As a student, he became aware of what it meant to be African American-a realization he later brought with him to the White House. Obama grew up in Hawaii, where he was one of only three black students at the Punahou School. Though his mission to kill Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was successful, his pledge to close the Guantanamo prison went unrealized. Overseas, he oversaw the drawdown of American troops in the Middle East-a force reduction that was controversially replaced with an expansion of drone and aviation strikes.
While working to improve the economy, Obama enacted the Affordable Care Act, extending health benefits to millions of previously uninsured Americans. was undergoing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The former Illinois state senator’s election signaled a feeling of hope for the future even as the U.S.
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Obama stands ready to mobilize the diverse and growing coalition that put him in office to further his agenda.> Download the Classroom Resource About the Subjectīarack Obama made history in 2009 by becoming the first African American president of the United States. Rather than preaching the need for a post-partisan Washington, as he did four years ago, Mr. Immediately after the speech, he planned to leave Washington to highlight his proposals to increase manufacturing, strengthen the middle class and combat gun violence. Obama was re-elected, it has become clear that the GOP is not impervious to public opinion. There is little chance that Republicans will suddenly spring into action because the president urged them to. Comprehensive immigration reform? "Now's the time." Raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour? "We should be able to get that done." Long lines at the polls? "We can fix this, and we will." The victims of gun violence "deserve a simple vote." "Now is our best chance," he said, for tax reform to encourage economic growth. Expanding pre-kindergarten access to all Americans "is something we should be able to do." Legislation to tackle climate change is something members of both parties have worked on in the past. Obama asked, of Washington's inability to act on help for the housing market. The president certainly didn't ignore the fiscal issues that have dominated his debates with Congress in recent years - he offered entitlement reform, for example, to further reduce the deficit - but he also made clear that he will not allow them to crowd out everything else. The president's insistence on the need to invest in education, research and development, infrastructure and clean energy development is not new, but it remains crucial, and it remains threatened by Republicans' myopic concern about short-term deficits rather than long-term growth. In fact, done incorrectly or done too quickly, deficit reduction could send us back to recession - the stalling of the economy in the fourth quarter of last year as the nation careened on the edge of the fiscal cliff is testament to that. "Deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan," Mr. The president is entirely correct that it is self-inflicted wounds from the partisan warfare in Washington that have stifled growth and prevented us from focusing on readying our economy for a new era of global competition.
But the message was loud and clear: He stands ready to make a deal, provided that Republicans are willing to abandon their tactic of "moving from one manufactured crisis to the next." Obama didn't say who these "some people" are in Washington who have the terrible ideas he criticized. The speech was not overtly partisan - Mr.
Kennedy's assertion that the president and Congress were "not rivals for power but partners in progress," but he went on to make clear that the blame for failing to make that progress is not evenly shared. Obama began the speech by quoting John F. Obama would set a dramatic new direction for the nation but whether he can finally get a divided Congress to act. But given the dysfunction in Washington, the issue at hand was not whether Mr. Aside from gun control - an issue thrust on the president's agenda by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre - and a new, ominous nuclear test in North Korea, all of the themes from the speech could have had a home in any of President Obama's previous State of the Union addresses. Obama focused on improving the economic lot of the middle class, reforming the nation's immigration system, addressing climate change and finding a balanced approach to solving our budget problems. The first State of the Union address of President Barack Obama's second term offered a list of new initiatives if not new ideas.