Fathered by a Kenyan exchange student and raised by a single white mother, spending his childhood in both Hawaii and Indonesia, he has been directly impacted by the cultural divide of race while emerging virtually unscathed by the bitterness of the conflict. He has risen from virtually nothing (at one point living off of food stamps) to graduate with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard. He has written two best-selling books. He has devoted his life to public service, first as a community organizer in the battle-scarred South Side district of Chicago, emphasizing his devotion to serving the people. As the first African-American president of the influential Harvard Law Review, he could have devoted his life to intaking large amounts of cash as a successful corporate lawyer. But he didn’t stop there: he moved to teach constitutional law for 12 years at the University of Chicago, served on several boards of charitable organizations, was elected to the Illinois State Senate and, finally, the United States Senate.
So why all the hype about his inexperience? Obama has over 20 years of it. It is obvious that this is a deeply-rooted political tactic that was seeded in the primaries with Hillary Clinton, and the mantle has been taken up by the McCain campaign. (I won’t expound further on this, except to note, IMHO, that McCain seemingly cannot come up with an original idea to save his life, but I digress.) As it always is in American politics – at least in the GOP’s worldview – whittle away at your opponent’s strengths, muting their efficacy.
During the primaries, I was a die-hard Clinton supporter. However, her increasing negative attacks against Obama began to disillusion me (I am NOT a fan of negative politics) and so I decided to learn more about the Illinois Junior Senator. I had heard the circulating rumors – that he was a Muslim, linked to terrorism, racist – and that peaked my interest even more. (These days, the more dirisive the attacks, the more likely the candidate will be aligned with my worldview). So I watched a few speeches (this one really got to me), read Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and I was starting to get the hope bug! Being the eternal skeptic that I am, I did extensive research on his background and his policies, which fully convinced me that this man truly has the interests of the American people close to his heart more than any other politician I have ever seen.
So, without further ado, I would like to present Barack Obama’s 20 years of experience to you, and highlight a few of the hundreds of bills he has authored, sponsored or co-sponsored into our country's legislature.
- 1983
- Graduated with a B.A. from Columbia University
- Worked as a junior editor for Business International Corporation, a New-York based publisher focused on global finance, then at the New York Public Interest Research Group
1985-1988 - Worked as a community organizer as the Director of the Developing Communities Project, which grew a staff from 1 to 13 and a budget from $70K to $400K and helped to set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenant’s rights organization
1988 - Entered Harvard Law School
1989 - Elected to be the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review
- Associate at Hopkins & Sutter, a Chicago law firm
1990 - Elected President of the Harvard Law Review, Editor-In-Chief; supervised the Law Review’s staff of 80 editors
- Associate at Sidley & Austin, a Chicago law firm
1991 - Graduated with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard
- Awarded a fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School
1992 - Directed Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state
- Founding Member of the Board of Directors of Public Allies, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth leadership development
1992-2004 (12 years) - Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School
1993-2002 (9 years) - Served on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a philanthropic organization devoted to poverty relief and the promotion of social mobility (smear alert: read this)
1993 - Joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development
- Made it to Crain’s Chicago Business list of “40 under Forty” rising business stars
1995-2002 - Published bestselling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, in 1995, which was commissioned by Columbia University
- Served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, a public-private partnership founded in 1995 with a focus to improve school performance, and as founding President and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1995–1999
- Obama also served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.
1996 - Elected to the Illinois State Senate, representing 650,000 people in District 13, was reelected in 1998, and again in 2002. In the Illinois State Senate, Obama has sponsored 820 laws. A visual representation of his Illinois Senate record can be found here.
1998 - Successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform called the Gift Ban Act, which prohibited legislators, state officers and employees, and judges from soliciting or receiving gifts from a person or entity with interests affected by government
2000 - Unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives
- Helped pass a 5% earned-income tax credit for low-income working families in Illinois
2003 - In January, Announced his Campaign for the U.S. Senate; also became Chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee
- Requirement that law enforcement videotape interrogations of suspects for serious crimes
- Successfully sponsored law enforcement study of the race of people pulled over for traffic tickets
- Co-sponsored a prescription drug discount buying club program for seniors and the disabled
- Instrumental in the passage of an overhaul of the state's troubled death penalty system
- Co-sponsored ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation; the measure became law after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate
2004 - Elected to Senate by receiving 70% of the vote, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history
- Sponsored the Health Care Justice Act, a study of ways to implement a universal health care system statewide
- Voted for having Illinois endorse embryonic stem cell research
- Voted to let retired police and military police carry concealed weapons
2005-2008 - Junior US Senator of Illinois
- In the US Senate, Obama has sponsored 136 bills, co-sponsored 653 bills, and authored 152 bills. You can review Obama's record here. Three of them, including S. 3558 ("A bill to provide for enhanced food-borne illness surveillance and food safety capacity") were moved upon just last week. These numbers, along with the number of bills he sponsored in the Illinois legislature, directly clash with the GOP's mockery of his record with "zero accomplishments".
2007 - Sponsored Resolution 25, condemning the recent violent actions of the Government of Zimbabwe against peaceful opposition party activists and members of civil society
- Sponsored and passed the 2007 Feingold-Obama Lobbying & Ethics Reform Bill, the most sweeping package of its kind since Watergate (more on ethics reform and contrast with McCain in upcoming posts)
- Introduced the Security Contractor Accountability Act of 2007, which requires accountability for contractors and contract personnel under Federal contracts, and for other purposes
- Introduced the Military Family Job Protection Act, which provides for a prohibition on discrimination in employment against certain family members caring for recovering members of the Armed Forces
- Worked on the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, designed to slow the revolving door between Congress and the lobbying world, require disclosure of lobbyists who bundle campaign contributions, and increase transparency in the legislative process by requiring earmark transparency and preventing new earmarks from being added in the dead of night
2008 - Introduced Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act
- Ranked by Congress.org as the 11th most powerful senator (McCain is rated 10th in the same report; Clinton is 9th, Biden is 19th. For a man who was been charged with “little experience” and “zero accomplishments”, those comparisons are worth noting.)
- Of bills currently in Congress, Obama is sponsoring 129. In contrast, McCain has only sponsored 38. Review the bills currently in Congress here.
Obama is in the following committees: - Chairman of the Senate's Committee on European Affairs
- member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
- member of the Senate Committee on African Affairs
- member of the Senate Committee on East Asian & Pacific Affairs
- member of the International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and International Environmental Protection
- member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
- member of the Senate Committee on Children and Families
- member of the Senate Committee on Employment and Workplace Safety
- member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
- member of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration
- member of the Senate Commitee on Homeland Security Investigations
- member of the Senate Committee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security
- member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
In my next post, I will lay out defining points that demonstrate Obama’s superior leadership and experience, and provide a contrast to that of McCain.
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