Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (pronounced /ˈnjuːtən/; 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726])[1] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.
In mechanics, Newton enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. In optics, he invented the reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into a visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.
In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed the so-called "Newton's method" for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
Newton was also highly religious (though unorthodox), producing more work on Biblical hermeneutics than the natural science he is remembered for today.
In a 2005 poll of the Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton was deemed much more influential than Albert Einstein.[5]
Biography
Early years
Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 [OS: 25 December 1642][1] at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. At the time of Newton's birth, England had not adopted the latest papal calendar and therefore his date of birth was recorded as Christmas Day, 25 December 1642. Newton was born three months after the death of his father. Born prematurely, he was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabus Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. The young Isaac disliked his stepfather and held some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.[6]
According to E.T. Bell and H. Eves:
Newton began his schooling in the village schools and was later sent to The King's School, Grantham, where he became the top student in the school. At King's, he lodged with the local apothecary, William Clarke and eventually became engaged to the apothecary's stepdaughter, Anne Storer, before he went off to the University of Cambridge at the age of 19. As Newton became engrossed in his studies, the romance cooled and Miss Storer married someone else. It is said he kept a warm memory of this love, but Newton had no other recorded "sweet-hearts" and never married.[7]
There are rumours that he remained a confirmed celibate.[8] However, Bell and Eves' sources for this claim, William Stukeley and Mrs. Vincent (the former Miss Storer – actually named Katherine, not Anne), merely say that Newton entertained "a passion" for Storer while he lodged at the Clarke house.
From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham (where his signature can still be seen upon a library window sill). He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where his mother, widowed by now for a second time, attempted to make a farmer of him. He hated farming. Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. This he did at the age of eighteen, achieving an admirable final report.
In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. According to John Stillwell, he entered Trinity as a sizar.[9] At that time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers such as Descartes and astronomers such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that would later become infinitesimal calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his degree in August of 1665, the University closed down as a precaution against the Great Plague. Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student,[10] Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on calculus, optics and the law of gravitation.
Middle years
Mathematics
Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed infinitesimal calculus independently, using their own unique notations. According to Newton's inner circle, Newton had worked out his method years before Leibniz, yet he published almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account until 1704. Meanwhile, Leibniz began publishing a full account of his methods in 1684. Moreover, Leibniz's notation and "differential Method" were universally adopted on the Continent, and after 1820 or so, in the British Empire. Whereas Leibniz's notebooks show the advancement of the ideas from early stages until maturity, there is only the end product in Newton's known notes. Newton claimed that he had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared being mocked for it. Newton had a very close relationship with Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who from the beginning was impressed by Newton's gravitational theory. In 1691 Duillier planned to prepare a new version of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, but never finished it. However, in 1694 the relationship between the two men changed. At the time, Duillier had also exchanged several letters with Leibniz.
Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society (of which Newton was a member) accused Leibniz of plagiarism, and the dispute broke out in full force in 1711. Newton's Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labeled Leibniz a fraud. This study was cast into doubt when it was later found that Newton himself wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter Newton v. Leibniz calculus controversy, which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716.
Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula), and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. He also discovered a new formula for calculating pi.
He was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. In that day, any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be an ordained Anglican priest. However, the terms of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder not be active in the church (presumably so as to have more time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.
Optics
From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light.
He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour.
From this work he concluded that any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours, and invented a reflecting telescope (today known as a Newtonian telescope) to bypass that problem. By grinding his own mirrors, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes, he was able to produce a superior instrument to the refracting telescope, due primarily to the wider diameter of the mirror. In 1671 the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour, which he later expanded into his Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. The two men remained enemies until Hooke's death.
Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium, but he had to associate them with waves to explain the diffraction of light (Opticks Bk. II, Props. XII-L). Later physicists instead favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for diffraction. Today's quantum mechanics, photons and the idea of wave–particle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton's understanding of light.
In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the theosophist Henry More, revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians."[11] Newton's interest in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science.[12] (This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science.) Had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity. (See also Isaac Newton's occult studies.)
In 1704 Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[13] Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe (Optics, 8th Query).
Mechanics and gravitation
In 1677, Newton returned to his work on mechanics, i.e., gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets, with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and consulting with Hooke and Flamsteed on the subject. He published his results in De motu corporum in gyrum (1684). This contained the beginnings of the laws of motion that would inform the Principia.
The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (now known as the Principia) was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that were not to be improved upon for more than two hundred years. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation. In the same work he presented the first analytical determination, based on Boyle's law, of the speed of sound in air. Newton's postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing "occult agencies" into science.[14]
With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with whom he formed an intense relationship that lasted until 1693. The end of this friendship led Newton to a nervous breakdown.[clarify][citation needed]
Later life
In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Henry More's belief in the universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton's religious ideas. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published. Later works – The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) – were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to alchemy (see above).
Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701, but his only recorded comments were to complain about a cold draft in the chamber and request that the window be closed.
Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, somewhat treading on the toes of Master Lucas (and securing the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley). Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon Lucas' death in 1699, a position Newton held until his death. These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint in 1717 Newton unofficially moved the Pound Sterling from the silver standard to the gold standard by creating a relationship between gold coins and the silver penny in the "Law of Queen Anne"; these were all great reforms at the time, adding considerably to the wealth and stability of England. It was his work at the Mint, rather than his earlier contributions to science, that earned him a knighthood from Queen Anne in 1705.
Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's star catalogue, which Newton had used in his studies.
Newton died in London on 31 March 1727 [OS: 20 March 1726][1], and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His half-niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt,[15] served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle,"[16] according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox. Although Newton, who had no children, had divested much of his estate onto relatives in his last years, he actually died intestate.
After his death, Newton's body was discovered to have had massive amounts of mercury in it, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.[17]
Sabtu, 2008 November 01
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS ( 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of the time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magneticfield around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and laws of electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.[2][3] His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians[4] of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science.[5] The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Faraday was highly religious, a member of the Sandemanian Church, a Christian sect founded in 1730 which demanded total faith and commitment. Biographers have noted that "a strong sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded Faraday's life and work."[6]
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, part of South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London around 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.[7] At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.[8]
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on 1 March.[2]
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.[2]
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church at Glovers Hall, Barbican, which later moved to Barnsbury, Islington.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on 2 June 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
Scientific achievements
Chemistry
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Humphry Davy. Faraday made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat.[9][10] Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C2Cl6 and C2Cl4, and published his results the following year.[11][12][13] Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.[14][15]
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularised terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.[16]
Electricity and magnetism
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, 12 July 1812).
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor.[3] Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.[citation needed]
At this stage, there is also evidence[citation needed] to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faraday's rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.[18]
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around an iron ring, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil.[3] This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalisation known today as field theory.
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.[3]
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualise electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
Diamagnetism
In 1845, Faraday discovered that many materials exhibit a weak repulsion from a magnetic field, a phenomenon he named diamagnetism.
Faraday also found that the plane of polarisation of linearly polarised light can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the direction the light is moving. This is now termed the Faraday effect. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
Late in life (1862), Faraday used a spectroscope to search for a different alteration of light, the change of spectral lines by an applied magnetic field. However, the equipment available to him was insufficient for a definite determination of a spectral change. Pieter Zeeman later used an improved apparatus to study the same phenomenon, publishing his results in 1897 and receiving the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for his success. In both his 1897 paper[21] and his Nobel acceptance speech[22], Zeeman referred to Faraday's work.
