics, peaking with the landslide victory of Lyndon B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson had been a New Deal Democrat in the 1930s and by the 1950s had decided that the Democratic Party had to break from its segregationist past and endorse racial liberalism as well as economic liberalism. In the face of the disastrous defeat of Goldwater, the Republicans accepted more than a few of Johnson's ideas as their own, so to a very real extent, the policies of President Johnson became the policies of the Republican administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.

Liberals and civil rights[link]

Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African Americans were politically and economically disenfranchised. Beginning with To Secure These Rights, an official report issued by the Truman White House in 1947, self-proclaimed liberals increasingly embraced the civil rights movement. In 1948, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and the Democrats inserted a strong civil rights plank in the party platform, even though delegates from the Deep South walked out, and nominated a third party ticket, called Dixiecrat, headed by Strom Thurmond. Truman abolished discrimination in the Armed Forces, which led to the integration of military units in the early 1950s. However, no civil rights legislation was passed until a weak bill was passed in 1957.^[31]

During the 1960s, relations between white liberals and the civil rights movement became increasingly strained; civil rights leaders accused liberal politicians of temporizing and procrastinating, although they realize they needed the support of Northern lights to pass any legislation over Southern obstructionism. The white liberals believed the grassroots movement for civil rights would only anger many Southern whites and make it even more difficult to pass civil rights laws through Congress. Thereafter, in response to that concern, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed to tone down the March on Washington in 1963. Kennedy finally endorsed the March on Washington, and proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he could not get it passed during his lifetime. Lyndon Johnson, who took office in November 1963, used the image of Kennedy's martyrdom to mobilize northern support, along with the black leadership community, to pass major civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The result was an end to segregation, and an end to restrictions on black voting, but also a wave of black riots in the inner cities, but made for "long hot summers" in every major city from 1964 through 1970. The riots alienated much of the white working class, that had been the base of the labor union element in the civil rights coalition.^[32]

The civil rights movement itself was becoming fractured. On 8 March 1964, Malcolm X stated he was going to organize a black nationalist organization that would try to "heighten the political consciousness" of African Americans.^[33] By 1966, a Black Power movement had emerged; Black Power advocates accused white liberals of trying to control the civil rights agenda. Proponents of Black Power wanted African-Americans to follow an "ethnic model" for obtaining power, not unlike that of Democratic political machines in large cities. This put them on a collision course with urban machine politicians. And, on its edges, the Black Power movement contained racial separatists who wanted to give up on integration altogether — a program that could not be endorsed by American liberals of any race. The mere existence of such individuals (who always got more media attention than their actual numbers might have warranted) contributed to "white backlash" against liberals and civil rights activists.^[34]

Paleoliberalism[link]

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As the civil rights and anti-war protesters of the late 1960s and early 1970s began to organize into a recognizable school of thought known as the New Left, many "anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ("Scoop") Jackson… preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals'", according to historian Michael Lind.

Lind also notes that some of these people became neoconservatives. ^Lind, although paleoliberals such as Peter Beinart exist to this day.

Liberals and Vietnam[link]

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While the civil rights movement isolated liberals from their erstwhile allies, the Vietnam War threw a wedge into the liberal ranks, dividing pro-war "hawks" such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from "doves" such as Senator (and 1972 presidential candidate) George McGovern. As the war became the leading political issue of the day, agreement on domestic matters was not enough to hold the liberal consensus together.

Vietnam was part of the strategy of containment of Soviet Communism. In the 1960 presidential campaign, the liberal Kennedy was more hawkish on Southeast Asia than the conservative Richard Nixon. Although it can be argued that the war expanded only under the less liberal Johnson, there was much continuity of their cabinets.

As opposition to the war grew, a large portion of that opposition came from within liberal ranks. In 1968, the Dump Johnson movement forced Democratic President Johnson out of the race for his own party's nomination for the presidency. Assassination removed Robert Kennedy from contention and Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged from the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention with the presidential nomination of a deeply divided party. The party's right wing had seceded to run Alabama governor George Wallace, and some on the left chose to sit out the election rather than vote for a man so closely associated with the Johnson administration (and with Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley). The result was a narrow victory for Republican Richard Nixon, a man who, although a California native, was largely regarded as from the old Northeast Republican Establishment, and quite liberal in many areas. Nixon enacted many liberal policies, including the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, normalizing relations with Communist China, and starting the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to reduce the availability of ballistic missiles.

