Barack Obama: A funny name, a compelling story

MANILA, Philippines – “My presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” Barack Obama began.

“I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story ... and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

It was the speech that launched him. Obama was an Illinois assembly member seeking his first term in the US Senate, given a shot at the national stage when John Kerry asked him to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

He had those in the crowd on their feet, cheering wildly, even as many of them – even as many of us – wondered: Who is this guy?

A “skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too,” he told us then.

He talked about hope and brighter days and standing at a crossroads in our nation’s history – themes that would become the bedrock of his own unprecedented run for the White House. And he touched on the many chapters of his life, as familiar to us now as his rallying cry for change.

There was the black father, also named Barack, who grew up herding goats in Kenya. He traveled on scholarship to attend the University of Hawaii and there, in a Russian language class, met 18-year-old Stanley Ann Dunham, the white daughter of Kansas-bred parents, christened after the father who worked on oil rigs and farms and served in World War II.

Barack (“blessed” in Arabic) was born on Aug. 4, 1961. But his parents’ marriage didn’t last, and his father would be absent for all but a month of the boy’s life. His mother, a free-spirited anthropologist passionate about helping women, raised him. Of her, Obama once wrote: “What is best in me I owe to her.”

We would learn of the international upbringing, four years spent living in Indonesia after his mother remarried and brought her son to a Third World country, at once exotic and enlightening. Young Barack had a pet monkey, but he also saw poverty and disease, and his eyes were opened to a new world view.

That world view didn’t ease Obama’s own struggle with his biracial identity. He was among the few black students at his Honolulu high school, where he was known as “Barry” and met with others for a weekly “ethnic corner” discussion. He lived then with his maternal grandparents, including Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother he called “Toot.”

In a remarkable dissertation on race earlier this year, a speech intended to rebuke the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remarks regarding the nation’s racial divide, Obama referred to his “white grandmother” as the woman who helped raise him, sacrificed for him and loved him, but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street and “who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Dunham died Sunday at age 86. His father died in a car crash in 1982, his mother of ovarian cancer in 1995. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, lives in Honolulu and teaches history.

The compelling life story that helped propel Obama from community organizer to celebrity politician emerged initially in 1990, after he was elected the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He was 28, a second-year student with a political science degree from Columbia University who had spent several years working the streets of Chicago mobilizing South Side residents to fight for themselves after steel mill closings left them struggling.

His election made headlines, even landing him his first book deal and, in a 1990 interview with The Associated Press, he professed a desire to stay “engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society.” He mentioned poverty and race, saying, “I really hope to be part of a transformation of this country.”

After Harvard, Obama rejected high-powered job offers, joining a small civil rights firm back in Chicago. He ran a voter registration drive and lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

He also married Michelle Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad who served as his adviser during a summer internship at a Chicago law firm. The couple have two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

The jump into politics came in 1996, when Obama won an Illinois Senate seat representing Hyde Park, the South Side neighborhood that encompasses the prestigious university as well as pockets of deep inner-city poverty.

Obama helped change laws governing the death penalty, ethics and racial profiling, and he won tax credits for the working poor. But he failed in his campaign for universal health care. He failed, too, in a 2000 bid for a US House seat.

Then came 2004 and the opportunity to run for the US Senate – and to introduce himself to his fellow Americans.

He won the election, becoming only the third black US senator since Reconstruction. But it was “The Speech” that made him a rock star. Talk of a presidential run began even before his first day in Washington. At first, he demurred.

But on a blustery February day last year, Obama returned to Illinois to the steps of the Old Capitol to announce his candidacy for presidency.

These past 21 months, he has drawn colossal crowds, spurring comparisons to the Kennedys (both John and Bobby). He took on race. He overcame rumors about whether he was a Muslim when, in fact, he is a Christian, as well as accusations of consorting with a 1960s anti-war radical.

He toppled the anointed Democratic front-runner, a historic candidate in her own right whose political acclaim and eight years spent as first lady weren’t enough to win her party’s nomination. He deflected repeated condemnation of his lack of experience.

And he crossed party lines, earning the backing of former Republican governors and senators and retired Gen. Colin Powell, President Bush’s first secretary of state who, echoing the young Obama of Harvard days, called the Democrat a “transformational figure” who displays “a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems.”

“I think that he has a definitive way of doing business,” Powell concluded, “that would serve us well.”

“Yes, we can!” all those legions of supporters chanted throughout the campaign.

And somehow, he did.

On Jan. 20, 47-year-old Barack Obama will take to another stage, the west front of the US Capitol, to recite the oath of the nation’s highest office.

The rock star will be known the world over as Mr. President.

And the skinny kid will take his place in history, proving that unlikely as it may have all been – it was, indeed, possible. – AP