Faraday cage
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena. On Faraday's uses of the lines of force, James Clerk Maxwell wrote that they show Faraday "to have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order--one from whom the mathematicians of the future may derive valuable and fertile methods."[23]
Public service
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in coal mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass. In 1846, together with Charles Lyell, he produced a lengthy and detailed report on a serious explosion in the colliery at Haswell County Durham which killed 95 miners. Their report was a meticulous forensic investigation and indicated that coal dust contributed to the severity of the explosion. The report should have warned coal owners of the hazard of coal dust explosions, but the risk was ignored for over 60 years until the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster of 1913.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system.[24]
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Later life
In June 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.[citation needed]
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there.[25]
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on 25 August 1867. He had previously turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Faraday studied the magneticfield around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and laws of electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.[2][3] His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians[4] of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science.[5] The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Faraday was highly religious, a member of the Sandemanian Church, a Christian sect founded in 1730 which demanded total faith and commitment. Biographers have noted that "a strong sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded Faraday's life and work."[6]
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, part of South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London around 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.[7] At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.[8]
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on 1 March.[2]
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.[2]
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church at Glovers Hall, Barbican, which later moved to Barnsbury, Islington.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on 2 June 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
Scientific achievements
Chemistry
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Humphry Davy. Faraday made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat.[9][10] Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C2Cl6 and C2Cl4, and published his results the following year.[11][12][13] Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.[14][15]
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularised terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.[16]
Electricity and magnetism
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, 12 July 1812).
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor.[3] Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.[citation needed]
At this stage, there is also evidence[citation needed] to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faraday's rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.[18]
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around an iron ring, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil.[3] This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalisation known today as field theory.
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.[3]
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualise electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
Diamagnetism
In 1845, Faraday discovered that many materials exhibit a weak repulsion from a magnetic field, a phenomenon he named diamagnetism.
Faraday also found that the plane of polarisation of linearly polarised light can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the direction the light is moving. This is now termed the Faraday effect. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
Late in life (1862), Faraday used a spectroscope to search for a different alteration of light, the change of spectral lines by an applied magnetic field. However, the equipment available to him was insufficient for a definite determination of a spectral change. Pieter Zeeman later used an improved apparatus to study the same phenomenon, publishing his results in 1897 and receiving the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for his success. In both his 1897 paper[21] and his Nobel acceptance speech[22], Zeeman referred to Faraday's work.
Faraday cage
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena. On Faraday's uses of the lines of force, James Clerk Maxwell wrote that they show Faraday "to have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order--one from whom the mathematicians of the future may derive valuable and fertile methods."[23]
Public service
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in coal mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass. In 1846, together with Charles Lyell, he produced a lengthy and detailed report on a serious explosion in the colliery at Haswell County Durham which killed 95 miners. Their report was a meticulous forensic investigation and indicated that coal dust contributed to the severity of the explosion. The report should have warned coal owners of the hazard of coal dust explosions, but the risk was ignored for over 60 years until the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster of 1913.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system.[24]
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Later life
In June 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.[citation needed]
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there.[25]
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on 25 August 1867. He had previously turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Sabtu, 2008 Oktober 25
Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie
Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (born June 25, 1936), more commonly known simply as Rudi Habibie or B J Habibie, was the third President of Indonesia, holding office from 1998 to 1999.
Early life
He was born in Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi; and studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology.
In 1950, when Habibie was fourteen, he became acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Suharto. The future Indonesian President was then stationed in Makassar to put down a separatist rebellion and lived in a house across the road from the Habibie family's. Suharto quickly became a family friend. He was present during the death of Habibie's father and became an intermediary when one of his soldiers wanted to marry Habibie's sister [1].
Time in Germany
During 1955-1965, he studied aerospace engineering at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, receiving Diploma (Germany's First degree certificate which is equivalent to Master in most countries) in 1960 and doctorate in 1965. He then worked for Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm in Hamburg. It might have been due to his time spent in Europe that made him interested in the Leica line of cameras.
While working in Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, Habibie conducted many research assignments, producing theories on thermodynamics, construction, and aerodynamics, known as the Habibie Factor, Habibie Theorem, and Habibie Method.
Minister of Technology and Research
In 1974, Suharto sent Ibnu Sutowo to Germany to meet Habibie and convince him to come back to Indonesia. Habibie was convinced and returned to Indonesia, taking the position of Technological Adviser to the President.
From 1978 to 1998 Habibie served as Minister of Technology and Research in Suharto's Cabinet. He pushed for a leapfrog strategy of development, which he hoped would bypass the foundational low-skill technology stages to turn Indonesia into an industrialized nation. Despite national and international opposition (which preferred agricultural investments to technological investments) to this;he once famously announced that "I have some figures which compare the cost of one kilo of airplane compared to one kilo of rice. One kilo of airplane costs thirty thousand US dollars and one kilo of rice is seven cents. And if you want to pay for your one kilo of high-tech products with a kilo of rice, I don't think we have enough. [2]."
Habibie had considerable power as Minister of Technology. His long acquaintance with Suharto combined with Suharto's own desire that Indonesia master technology as part of its development meant that Habibie was able to get extra fundings from the budget for his projects at the expense of other ministers' project. In 1989, Suharto increased Habibie's power, putting him in charge of strategic industries.
Aviation industry
When Habibie came back to Indonesia in 1974, he was also made CEO of a new state owned enterprise called PT. Nurtanio. By the early 1980s it had made considerable progress, specializing in making helicopters and small passenger planes. In 1995, Habibie succeeded in flying a N-250 (dubbed Gatotkoco) commuter plane.
In developing Indonesia's Aviation Industry, Habibie adopted an approach called "Begin at the End and End at the Beginning" [3]. In this method, things such as basic research became the last things that the workers at IPTN focused on while actual manufacturing of the planes was placed as the first objective.
In 1985, PT. Nurtanio changed its name to Indonesian Aviation Industry (IPTN) and is now known as Indonesian Aerospace Inc. (Dirgantara).
Union of Indonesian Intellectual Muslims (ICMI)
By the late 80's, it became apparent that there was a rift between Suharto and his main political ally, ABRI. Suharto, who had repressed Islamists in the earlier years of his regime now began to make concilliatory gestures in a bid to build a new power base to compensate the one he was losing with ABRI.
In December 1990, the ICMI was formed with Habibie as its Chairman. In Suharto's eyes, ICMI would become his main weapon in appealing to the Muslim society. ICMI was a successful venture, by 1994, it had 20,000 members including future political opponents such as Nurcolish Majid and Amien Rais [4].
Habibie served as Chairman of ICMI for 10 years.
Member of Golkar
Like all Government officials in Suharto's regime, Habibie was a member of Golkar.
From 1993-1998, Habibie was a Daily Coordinator for the Chairman of the Executive Board.
Vice presidency
The 1998 People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) General Session was to be held in the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis and many were hoping for Suharto to take serious steps to take the country out of trouble. In January 1998, after accepting nomination for a 7th term as President, Suharto announced the criteria for the person who he wanted as Vice President. Suharto did not mention Habibie by name but his suggestion that the next Vice President should have mastery over science and technology made it obvious who he wanted to nominate [5]. The market reacted badly, causing the rupiah to further depreciate in value.
Despite protests and former Minister Emil Salim trying to nominate himself as Vice President, Habibie was elected as Vice President in March 1998.
Presidency
Rise to office
By May 1998, the increasing poverty caused by the Financial Crisis and political discontent had reached boiling point. On 13th May, the shooting of six students at Trisakti University in Jakarta, caused extreme anger which in turn caused widespread riots and lootings. There were now explicit calls for Suharto to step down as President of Indonesia. Suharto responded by saying on 19 May 1998 that if he stepped down, the Vice President would become President and in a not too subtle jab to Habibie, said that he was not sure whether the Vice President could solve the problems facing the country [6].