Nixon and the liberal consensus[link]

Percent of self-identified liberals in the United States, broken down by state, according to Gallup, August 2010. Darker colors mean more liberals per state (click image for details).

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While the differences between Nixon and the liberals are obvious – the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, and Nixon overtly placed an emphasis on "law and order" over civil liberties, and Nixon's Enemies List was composed largely of liberals – in some ways the continuity of many of Nixon's policies with those of the Kennedy-Johnson years is more remarkable than the differences. Pointing at this continuity, Noam Chomsky has called Nixon, "in many respects the last liberal president." ^[35]

Although liberals turned increasingly against the Vietnam War, to the point of running the very dovish George McGovern for President in 1972, the war had, as noted above, been of largely liberal origin. Similarly, while many liberals condemned actions such as the Nixon administrations support for the 1973 Chilean coup, it was not entirely dissimilar to the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 or the marine landing in the Dominican Republic in 1965.

The political dominance of the liberal consensus, even into the Nixon years, can best be seen in policies such as the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency or in Nixon's (failed) proposal to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed annual income by way of a negative income tax. Affirmative action in its most quota-oriented form was a Nixon administration policy. Even the Nixon "War on Drugs" allocated two-thirds of its funds for treatment, a far higher ratio than was to be the case under any subsequent President, Republican or Democrat. Additionally, Nixon's normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and his policy of détente with the Soviet Union were probably more popular with liberals than with his conservative base.

An opposing view, offered by Cass R. Sunstein, in The Second Bill of Rights (Basic Books, 2004, ISBN 0-465-08332-3) argues that Nixon, through his Supreme Court appointments, effectively ended a decades-long expansion under U.S. law of economic rights along the lines of those put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly.

American Liberalism, 1970 to the present day[link]

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During the Nixon years (and through the 1970s), the liberal consensus began to come apart. The alliance with white Southern Democrats had been lost in the Civil Rights era. While the steady enfranchisement of African Americans expanded the electorate to include many new voters sympathetic to liberal views, it was not quite enough to make up for the loss of some Southern Democrats. Organized labor, long a bulwark of the liberal consensus, was past the peak of its power in the U.S. and many unions had remained in favor of the Vietnam War even as liberal politicians increasingly turned against it. Within the Democratic party leadership, there was a turn toward moderation after the defeat of liberal George McGovern in 1972.

Meanwhile, in the Republican ranks, a new wing of the party emerged. The libertarian Goldwater Republicans laid the groundwork for, and partially fed in to the Reagan Republicans.^{[clarification needed]} In 1980, Ronald Reagan was the Republican party's Presidential nominee. More centrist groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) were on equal footing with liberals for control of the Democratic Party in this time. The centrist-liberal alliance of the federal level Democrats lasted through the 1980s, declined in the 1990s when more conservative political figures sided with the Republican party, and returned in the 2010s, when congress split almost totally along party lines.

It has been hypothesized that the election of the first African-American President Barack Obama in 2008 could bring liberalism to the mainstream of American political thought once again.^[36] Republican party leaders have stated that making Obama a one-term president is their primary goal in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Demographics of American liberals[link]

While it is difficult to gather demographic information on ideological groups, recent surveys by the New York Times and CBS News, between 18% and 27% of American adults identify as liberal, versus moderate or conservative.^[37] In the 2008 presidential election, exit polls showed that 22% of the electorate self-identified as "liberal."^[38] According to a 2004 study by the Pew Research Center, liberals were tied with the conservative sub-group, the "Enterprisers", for the most affluent group, and were the ideological demographic with the highest rate of college education. Of those who identified as liberal, 49% were college graduates and 41% had household incomes exceeding $75,000, compared to 27% and 28% as the national average, respectively.^[39]

Liberalism also remains the dominant political ideology in academia, with 72% of full-time faculty identifying as liberal in a 2004 study.^[40] The social sciences and humanities were most liberal, whereas business and engineering departments were the least liberal, though even in the business departments, liberals outnumbered conservatives 49% to 39%. Generally, the more educated a person is the more likely he or she is to hold liberal beliefs.^[41]

In the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections, the vast majority of liberals voted in favor of the Democrats, though liberals may also show support for the Greens.^[42][43][44]

