| Senator of Illinois:
In 1996, Obama decided to run for the senator of Illinois from 13 electoral districts, after garnering support of the existing senator of State, Alice Palmer, from the Democratic party, who had decided to participate in the elections in the House of Representatives. But Palmer lost the elections and demanded that Obama too withdraws his name from the elections in the Senate of State. However, Obama refused to do so. Palmer hurriedly lodged the application for participation in the elections in the senate, but was disqualified after checking the signatures for her nomination, upon which Obama insisted. Subsequently, Obama managed to be ahead of other candidates from the Democratic Party in the primaries and won the election with a big margin against the Republican Party candidate.
Obama represented the Democratic Party in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. In this post, Obama worked both with the Democrats as well as with Republicans: along with representatives of both parties, Obama worked on programs to support the low-income families through the reduction of taxes. Obama projected himself as an active supporter for the development of preschool education. He also supported the measures on toughening the control over the working of investigating bodies: due to his efforts, laws were adopted in the state, which demand recording the interrogations of people, arrested for attempt to murder, on video camera and also maintain statistics of race details of drivers, who were intercepted by policemen.
In 2000, Obama made an attempt to run in the elections for the House of Representatives from the 13th electoral district of Illinois. In the primaries, his opponent was an existing congressman Bobby Rush - former member of the "Black Panthers" movement. Shortly before this, Rush lost the elections for the post of the mayor of Chicago, however, he made a lustrous pre-election campaign for the House of Representatives and in primaries, received two times more votes than Obama, whereas, the mainly white population voted for Obama. After losing in the elections for the House of Representatives, Obama quickly restored popularity amongst the black population. In January 2002, after the democrats got the majority in the State Senate, he became the Chairman of Health and Human Services Committee.
In 2002, Obama gained popularity for his speech in an anti-war meeting in Chicago, during which he criticized the George Bush Administration for operations in Iraq.
Career in the US Senate:
In 2004, Obama entered the race for one of the posts from Illinois in the US Senate. Barack Obama won convincingly over six opponents during the primaries. Obama's chances of victory increased when his Republican opponent "Jack Ryan" was forced to withdraw his nomination: the reason was scandalous charges moved against Ryan during his divorce case.
On July 29, 2004, during the pre-election campaign, Obama addressed the national convention of the Democratic Party. His speech was broadcast on television and made Barack Obama extremely popular in the USA. The Senate candidate urged the audience to return to the roots of American society and once again make USA a country of "open possibilities": he illustrated on examples of his own and his father's biography as an ideal for open possibilities.
In the elections for Senate, Obama had a confident victory over Republican Alan Keyes, by collecting 70% of the votes. He assumed office on January 4, 2005 and became the fifth black senator in the history of the USA. Subsequently, experts noted that, as in Chicago, Obama would quickly adapt to the political climate of Washington and create coalition of supporters.
Barack Obama became a member of several committees of the Senate: on environmental issues and community works, on issues, pertaining to veterans and on international relations.
As before, in the Senate of state, Obama worked in a close association with Republicans on various issues, particularly over legislation on transparency of government activities. Apart from this, Obama visited Russia along with Richard Lugar, a well-known senator-Republican: the trip was dedicated towards cooperation in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In general, Obama voted in the Senate in accordance with the liberal side of the Democratic Party. He paid special attention to the idea of developing alternative energy sources. |
President Barack “O-bow-ma” bowed again, this time to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Obama first raised public brows when he apparently bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Just recently he also gave a bow to another foreign leader - Japan's Emperor Akihito. Republicans ask "How low will he go?"