Habibie, who learned of Suharto's comments from television, was upset with his mentor and from then on was increasingly sympathetic to those who wanted Suharto to step down. While careful not to oppose him directly or support those who did, Habibie left the president in little doubt that he saw himself as Suharto's legitimate successor. Suharto, faced with dwindling civilian and military support, even among loyalists like Wiranto and Ginandjar Kartasasmita, decided to resign late on the evening of 20 May 1998. [7]
The next morning, on 21 May 1998, Suharto publicly announced his resignation and Habibie was immediately sworn in as President. There was mixed reaction to Habibie's assumption of the Presidency. Hardline reformists saw Habibie as an extension of Suharto's regime while moderate reformists saw him as leading a transitional Government.
With the release of his 2006 book, Detik-Detik Yang Menentukan: Jalan Panjang Indonesia Menuju Demokrasi (Decisive Moments: Indonesia's Long Road Towards Democracy), there is speculation that Suharto had wanted Habibie to resign along with him. [8] In Javanese style, Suharto hinted at this intention subtly. Habibie, who isn't Javanese, didn't take the hint and decided to take the office of the President. Because of this inability to read his intentions, Suharto showed nothing but contempt and never talked to Habibie again.
Cabinet
Habibie's Cabinet, which was called the Development Reform Cabinet consisted mostly of the same faces which had served in Suharto's last Cabinet. To show his reformist bent, Habibie included United Development Party (PPP) member Hamzah Haz in the Cabinet.
East Timor
When he took office, Habibie made it clear that East Timorese Independence was out of the question, but that he would consider giving East Timor special autonomy. In January 1999, however, Habibie surprised everyone by announcing that a referendum, choosing between special autonomy and independence, would be held in East Timor. This particular decision made Habibie extremely unpopular with ABRI.
On 30th August 1999, the referendum was held and the East Timorese people chose overwhelmingly for Independence. However, the retreat of Indonesian troops from East Timor would not be peaceful as many were killed by Pro-Indonesian para-militaries.
Suharto's corruption charge
The 1998 MPR Special Session in November declared that an investigation should be made into corruption charges especially that of Suharto's.
Habibie also thought of forming a special commission as a gesture of good faith towards Reformasi and invited noted lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution to be on the commission. Nasution would ask for a lot of power in investigating the matter and Habibie rejected the offer. Instead, he appointed Attorney General and loyalist, Andi Muhammad Ghalib to head the investigation.
On 9th December 1998, Suharto was questioned for three hours by Ghalib. The Habibie Government declared that Suharto had not gained his wealth by corruption.
A controversial tape was released which involved a telephone conversation between Habibie and Ghalib. The conversation seemed to suggest that Habibie's Government was not giving a serious attempt at investigating Suharto's corruption charges [9].
The economy
Habibie's Government stabilized the economy after the chaos which it went through in the Asian Financial Crisis and the last few months of Suharto's Presidency [10].
Social
Habibie's Government also began making concilliatory gestures towards Chinese Indonesians who because of their wealth and dominance of the Indonesian economy were targeted during the violence and looting. In September 1998, Habibie issued a Presidential Instruction which does not allow for the discriminatorial reference to pribumi (Native) and non-pribumi (Non-Native) [11]. In May 1999, Habibie followed this up with another Presidential Instruction which states that a display of ID Card is enough to prove someone's Indonesian citizenship whereas before, displaying the Letter of Evidence of Republic of Indonesia Citizenship (SBKRI) was the norm.
Although they were not mentioned specifically, it is clear that these policies were targeted towards Chinese Indonesians who in the Suharto years were referred to as non-Pribumi and had to display SBKRI to prove their Indonesian citizenship.
Other
Habibie also proposed banning Indonesians from studying abroad, despite himself having been educated abroad, and his son enrolled in a university abroad during the time he flirted with the idea.
End of presidency
Although he had been viewed as just leading a transitional Government, Habibie seemed determined to continue as President. In May 1999, Golkar announced that Habibie would be their Presidential candidate.
At the 1999 MPR General Session in October, Habibie delivered an accountability speech, which was a report of what he had achieved during his Presidency. Once this was completed, the MPR members began voting to decide if they would accept or reject Habibie's speech. During this process, pro-Reform members of Golkar broke with the ranks and voted against Habibie and the accountability speech was rejected with 355 votes to 322. Seeing that it would be unethical to go for the Presidency after having his accountability speech rejected, Habibie withdrew his nomination.
Singapore
In 1998, Habibie insulted Singapore by calling the country a little red dot.
Post-presidency
Since relinquishing the presidency, Habibie has spent more time in Germany than in Indonesia.
In September 2006, Habibie released a book called Detik-Detik Yang Menentukan: Jalan Panjang Indonesia Menuju Demokrasi (Decisive Moments: Indonesia's Long Road Towards Democracy). The book recalled the events of May 1998 which led to his rise to the Presidency. In the book, he controversially accused Lieutenant General Prabowo, Suharto's son-in-law and the Kostrad Commander in May 1998, of planning a coup d'etat against him.
Family
Habibie is married to Hasri Ainun with whom he had two sons, both of them are married and give Habibie grand children. Habibie's father was from Sulawesi (Celebes) but his mother was Javanese from Central Java. His brother, Yunus Habibie, is the current Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands.
Early life
He was born in Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi; and studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology.
In 1950, when Habibie was fourteen, he became acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Suharto. The future Indonesian President was then stationed in Makassar to put down a separatist rebellion and lived in a house across the road from the Habibie family's. Suharto quickly became a family friend. He was present during the death of Habibie's father and became an intermediary when one of his soldiers wanted to marry Habibie's sister [1].
Time in Germany
During 1955-1965, he studied aerospace engineering at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, receiving Diploma (Germany's First degree certificate which is equivalent to Master in most countries) in 1960 and doctorate in 1965. He then worked for Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm in Hamburg. It might have been due to his time spent in Europe that made him interested in the Leica line of cameras.
While working in Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, Habibie conducted many research assignments, producing theories on thermodynamics, construction, and aerodynamics, known as the Habibie Factor, Habibie Theorem, and Habibie Method.
Minister of Technology and Research
In 1974, Suharto sent Ibnu Sutowo to Germany to meet Habibie and convince him to come back to Indonesia. Habibie was convinced and returned to Indonesia, taking the position of Technological Adviser to the President.
From 1978 to 1998 Habibie served as Minister of Technology and Research in Suharto's Cabinet. He pushed for a leapfrog strategy of development, which he hoped would bypass the foundational low-skill technology stages to turn Indonesia into an industrialized nation. Despite national and international opposition (which preferred agricultural investments to technological investments) to this;he once famously announced that "I have some figures which compare the cost of one kilo of airplane compared to one kilo of rice. One kilo of airplane costs thirty thousand US dollars and one kilo of rice is seven cents. And if you want to pay for your one kilo of high-tech products with a kilo of rice, I don't think we have enough. [2]."
Habibie had considerable power as Minister of Technology. His long acquaintance with Suharto combined with Suharto's own desire that Indonesia master technology as part of its development meant that Habibie was able to get extra fundings from the budget for his projects at the expense of other ministers' project. In 1989, Suharto increased Habibie's power, putting him in charge of strategic industries.
Aviation industry
When Habibie came back to Indonesia in 1974, he was also made CEO of a new state owned enterprise called PT. Nurtanio. By the early 1980s it had made considerable progress, specializing in making helicopters and small passenger planes. In 1995, Habibie succeeded in flying a N-250 (dubbed Gatotkoco) commuter plane.
In developing Indonesia's Aviation Industry, Habibie adopted an approach called "Begin at the End and End at the Beginning" [3]. In this method, things such as basic research became the last things that the workers at IPTN focused on while actual manufacturing of the planes was placed as the first objective.