See also[link]

• Conservatism in the United States
• Libertarianism
• Progressivism in the United States

References[link]

1. ^ Pena, David S. Economic Barbarism and Managerialism, 2001, p. 35
2. ^ Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, (1991) p. 4.
3. ^ "Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans", Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in The Politics of Hope, (1962)
4. ^ Bryan-Paul Frost; Jeffrey Sikkenga (2003). History of American Political Thought. Lexington Books. p. 33. http://books.google.com/books?id=w81L1qAhNjoC&pg=PA33. 
5. ^ Alfred Fernbach and Charles Julian Bishko, Charting democracy in America (1995)
6. ^ Robert Allen Rutland, The Democrats: from Jefferson to Clinton? (1995) p. 61
7. ^ Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (1996) p. 157
8. ^ Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2006)
9. ^ John D. Buenker, John C. Burnham, and Robert M. Crunden, Progressivism (1986)
10. ^ Richard Jensen, "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885-1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775-2000 (2001) pp 149–180
11. ^ Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, The New Deal and the triumph of liberalism‎ (2002)
12. ^ "Leonhardt, David (13 April 2010) Taxing the Rich, Over Time The New York Times". 2010-04-13. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/taxing-the-rich-over-time/. Retrieved 2012-04-08. 
13. ^ Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008‎ (2009)
14. ^ Ericson and Green, pp. 1-2
15. ^ Adams, Ian, Political Ideology Today (2002), Manchester University Press, page 20
16. ^ Henry Steele Commager, ed., Lester Ward and the Welfare State (1967)
17. ^ on Ward and Sumner see Charlotte G. O'Kelley, and John W. Petras, "Images of Man in Early American Sociology. Part 2: The Changing Concept of Social Reform," Journal of the History of ohe Behavioral Sciences 1970 6(4): 317-334
18. ^ Byron Dexter, "Herbert Croly and the Promise of American Life," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Jun., 1955), pp. 197-218 in JSTOR
19. ^ David W. Levy, Herbert Croly of the New Republic: The Life and Thought of an American Progressive (1985)
20. ^ Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2005)
21. ^ Harvard Sitkoff, ed. Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated (1985)
22. ^ James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox: Vol. 1, 1882-1940 (1956)
23. ^ "Franklin Roosevelt Autographs - Presidential". Raab Collection. http://www.raabcollection.com/detail.aspx?cat=2&subcat=38&man=261. Retrieved 2012-03-11. 
24. ^ Alonzo Hamby, For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930's (1996)
25. ^ James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom 1940-1945 (1970)
26. ^ Alonzo L. Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992)
27. ^ Stern, Sol (Winter, 2010) "The Ramparts I Watched." City Journal.
28. ^ Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (1995)
29. ^ Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (1991)
30. ^ Alexander Bloom, Prodigal sons: the New York intellectuals & their world (1986) P. 178
31. ^ James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1996) pp 148=64, 413
32. ^ Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 pp 542-47
33. ^ Handler, M. S. (March 9, 1964). "Malcolm X Splits with Muhammad". The New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00D17FB395415738DDDA00894DB405B848AF1D3. Retrieved August 1, 2008. 
34. ^ Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 pp 550-55, 652-668
35. ^ Noam Chomsky. "The Colombia Plan: April 2000, by Noam Chomsky". Chomsky.info. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200006--.htm. Retrieved 2012-03-11. 
36. ^ Beinart, Peter (2008-11-13). "The New Liberal Order". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858873,00.html. Retrieved 2012-02-12. 
37. ^ "New York Times/CBS News Poll: The War in Afghanistan". New York Times. 2009-12-10. http://documents.nytimes.com/new-york-times-cbs-news-poll-the-war-in-afghanistan#p=12. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 
38. ^ "Exit Polls Conducted by Edison Research Media". CNN. 2008-11-04. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1. Retrieved 2010-01-29. 
39. ^ "Pew Research Center. (10 May 2005). Beyond Red vs. Blue.". http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=945. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
40. ^ "Kurtz, H. (29 March 2005). College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. The Washington Post.". 2005-03-29. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html. Retrieved 2007-07-02. 
41. ^ "O'Bannon, B. R. (27 August 2003). In Defense of the 'Liberal' Professor. Indianapolis Star.". Archived from the original on 2008-11-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20081120193155/http://www.collegenews.org/x2782.xml. Retrieved 2011-06-22. 
42. ^ "CNN. (2000). Exit Poll.". Archived from the original on 2007-06-30. http://web.archive.org/web/20070630063715/http://www4.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.epolls.html. Retrieved 2007-07-11. 
43. ^ "CNN. (2004). Exit Poll.". http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-11. 
44. ^ "CNN. (2006). Exit Poll.". http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-11. 