In 1985, PT. Nurtanio changed its name to Indonesian Aviation Industry (IPTN) and is now known as Indonesian Aerospace Inc. (Dirgantara).
Union of Indonesian Intellectual Muslims (ICMI)
By the late 80's, it became apparent that there was a rift between Suharto and his main political ally, ABRI. Suharto, who had repressed Islamists in the earlier years of his regime now began to make concilliatory gestures in a bid to build a new power base to compensate the one he was losing with ABRI.
In December 1990, the ICMI was formed with Habibie as its Chairman. In Suharto's eyes, ICMI would become his main weapon in appealing to the Muslim society. ICMI was a successful venture, by 1994, it had 20,000 members including future political opponents such as Nurcolish Majid and Amien Rais [4].
Habibie served as Chairman of ICMI for 10 years.
Member of Golkar
Like all Government officials in Suharto's regime, Habibie was a member of Golkar.
From 1993-1998, Habibie was a Daily Coordinator for the Chairman of the Executive Board.
Vice presidency
The 1998 People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) General Session was to be held in the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis and many were hoping for Suharto to take serious steps to take the country out of trouble. In January 1998, after accepting nomination for a 7th term as President, Suharto announced the criteria for the person who he wanted as Vice President. Suharto did not mention Habibie by name but his suggestion that the next Vice President should have mastery over science and technology made it obvious who he wanted to nominate [5]. The market reacted badly, causing the rupiah to further depreciate in value.
Despite protests and former Minister Emil Salim trying to nominate himself as Vice President, Habibie was elected as Vice President in March 1998.
Presidency
Rise to office
By May 1998, the increasing poverty caused by the Financial Crisis and political discontent had reached boiling point. On 13th May, the shooting of six students at Trisakti University in Jakarta, caused extreme anger which in turn caused widespread riots and lootings. There were now explicit calls for Suharto to step down as President of Indonesia. Suharto responded by saying on 19 May 1998 that if he stepped down, the Vice President would become President and in a not too subtle jab to Habibie, said that he was not sure whether the Vice President could solve the problems facing the country [6].
Habibie, who learned of Suharto's comments from television, was upset with his mentor and from then on was increasingly sympathetic to those who wanted Suharto to step down. While careful not to oppose him directly or support those who did, Habibie left the president in little doubt that he saw himself as Suharto's legitimate successor. Suharto, faced with dwindling civilian and military support, even among loyalists like Wiranto and Ginandjar Kartasasmita, decided to resign late on the evening of 20 May 1998. [7]
The next morning, on 21 May 1998, Suharto publicly announced his resignation and Habibie was immediately sworn in as President. There was mixed reaction to Habibie's assumption of the Presidency. Hardline reformists saw Habibie as an extension of Suharto's regime while moderate reformists saw him as leading a transitional Government.
With the release of his 2006 book, Detik-Detik Yang Menentukan: Jalan Panjang Indonesia Menuju Demokrasi (Decisive Moments: Indonesia's Long Road Towards Democracy), there is speculation that Suharto had wanted Habibie to resign along with him. [8] In Javanese style, Suharto hinted at this intention subtly. Habibie, who isn't Javanese, didn't take the hint and decided to take the office of the President. Because of this inability to read his intentions, Suharto showed nothing but contempt and never talked to Habibie again.
Cabinet
Habibie's Cabinet, which was called the Development Reform Cabinet consisted mostly of the same faces which had served in Suharto's last Cabinet. To show his reformist bent, Habibie included United Development Party (PPP) member Hamzah Haz in the Cabinet.
East Timor
When he took office, Habibie made it clear that East Timorese Independence was out of the question, but that he would consider giving East Timor special autonomy. In January 1999, however, Habibie surprised everyone by announcing that a referendum, choosing between special autonomy and independence, would be held in East Timor. This particular decision made Habibie extremely unpopular with ABRI.
On 30th August 1999, the referendum was held and the East Timorese people chose overwhelmingly for Independence. However, the retreat of Indonesian troops from East Timor would not be peaceful as many were killed by Pro-Indonesian para-militaries.
Suharto's corruption charge
The 1998 MPR Special Session in November declared that an investigation should be made into corruption charges especially that of Suharto's.
Habibie also thought of forming a special commission as a gesture of good faith towards Reformasi and invited noted lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution to be on the commission. Nasution would ask for a lot of power in investigating the matter and Habibie rejected the offer. Instead, he appointed Attorney General and loyalist, Andi Muhammad Ghalib to head the investigation.
On 9th December 1998, Suharto was questioned for three hours by Ghalib. The Habibie Government declared that Suharto had not gained his wealth by corruption.
A controversial tape was released which involved a telephone conversation between Habibie and Ghalib. The conversation seemed to suggest that Habibie's Government was not giving a serious attempt at investigating Suharto's corruption charges [9].
The economy
Habibie's Government stabilized the economy after the chaos which it went through in the Asian Financial Crisis and the last few months of Suharto's Presidency [10].
Social
Habibie's Government also began making concilliatory gestures towards Chinese Indonesians who because of their wealth and dominance of the Indonesian economy were targeted during the violence and looting. In September 1998, Habibie issued a Presidential Instruction which does not allow for the discriminatorial reference to pribumi (Native) and non-pribumi (Non-Native) [11]. In May 1999, Habibie followed this up with another Presidential Instruction which states that a display of ID Card is enough to prove someone's Indonesian citizenship whereas before, displaying the Letter of Evidence of Republic of Indonesia Citizenship (SBKRI) was the norm.
Although they were not mentioned specifically, it is clear that these policies were targeted towards Chinese Indonesians who in the Suharto years were referred to as non-Pribumi and had to display SBKRI to prove their Indonesian citizenship.
Other
Habibie also proposed banning Indonesians from studying abroad, despite himself having been educated abroad, and his son enrolled in a university abroad during the time he flirted with the idea.
End of presidency
Although he had been viewed as just leading a transitional Government, Habibie seemed determined to continue as President. In May 1999, Golkar announced that Habibie would be their Presidential candidate.
At the 1999 MPR General Session in October, Habibie delivered an accountability speech, which was a report of what he had achieved during his Presidency. Once this was completed, the MPR members began voting to decide if they would accept or reject Habibie's speech. During this process, pro-Reform members of Golkar broke with the ranks and voted against Habibie and the accountability speech was rejected with 355 votes to 322. Seeing that it would be unethical to go for the Presidency after having his accountability speech rejected, Habibie withdrew his nomination.
Singapore
In 1998, Habibie insulted Singapore by calling the country a little red dot.
Post-presidency
Since relinquishing the presidency, Habibie has spent more time in Germany than in Indonesia.
In September 2006, Habibie released a book called Detik-Detik Yang Menentukan: Jalan Panjang Indonesia Menuju Demokrasi (Decisive Moments: Indonesia's Long Road Towards Democracy). The book recalled the events of May 1998 which led to his rise to the Presidency. In the book, he controversially accused Lieutenant General Prabowo, Suharto's son-in-law and the Kostrad Commander in May 1998, of planning a coup d'etat against him.
Family
Habibie is married to Hasri Ainun with whom he had two sons, both of them are married and give Habibie grand children. Habibie's father was from Sulawesi (Celebes) but his mother was Javanese from Central Java. His brother, Yunus Habibie, is the current Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands.
Kamis, 2008 Oktober 23
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Heath Palin (pronounced /ˈpeɪlɨn/; born February 11, 1964) is the governor of the U.S. state of Alaska and is the Republican Party vice-presidential nominee for the United States presidential election of 2008.
Palin was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002, she chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004. She was elected governor of Alaska in November 2006 by defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary and then defeating a former two-term Democratic governor in the general election. She is the first female governor of Alaska, and the youngest person elected to the position.
On August 29, 2008, presidential candidate John McCain announced he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Palin was formally nominated at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the first woman to run on the Republican Party's presidential ticket and the first Alaskan nominee of either major party.
Early life and education
Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, the third of four children of Sarah Heath (née Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach.[6] She is of English, German, and Irish descent. The family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school. The family regularly ran 5 km and 10 km races.[7]
Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, located 44 miles (71 km) north of Anchorage.[8] She was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school and the point guard and captain of the school's girls' basketball team.[9]
Palin attended several colleges and universities. In 1982, she enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester. She transferred to North Idaho community college, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From there, she transferred to the University of Idaho for two semesters.[10][11] During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant,[12][13] then finished third in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant,[14][15] at which she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award.[16] She then attended the Matanuska-Susitna community college in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.[10][11]
In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, Alaska,[17] and for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman as a sports reporter.[18] She also helped in her husband’s commercial fishing family business.[19]
City council of Wasilla
See also: Electoral history of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin was elected twice to the city council of Wasilla, in 1992 and 1995. Palin says she entered politics because she was concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely.[20]
She ran for Wasilla city council in 1992, at age 28, against John Hartrick, a local telephone company worker, on a promise to bring "my progressive, competitive attitude" to the government.[21][22] She won 530 votes to John Hartrick’s 310.[21] On the council, she successfully opposed a measure to curtail the hours at Wasilla's bars by two hours, which surprised Hartrick because she was then a member of a church that advocated abstinence from alcohol.[21] After serving on the city council for three years, she ran for reelection against R’nita Rogers in 1995, winning 413 votes to Rogers' 185.[23]
According to Laura Chase of Wasilla, and former mayor John Stein, Palin as city councilwoman mentioned to her colleagues in 1995 that she saw the book Daddy's Roommate in the public library and did not think that it belonged there. Chase later became Palin's campaign manager for mayor in 1996, when Palin defeated John Stein, and Chase is now a vocal critic of Palin.[24] City of Wasilla Library records indicate that there was never a request for the library to remove the book and that no books were ever censored or banned.[25] The McCain-Palin campaign says that Palin was not advocating censorship.[26]
Palin did not complete her second term on the city council because she ran for mayor in 1996. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her career, Palin has been a registered Republican.[27]
Mayor of Wasilla
Main article: Mayoralty of Sarah Palin
Palin served two terms (1996–2002) as mayor of Wasilla. At the conclusion of Palin's tenure as mayor in 2002, the town had about 6,300 residents.[28] In 1996, Palin defeated three-term incumbent mayor John Stein,[29] on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes,[30] and Stein says that she introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.[31] Although the election was a nonpartisan blanket primary, the state Republican Party ran advertisements on her behalf.[31]
First term
Wasilla City Hall
Wasilla City Hall
Location of Wasilla, Alaska
Location of Wasilla, Alaska
Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin consolidated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from some top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian.[32] Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.[32] She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies.[32] She created the position of city administrator,[31] and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.[33]
According to Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin inquired two or three times in October 1996 as to how Emmons would handle any request to remove books from the library.[34][35][36] John Stein, the former mayor of Wasilla and Palin's 1996 political opponent, said in September 2008 that Palin's "religious beliefs," and the concerns of some voters about language in the books, motivated her inquiries.[37] In December 1996, Palin said she had no books or other material in mind for removal.[36] No books were removed from the library,[34][38] and Palin stated in 2006 that she would not allow her personal religious beliefs to dictate her political positions.[39]
Palin fired Emmons and Police Chief Irl Stambaugh in January 1997, stating that she did not feel they fully supported her efforts to govern the city.[40] Following expressions of public support for Emmons and a personal meeting, Palin rescinded the firing of Emmons the next day,[34] stating that her concerns had been alleviated, and adding that Emmons agreed to support Palin's plan to merge the town's library and museum operations.[40] Stambaugh, who along with Emmons had supported Palin's opponent in the election, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit alleging that his termination violated his contract, reflected gender discrimination, and was for political reasons;[41] he said, for example, that he had opposed a bill in the state legislature, supported by Palin, that would "permit concealed weapons in schools and bars."[42] In fact, the bill stated: "A permitee may not carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun within...or on school grounds."[43] The federal judge who heard the case dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, ordering Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees,[44] ruling that the mayor had the right to fire city employees for any reason, including a political one, or for no reason at all.[45] Palin appointed[46] Charles Fannon to replace Stambaugh as police chief.
During her first year in office, Palin kept a jar with the names of Wasilla residents on her desk, and once a week she pulled a name from it and picked up the phone; she would ask: "How's the city doing?"[38] Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that was enacted before she was on the city council,[47] Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes.[48][49] Tapping municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department.[31] She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources.[49] At the same time, she reduced spending on the town museum and blocked construction of a new library and city hall.[49] Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and won,[50] with 74% of the vote.[51] Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.[52]
Second term
During her second term as mayor, Palin introduced a ballot measure proposing the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5% sales tax increase.[53] The $14.7 million Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex was built on time and under budget, but the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction.[53] The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million through voter-approved indebtedness of $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.[54]
Palin also joined with nearby communities in jointly hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The firm secured nearly $8 million in earmarked funds for the Wasilla city government, and another $19 million for other public and private entities in the Wasilla valley area.[55] Earmarks included $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project linking Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood.[56] Term limits prevented Palin from running for a third term as mayor in 2002.[57]
Post-mayoral years
In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary.[58] The Republican ticket of U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski and Leman won the November 2002 election. When Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to become governor, he considered appointing Palin to replace him in the Senate, but chose his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, who was then an Alaskan state representative.[59]
Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.[60] She chaired the Commission beginning in 2003, serving as Ethics Supervisor.[61] Palin resigned in January 2004, protesting what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members.[62][63]
After resigning, Palin filed a formal complaint against Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner Randy Ruedrich, also the chair of the state Republican Party,[64] accusing him of doing work for the party on public time and of working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft[65] to file a complaint against Gregg Renkes, a former Alaska Attorney General,[66] accusing him of having a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement,[67] while Renkes was the subject of investigation and after records suggesting a possible conflict of interest had been released to the public.[68] Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[61][69]
From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska.[70] In 2004, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had decided not to run for the U.S. Senate that year, against the Republican incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, because her teenage son opposed it. Palin said, "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. Senator?"[71]
Governor of Alaska
Main article: Governorship of Sarah Palin
Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.
Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.
In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.[72] Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell.
Despite being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%.[73] Palin became Alaska's first woman governor, and at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history.[74] She is the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006, and has been very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 early in her term showed her with a 93% and 89% popularity among all voters,[75] which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America."[65][75] A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%.[76]
Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development.[77] She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step", and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.[78]
Palin tries out the Engagement Skills Trainer, July 24, 2007.
Palin tries out the Engagement Skills Trainer, July 24, 2007.