• Lewis H. Lapham, "Tentacles of Rage" in Harper's, September 2004, p. 31-41.
• Ericson, David F., Green, Louisa Bertch. "Introduction". In Ericson, David F., Green, Louisa Bertch (Eds.), The liberal tradition in American politics: reassessing the legacy of American liberalism.Llondon, UK: Routledge, 1999 ISBN 0-415-92256-9

Robert Higgs

Austrian School
Born	1 February 1944
Nationality	United States
Field	Economic history, political economy, natural resource economics, health economics, military economics
Influences	Simon Kuznets, Douglass C. North, Ronald Coase, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economic historian, economist combining the insights from the Public Choice, Institutional and Austrian schools of economics, and a classical liberal or libertarian in political and legal theory and public policy. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government power and growth.

Participation in academia[link]

He is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute (since September 1994), and is editor of The Independent Review (since 1995).^[1] He is an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute^[2] and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.^[3]

Higgs received his Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and has held teaching positions at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University. Higgs held a visiting professorship at the University of Economics, Prague in 2006,^[1] and has supervised dissertations in the Ph.D. program at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.^[4]

Writings[link]

The Ratchet Effect[link]

Daniel McCarthy praised Higgs and summarized his ratchet effect theory in a review of Against Leviathan that appeared in The American Conservative. In the review, McCarthy remarked that,

What made Crisis and Leviathan a milestone was the rigor with which it elaborated upon the logic of James Madison's 1794 warning against "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government." Other political economists had studied the growth of state power during times of war, depression, and general upheaval before, but none had done so as thoughtfully and thoroughly as Higgs. He took special care in describing the "ratchet effect" — once a crisis has passed state power usually recedes again, but it rarely returns to its original levels; thus each emergency leaves the scope of government at least a little wider than before.^[5]

Jörg Guido Hülsmann,^[6] Joseph Salerno,^[7] Lew Rockwell,^[8] and other scholars have discussed the Higgs Ratchet Effect in their writings.

The Iraq War[link]

A vehement critic of the Iraq war, Higgs wrote in the Los Angeles Chronicle in February 2008 that only a high toll in casualties or economic hardship will end the Iraqi war, not cogent arguments. Higgs continued:

It follows directly that up to this point the continued prosecution of the war has served the leaders' interests. They may say they are trying to end the war. They may have secured their election or reelection, as many of the Democrats now serving in Congress have, by promising to do whatever they can to end the war. Yet the truth is that they've sold the public a bill of goods. When the leaders have considered all the personal consequences they expect to follow from acting to end the war, they have concluded that, all things being considered, doing so does not serve their interest, and therefore they have refrained from doing so.^[9]

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and social security[link]

Higgs's 10 September 2008 article, "Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Is Shocked," stated that

[t]he failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting in motion the biggest government bailout/takeover in U.S. history, brings a grim sense of fulfillment to competent economists.... Our political economy is rife with such catastrophes in waiting, yet the public always seems startled, and outraged, when the day of reckoning can no longer be deferred, and another apartment collapses in the state’s Hotel of Impossible Promises, loading onto the taxpayers more visibly the burden of sheltering the previous occupants.... Call it democracy in action or utterly corrupt governance; they are the same thing.^[10]

Books[link]

As author[link]

• The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865-1914 (1971) ^[11]
• Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (1977; paperback edition 1980) Nominated for the American Historical Association's Beveridge Award
• Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987)
• Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society (2004)
• Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 (2005)
• Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (2006)
• Politická ekonomie strachu ("The Political Economy of Fear") (Czech language; 2006)
• Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government (2007)
• Delusions of Power: New Explorations of the State, War, and Economy (2012)

As editor[link]

• Emergence of the Modern Political Economy (1985)
• Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (1990)
• Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products (1995)
• Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy with Carl P. Close (2005)
• The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today with Carl P. Close (2006)
• Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism with Carl P. Close (2007)