Palin has sometimes broken with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Sean Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young.[79] Palin has publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as needed "to make clear she had not abandoned him politically."[70]
Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have been the subject of a national debate.[80]
In 2006, Palin obtained a passport[81] and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases.[82] On her return trip to the U.S., she visited injured soldiers in Germany.[83]
Budget, spending, and federal funds
Governor Palin in Germany, July 2007
Governor Palin in Germany, July 2007
In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.[84] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to $1.6 billion.[85] In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.[86]
Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.[87] In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.[88]
Expense reimbursements
Palin lives in Juneau during the legislative session and lives in Wasilla and works out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is far from Juneau, while she works there, state officials say she is legally entitled to a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she has taken (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she has not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla.[89] She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef.[90] In response to criticism for taking the per diem, and for $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business, the governor's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that Palin's gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski,[91] and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation."[89]
Federal funding
In her State of the State Address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]."[92] Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; as of 2008, Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.[93]
While there is no sales tax or income tax in Alaska, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008, For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.[94] Palin’s decreasing support for federal funding has been a leading source of friction between herself and the state's congressional delegation; Palin has requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.[95]
Bridge to Nowhere and Knik Arm Bridge
See also: Gravina Island Bridge and Knik Arm Bridge
See also: Use of "Bridge to Nowhere" in 2008 campaign
In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges was passed in the U.S. Senate as part of an omnibus spending bill. The Gravina Island Bridge was proposed to connect Ketchikan to sparsely populated Gravina Island where an international airport serves over 200,000 passengers per year and the existing ferry carries 400,000 passengers per year.[96] The Knik Arm Bridge (also known as "Don Young's Way" after Alaska's Congressman Don Young) was proposed to provide an alternate link between heavily-populated Anchorage and Wasilla.[97] The Gravina Island Bridge proposal became nicknamed the "Bridge to Nowhere" because of the island's population of 50.[96] More rarely, the term "Bridges to Nowhere" has been applied to both bridge proposals.[98] Critics of the two bridge proposals gave them national attention as symbols of pork-barrel spending, and Congress responded to the intense criticism by stripping the earmark from the bill before final passage in November 2005 and instead giving the $442 million to Alaska as transportation money with no strings attached.[99]
Sarah Palin holds up a t-shirt reading "Nowhere Alaska 99901" while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the zip code for the area is 99901.
Sarah Palin holds up a t-shirt reading "Nowhere Alaska 99901" while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the zip code for the area is 99901.
In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform, supporting the use of state and federal funds to construct the two bridges. She said she sympathized with members of a community that had been characterized by politicians as "nowhere".[100] She also urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."[101]
As governor, however, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to what she called "inaccurate portrayals of the projects."[102] She opted not to return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.[103] Palin did maintain her support for a controversial highway on the bridgeless Gravina Island, committing $25 million in federal funds to the project saying through her spokesperson that it would open territory for development. Alaska state officials said if the money were not used for the road it would have had to have been returned to the federal government.[104] She also directed state officials to explore other ways to provide access to the island.[102]
Later, as a vice-presidential candidate, emphasizing her efforts to end abuses of "earmark" spending, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." This angered many Alaskans in Ketchikan who said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community.[105] Meanwhile, some critics complained that this statement was misleading, since she had repeatedly expressed support for the spending project and even kept the Federal money after the project was canceled. [106]
Palin continues to support the Knik Arm project,[97] although in June 2008, she ordered a funding and feasibility review.[107] According to news reports, local residents and officials of Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which would be connected by the bridge and causeway, are divided over the matter. Many residents feel a strong need for a more direct and less congested route linking the two areas, but many local officials have recently expressed concern that the bridge and causeway may be too expensive. Officials have discussed a ferry as an alternative, although Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough have disagreed as to the appropriate sites for ferry landings.[108]
Gas pipeline
See also: Alaska Gas Pipeline
In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Continental United States through Canada.[109] The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project.[110] It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion.[109] Newsweek described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor,"[111] but it faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations (aboriginal peoples).[111]
Predator Control
See also: Palin's Predator Control policy
In 2007, Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters.[112] In March 2007, Palin's office announced that a bounty of $150 per wolf would be paid to the 180 volunteer pilots and gunners, to offset fuel costs. Wildlife activists sued the state, and a state judge declared the bounty illegal on the basis that a bounty would have to be offered by the Board of Game and not by the Department of Fish and Game.[112][113]
Public Safety Commissioner dismissal
Main article: Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal
Sarah Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues."[114] Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from the Governor, her husband, and her staff, including State Attorney General Talis Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father.[115][116] Monegan stated he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others.[116] He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed.[117] When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue;[116] he later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing.[118] Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so.[114][117] Monegan's replacement resigned on July 25, amid charges of sexual harassment in his previous job.[119]
Legislative investigation
On August 1, the Republican-dominated[120] Alaska Legislature hired an investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to review the Monegan dismissal. Legislators stated that Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten.[121][122] The atmosphere was bipartisan and Palin pledged to cooperate.[121][122][123] After she ordered her own internal investigation, Palin stated on August 13 that "pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it."[124] Palin announced that officials had contacted Monegan or his staff about two dozen times regarding Wooten,[117] that she had only known about some of those contacts, that many of those contacts were appropriate, and that she had not fired Monegan because of Wooten,[125] who remained employed as a state trooper.[126] She placed an aide on paid leave due to one tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide appeared to be acting on her behalf and complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.[127]
Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate", Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate.[122] In a news story published on September 2, the state senator running the investigation complained that Palin's hiring of private lawyers hampered the investigation, and suggested that the results of the investigation were "likely to be damaging to the Governor's administration."[128] On September 1, Palin asked the legislature to drop its investigation, saying that the state Personnel Board had jurisdiction over ethics issues.[129] The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Palin’s predecessor, and Palin reappointed one member in 2008.[130] On September 19, the Governor's husband and several state employees refused to honor subpoenas, the validity of which were disputed by Talis Colberg, Palin's appointee as Alaska's Attorney General.[131] On October 2, a court rejected Colberg's challenge to the subpoenas,[132] and seven of the witnesses, not including Sarah and Todd Palin, eventually testified.[133]
Branchflower Report
Main article: Branchflower Report
On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without officially endorsing,[134] the Branchflower Report in which Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten.[135] The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired."[136] The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office [...] to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."[136][137]
On October 11, Palin's attorneys responded, condemning the Branchflower Report as "misleading and wrong on the law";[138] one, Thomas Van Flein, said that it was an attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo."[139] Van Flein further argues that Branchflower's findings are flawed because Palin received "no monetary benefit" from her actions.
Palin said that she was "very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there".[140] Among the commentators disputing her interpretation was a columnist for The Washington Post:
Whether or not the Branchflower report -- which was launched by a bipartisan committee -- was a partisan smear job is debatable. What is not debatable is that the report clearly states that she violated the State Ethics Act. Palin has reasonable grounds for arguing that the report cleared her of "legal wrongdoing," since she did have the authority to fire Monegan. But it is the reverse of the truth to claim that she was cleared of "any hint of any kind of unethical activity."[139]
Another view was expressed by McClatchy's Kansascity.com, The Kansas City Star: "It’s just Steve Branchflower’s opinion that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both the complete right to perform and other very good reasons to perform."[141]
State Personnel Board investigation
The State Personnel Board (SPB) has been reviewing this matter at Palin's request.[142] On September 15, she filed arguments of "no probable cause" with the SPB.[143][144] The Palins' attorney, Thomas Van Flein, stated Palin and her husband will both give depositions on October 24 outside the state. The SPB has hired independent counsel Timothy Petumenos, and each interview with the Palins is expected to take up to three hours.[145][146]
2008 Vice-presidential campaign
Main articles: John McCain presidential campaign, 2008 and Republican Party (United States) vice presidential candidates, 2008
This section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election.
Content may change as the election approaches.
Palin addresses the 2008 Republican National Convention
Palin addresses the 2008 Republican National Convention
On August 29, 2008, in Dayton, Ohio, Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate.[147] According to Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for John McCain, "John McCain first met Governor Sarah Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February of 2008 and came away extraordinarily impressed."[148] He called Palin on August 24 to discuss the possibility of having her join him on the ticket.[149] On August 27, she visited McCain's vacation home near Sedona, Arizona, where she was offered the position of vice-presidential candidate.[150] Palin was the only prospective running mate who had a face-to-face interview with McCain to discuss joining the ticket that week.[149] Nonetheless, Palin's selection was a surprise to many as speculation had centered on other candidates, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, United States Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.[147]
Palin is the second woman to run on a major U.S. party ticket. The first was Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984, who ran with former vice-president Walter Mondale.[147] On September 3, 2008, Palin delivered a 40-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that was well-received and watched by more than 40 million viewers.[151]
Several conservative commentators met Palin in the summer of 2007 when they sailed on cruises that docked in Juneau.[152] Some of them, such as Bill Kristol, urged McCain to pick Palin, arguing that her presence on the ticket would provide a boost in enthusiasm among the religious right wing of the Republican party, while her status as an unknown on the national scene would also be a positive factor for McCain's campaign.[153]
Since Palin was largely unknown outside Alaska before her selection by McCain, her personal life, positions, and political record drew intense media attention and scrutiny.[154] Some Republicans felt that Palin was being subjected to unreasonable media coverage, a sentiment Palin noted in her acceptance speech.[155] A poll taken immediately after the Republican convention found that slightly more than half of Americans believed that the media was "trying to hurt" Palin with negative coverage.[156]
The Palins and McCains in Fairfax, Virginia, September 2008.
The Palins and McCains in Fairfax, Virginia, September 2008.
During the campaign, controversy erupted over alleged differences between Sarah Palin's positions as a gubernatorial candidate and her position as a vice-presidential candidate. While campaigning for vice-president, Palin touted her stance on "the bridge to nowhere" as an example of her opposition to pork barrel spending.[100] In her nomination acceptance speech and on the campaign trail, Palin has often said, "I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere."[157] Although Palin was originally a main proponent of the Gravina Island Bridge, McCain-Palin television advertisements assert that Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."[158] These statements have been widely questioned or described as misleading or exaggerations[159] by many media groups in the U.S.[160] Newsweek remarked, "Now she talks as if she always opposed the funding."[161]
McCain chose Palin, in part, due to her potential to rally Christian conservatives behind his campaign.[149]
Sarah Palin signing an autograph at a campaign rally in O'Fallon, Missouri
Sarah Palin signing an autograph at a campaign rally in O'Fallon, Missouri
After McCain announced Palin as his running mate, Newsweek and Time put Palin on their magazine covers,[162] as some of the media alleged that McCain's campaign was restricting press access to Palin by allowing only three one-on-one interviews and no press conferences with her.[163] Among the news organizations that criticized the restrictions were Palin's first major interview, with Charles Gibson of ABC News, met with mixed reviews.[164] Her interview five days later with Fox News's Sean Hannity focuses on many of the same questions from Gibson's interview.[165] However, Palin's performance in her third interview, with Katie Couric of CBS News, was widely criticized, prompting a decline in her poll numbers, concern among Republicans that she was becoming a political liability, and calls from some conservative commentators for Palin to resign from the Presidential ticket.[165][166] Other conservatives remain ardent in their support for Palin, accusing the columnists of elitism.[167] Following this interview, some Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol, questioned the McCain campaign's strategy of sheltering Palin from unscripted encounters with the press.[168]
Palin was reported to have prepared intensively for the October 2 vice-presidential debate with Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden at Washington University in St. Louis. Some Republicans suggested that Palin's performance in the interviews would improve public perceptions of her debate performance by lowering expectations.[169][165][170] Polling from CNN, Fox and CBS found that while Palin exceeded most voters' expectations, they felt that Biden had won the debate.[171][172]
Upon returning to the campaign trail after her debate preparation, Palin stepped up her attacks on the Democratic candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama. At a fundraising event, Palin explained her new aggressiveness, saying, "There does come a time when you have to take the gloves off and that time is right now."[173] In a campaign appearance on October 4, Palin accused Obama of regarding America as "so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." The accusation referred to a New York Times article describing Obama's contacts with Bill Ayers, a founder of the 1960s radical group called the Weathermen.[174] The Obama campaign called the allegation a "smear",[175] citing newspaper commentaries critical of Palin's attack. Obama has condemned the Weathermen's violent actions.[176]
Personal life
"Levi Johnston" redirects here. For the football player, see Levi Johnson.
In 1988, Sarah eloped with her childhood sweetheart Todd Palin because, according to her mother, Sarah believed that her parents "couldn't afford a big white wedding."[177] Todd Palin works for the London-based oil company BP as an oil-field production operator and owns a commercial fishing business.[178][20] The Palins have an estimated combined net worth of over $1 million.[179]
Palin family members at announcement of vice-presidential selection, 29 Aug 2008. From left to right: Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol and Trig.
Palin family members at announcement of vice-presidential selection, 29 Aug 2008. From left to right: Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol and Trig.
Palin describes herself as a hockey mom. The Palins have five children: sons Track (b. 1989)[180] and Trig (b. 2008), and daughters Bristol (b. 1990), Willow (b. 1995), and Piper (b. 2001).[181] Track enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 11, 2007,[182] and was subsequently assigned to an infantry brigade. He and his unit deployed to Iraq in September 2008, for 12 months.[183] On September 1, 2008, Palin announced that Bristol was five months pregnant and that she intends to keep the baby and marry Levi Johnston, the father of the child.[184] Palin's youngest child, Trig, was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.[185]
Palin was born into a Catholic family.[186] Later her family joined the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church.[187] Palin attended the Wasilla Assembly of God until 2002. Palin says she switched to Wasilla Bible Church because she preferred the children's ministries there.[188] When in Juneau, she attends the Juneau Christian Center.[189] Her current home church is the Wasilla Bible Church, an independent congregation.[190] Palin described herself in an interview as a "Bible-believing Christian."[186] After the Republican National Convention, a spokesperson for the McCain campaign told CNN that Palin "doesn't consider herself Pentecostal" and has "deep religious convictions."[39]
Political positions
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Main article: Political positions of Sarah Palin
See also: Public image and reception of Sarah Palin
Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982 and has described the Republican Party platform as "the right agenda for America".[191] Palin is a social conservative. A lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), she believes the right to bear arms includes handgun possession, and is against a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons.[192] She has supported gun safety education for youth.[193] She supports capital punishment.[194] In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, responding to a question asking the candidates whether they would support teaching creationism in public schools, Palin stated that she supported teaching both creationism and evolution. Shortly after that debate, however, Palin said in an interview that she had only meant to say she supports allowing the discussion of creationism in public schools, but says it does not have to be part of the curriculum.[195] Palin opposes same-sex marriage and supported a non-binding referendum for an Alaskan constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples; however, early in her gubernatorial term she vetoed such a bill, citing its current unconstitutionality.[115][196] Palin has called herself "as pro-life as any candidate can be"[196] and has called abortion an "atrocity."[197] Palin has stated that abortion should be banned in nearly all cases, including rape and incest, except if the life of the mother is endangered.[198][199] Palin has stated that she does not support embryonic stem cell research.[192] She supports sex education in public schools that encourages abstinence but also discusses birth control.[197][200]
Palin has promoted oil and natural gas resource exploration in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.[80] She brought suit to overturn the listing of polar bears under the federal Endangered Species Act,[201] and also opposed strengthening protections for beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.[202] The official Alaska press release stated that she had "asked [the National Marine Fisheries Service] to work with the state and other scientists to finalize and implement a conservation plan for the Cook Inlet stock of belugas."[203]
On global warming, Palin said that "a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."[204] She later said that "man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue" and that "John McCain and I agree that we gotta do something about it."[83][204]
Regarding foreign policy, Palin supports the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, but is concerned that "dependence on foreign energy" may be obstructing efforts to "have an exit plan in place".[205] [206] Palin supports preemptive military action in the face of an imminent threat, and supports U.S. military operations in Pakistan. She declined to give a yes or no answer regarding whether U.S. military forces should make cross-border attacks into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government.[207] She supports NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia,[207] and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations.[208]
Palin was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002, she chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004. She was elected governor of Alaska in November 2006 by defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary and then defeating a former two-term Democratic governor in the general election. She is the first female governor of Alaska, and the youngest person elected to the position.