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Independent Institute biography
• Liberty and Power Group Blog.
• LewRockwell.com archive
• Mises.org archive
• Los Angeles Chronicle
• Conversation with Higgs on the Great Depression
• In Depth interview with Higgs, April 5, 2009

Barack Obama
44th President of the United States
Incumbent
Assumed office January 20, 2009
Vice President	Joe Biden
Preceded by	George W. Bush
United States Senator from Illinois
In office January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008
Preceded by	Peter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by	Roland Burris
Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th District
In office January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded by	Alice Palmer
Succeeded by	Kwame Raoul
Personal details
Born	Barack Hussein Obama II (1961-08-04) August 4, 1961 (age 50)[1] Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.[2]
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Michelle Robinson (1992–present)
Children	Malia (born 1998) Sasha (born 2001)
Residence	White House (Official) Chicago, Illinois (Private)
Alma mater	Occidental College Columbia University (B.A.) Harvard Law School (J.D.)
Profession	Community organizer Lawyer Constitutional law professor Author
Religion	Christianity[3]
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize
Signature
Website	barackobama.com

	This article is part of a series on Barack Obama
Background Illinois Senate US Senate Political positions Public image Family 2008 primaries Obama–Biden campaign Transition Inauguration Electoral history Presidency Timeline '09 '10 '11 '12 First 100 days Nobel Peace Prize Re-election campaign

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In May 2012, he became the first sitting U.S. president to openly support legalizing same-sex marriage. In foreign policy, he ended the war in Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. involvement in the 2011 Libya military intervention, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Early life and career[link]

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii,^[2][4][5] and is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.^[6] His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and was of mostly English ancestry,^[7] along with Scottish, Irish, German, and Swiss.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.^[13][14] The couple married on February 2, 1961,^[15] separated when Obama Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964.^[13] Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.^[16]

After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta.^[4][17] From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School.^[18]

In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.^[19] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year before dying of ovarian cancer.^[15][20]

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind."^[14] He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.^[21] Reflecting later on his years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."^[22] Obama has also written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."^[23] At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency, Obama described his high-school drug use as a great moral failure.^[24]

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to divest from South Africa in response to its policy of apartheid.^[25] In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks.^[25] Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations^[26] and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation,^[27] then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.^[28][29]

Chicago community organizer and Harvard Law School[link]

Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.^[29][30] He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.^[31] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.^[32] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.^[33] He returned to Kenya in August 2006 for a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.^[34]

In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,^[35] and president of the journal in his second year.^[31][36] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.^[37] After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude^[38] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.^[35] Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention^[31][36] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations,^[39] which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.^[39]

University of Chicago Law School and civil rights attorney[link]

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book.^[39][40] He then taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.^[41]

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.^[42] In 1993, he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004. His law license became inactive in 2002.^[43]

From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project; and of the Joyce Foundation.^[29] He served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.^[29]

Legislative career: 1997–2008[link]

State Senator: 1997–2004[link]

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.^[44] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws.^[45] He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.^[46] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.^[47]

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002.^[48] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.^[49]

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.^[50] He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.^[46][51] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.^[52] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.^[53]

U.S. Senate campaign[link]

County results of the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Counties in blue were won by Obama.

In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race; he created a campaign committee, began raising funds, and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. Obama formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.^[54]

Obama was an early opponent of the George W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[55] On October 2, 2002, the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,^[56] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally,^[57] and spoke out against the war.^[58] He addressed another anti-war rally in March 2003 and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.^[59]

Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun to not participate in the election resulted in wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.^[60] In the March 2004 primary election, Obama won in an unexpected landslide—which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party, started speculation about a presidential future, and led to the reissue of his memoir, Dreams from My Father.^[61] In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,^[62] seen by 9.1 million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party.^[63]

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.^[64] Six weeks later, Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.^[65] In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote.^[66]

U.S. Senator: 2005–2008[link]

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005,^[67] becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.^[68] CQ Weekly characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.^[69]

Legislation[link]

Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.^[70] He introduced two initiatives that bore his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons;^[71] and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.^[72] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama—along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain—introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.^[73]

Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee.^[74] Regarding tort reform, Obama voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.^[75]

Obama and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) visit a Russian facility for dismantling mobile-missiles (August 2005).^[76]

In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.^[77] In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007.^[78] Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections,^[79] and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007,^[80] neither of which was signed into law.

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act to add safeguards for personality-disorder military discharges.^[81] This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008.^[82] He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee; and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.^[83] Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.^[84]

Committees[link]

Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works, and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.^[85] In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.^[86] He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.^[87] As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before Abbas became President of the Palestinian National Authority, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi in which he condemned corruption within the Kenyan government.^[88]

Presidential campaigns[link]

2008 presidential campaign[link]

Obama stands on stage with his wife and daughters just before announcing his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, February 10, 2007.

President George W. Bush meets with President-elect Obama in the Oval Office on November 10, 2008.

On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois.^[89][90] The choice of the announcement site was viewed as symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858.^[89][91] Obama emphasized issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care,^[92] in a campaign that projected themes of "hope" and "change".^[93]

A large number of candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to a duel between Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton after early contests, with the race remaining close throughout the primary process but with Obama gaining a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long-range planning, superior fundraising, dominant organizing in caucus states, and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules.^[94] On June 7, 2008, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.^[95]

On August 23, Obama announced his selection of Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.^[96] Biden was selected from a field speculated to include former Indiana Governor and Senator Evan Bayh and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.^[97] At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Hillary Clinton called for her supporters to endorse Obama, and she and Bill Clinton gave convention speeches in his support.^[98] Obama delivered his acceptance speech, not at the center where the Democratic National Convention was held, but at Invesco Field at Mile High to a crowd of over 75,000; the speech was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide.^[99][100]

During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations.^[101] On June 19, 2008, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.^[102]

McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate and the two engaged in three presidential debates in September and October 2008.^[103] On November 4, Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received by McCain.^[104] Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7 percent.^[105] He became the first African American to be elected president.^[106] Obama delivered his victory speech before hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago's Grant Park.^[107]

2012 presidential campaign[link]

On April 4, 2011, Obama announced his re-election campaign for 2012 in a video titled "It Begins with Us" that he posted on his website and filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission.^{[108][109][110]} As the incumbent president he ran almost unopposed in the Democratic Party presidential primaries,^[111] and on April 3, 2012, Obama had secured the 2778 convention delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.^[112]

Presidency[link]

First days[link]

Barack Obama takes the oath of office as President of the United States.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President, and Joe Biden as Vice President, took place on January 20, 2009. In his first few days in office, Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.^[113] He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp,^[114] but Congress prevented the closure by refusing to appropriate the required funds.^{[115][116][117]} Obama reduced the secrecy given to presidential records,^[118] and changed procedures to promote disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.^[119] He also reversed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding to foreign establishments that allow abortions.^[120]

Domestic policy[link]

The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits.^[121] Five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover an additional 4 million uninsured children.^[122] In March 2009, Obama reversed a Bush-era policy which had limited funding of embryonic stem cell research and pledged to develop "strict guidelines" on the research.^[123]

Barack Obama speaking at Joint session of Congress with Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on February 24, 2009

Obama appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his Presidency. Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by Obama on May 26, 2009, to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter, was confirmed on August 6, 2009,^[124] becoming the first Hispanic to be a Supreme Court Justice.^[125] Elena Kagan, nominated by Obama on May 10, 2010, to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, was confirmed on August 5, 2010, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three, for the first time in American history.^[126]

On September 30, 2009, the Obama administration proposed new regulations on power plants, factories and oil refineries in an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to curb global warming.^[127][128]

On October 8, 2009, Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.^[129][130]

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, a reconciliation bill which ends the process of the federal government giving subsidies to private banks to give out federally insured loans, increases the Pell Grant scholarship award, and makes changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.^[131][132]

In a major space policy speech in April 2010, Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA, the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and development of the Ares I rocket, Ares V rocket and Constellation program, in favor of funding Earth science projects, a new rocket type, and research and development for an eventual manned mission to Mars, and ongoing missions to the International Space Station.^[133]

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, fulfilling a key promise made in the 2008 presidential campaign^[134][135] to end the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993 that had prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces.^[136]

President Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address focused on themes of education and innovation, stressing the importance of innovation economics to make the United States more competitive globally. He spoke of a five-year freeze in domestic spending, eliminating tax breaks for oil companies and reversing tax cuts for wealthy Americans, banning congressional earmarks, and reducing healthcare costs. He promised that the United States would have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and would be 80% reliant on "clean" electricity.^[137][138]