On August 29, 2008, presidential candidate John McCain announced he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Palin was formally nominated at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the first woman to run on the Republican Party's presidential ticket and the first Alaskan nominee of either major party.
Early life and education
Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, the third of four children of Sarah Heath (née Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach.[6] She is of English, German, and Irish descent. The family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school. The family regularly ran 5 km and 10 km races.[7]
Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, located 44 miles (71 km) north of Anchorage.[8] She was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school and the point guard and captain of the school's girls' basketball team.[9]
Palin attended several colleges and universities. In 1982, she enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester. She transferred to North Idaho community college, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From there, she transferred to the University of Idaho for two semesters.[10][11] During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant,[12][13] then finished third in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant,[14][15] at which she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award.[16] She then attended the Matanuska-Susitna community college in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.[10][11]
In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, Alaska,[17] and for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman as a sports reporter.[18] She also helped in her husband’s commercial fishing family business.[19]
City council of Wasilla
See also: Electoral history of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin was elected twice to the city council of Wasilla, in 1992 and 1995. Palin says she entered politics because she was concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely.[20]
She ran for Wasilla city council in 1992, at age 28, against John Hartrick, a local telephone company worker, on a promise to bring "my progressive, competitive attitude" to the government.[21][22] She won 530 votes to John Hartrick’s 310.[21] On the council, she successfully opposed a measure to curtail the hours at Wasilla's bars by two hours, which surprised Hartrick because she was then a member of a church that advocated abstinence from alcohol.[21] After serving on the city council for three years, she ran for reelection against R’nita Rogers in 1995, winning 413 votes to Rogers' 185.[23]
According to Laura Chase of Wasilla, and former mayor John Stein, Palin as city councilwoman mentioned to her colleagues in 1995 that she saw the book Daddy's Roommate in the public library and did not think that it belonged there. Chase later became Palin's campaign manager for mayor in 1996, when Palin defeated John Stein, and Chase is now a vocal critic of Palin.[24] City of Wasilla Library records indicate that there was never a request for the library to remove the book and that no books were ever censored or banned.[25] The McCain-Palin campaign says that Palin was not advocating censorship.[26]
Palin did not complete her second term on the city council because she ran for mayor in 1996. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her career, Palin has been a registered Republican.[27]
Mayor of Wasilla
Main article: Mayoralty of Sarah Palin
Palin served two terms (1996–2002) as mayor of Wasilla. At the conclusion of Palin's tenure as mayor in 2002, the town had about 6,300 residents.[28] In 1996, Palin defeated three-term incumbent mayor John Stein,[29] on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes,[30] and Stein says that she introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.[31] Although the election was a nonpartisan blanket primary, the state Republican Party ran advertisements on her behalf.[31]
First term
Wasilla City Hall
Wasilla City Hall
Location of Wasilla, Alaska
Location of Wasilla, Alaska
Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin consolidated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from some top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian.[32] Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.[32] She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies.[32] She created the position of city administrator,[31] and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.[33]
According to Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin inquired two or three times in October 1996 as to how Emmons would handle any request to remove books from the library.[34][35][36] John Stein, the former mayor of Wasilla and Palin's 1996 political opponent, said in September 2008 that Palin's "religious beliefs," and the concerns of some voters about language in the books, motivated her inquiries.[37] In December 1996, Palin said she had no books or other material in mind for removal.[36] No books were removed from the library,[34][38] and Palin stated in 2006 that she would not allow her personal religious beliefs to dictate her political positions.[39]
Palin fired Emmons and Police Chief Irl Stambaugh in January 1997, stating that she did not feel they fully supported her efforts to govern the city.[40] Following expressions of public support for Emmons and a personal meeting, Palin rescinded the firing of Emmons the next day,[34] stating that her concerns had been alleviated, and adding that Emmons agreed to support Palin's plan to merge the town's library and museum operations.[40] Stambaugh, who along with Emmons had supported Palin's opponent in the election, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit alleging that his termination violated his contract, reflected gender discrimination, and was for political reasons;[41] he said, for example, that he had opposed a bill in the state legislature, supported by Palin, that would "permit concealed weapons in schools and bars."[42] In fact, the bill stated: "A permitee may not carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun within...or on school grounds."[43] The federal judge who heard the case dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, ordering Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees,[44] ruling that the mayor had the right to fire city employees for any reason, including a political one, or for no reason at all.[45] Palin appointed[46] Charles Fannon to replace Stambaugh as police chief.
During her first year in office, Palin kept a jar with the names of Wasilla residents on her desk, and once a week she pulled a name from it and picked up the phone; she would ask: "How's the city doing?"[38] Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that was enacted before she was on the city council,[47] Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes.[48][49] Tapping municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department.[31] She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources.[49] At the same time, she reduced spending on the town museum and blocked construction of a new library and city hall.[49] Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and won,[50] with 74% of the vote.[51] Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.[52]
Second term
During her second term as mayor, Palin introduced a ballot measure proposing the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5% sales tax increase.[53] The $14.7 million Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex was built on time and under budget, but the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction.[53] The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million through voter-approved indebtedness of $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.[54]
Palin also joined with nearby communities in jointly hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The firm secured nearly $8 million in earmarked funds for the Wasilla city government, and another $19 million for other public and private entities in the Wasilla valley area.[55] Earmarks included $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project linking Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood.[56] Term limits prevented Palin from running for a third term as mayor in 2002.[57]
Post-mayoral years
In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary.[58] The Republican ticket of U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski and Leman won the November 2002 election. When Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to become governor, he considered appointing Palin to replace him in the Senate, but chose his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, who was then an Alaskan state representative.[59]
Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.[60] She chaired the Commission beginning in 2003, serving as Ethics Supervisor.[61] Palin resigned in January 2004, protesting what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members.[62][63]
After resigning, Palin filed a formal complaint against Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner Randy Ruedrich, also the chair of the state Republican Party,[64] accusing him of doing work for the party on public time and of working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft[65] to file a complaint against Gregg Renkes, a former Alaska Attorney General,[66] accusing him of having a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement,[67] while Renkes was the subject of investigation and after records suggesting a possible conflict of interest had been released to the public.[68] Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[61][69]
From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska.[70] In 2004, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had decided not to run for the U.S. Senate that year, against the Republican incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, because her teenage son opposed it. Palin said, "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. Senator?"[71]
Governor of Alaska
Main article: Governorship of Sarah Palin
Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.
Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.
In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.[72] Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell.
Despite being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%.[73] Palin became Alaska's first woman governor, and at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history.[74] She is the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006, and has been very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 early in her term showed her with a 93% and 89% popularity among all voters,[75] which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America."[65][75] A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%.[76]
Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development.[77] She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step", and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.[78]
Palin tries out the Engagement Skills Trainer, July 24, 2007.
Palin tries out the Engagement Skills Trainer, July 24, 2007.
Palin has sometimes broken with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Sean Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young.[79] Palin has publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as needed "to make clear she had not abandoned him politically."[70]
Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have been the subject of a national debate.[80]
In 2006, Palin obtained a passport[81] and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases.[82] On her return trip to the U.S., she visited injured soldiers in Germany.[83]
Budget, spending, and federal funds
Governor Palin in Germany, July 2007
Governor Palin in Germany, July 2007
In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.[84] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to $1.6 billion.[85] In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.[86]
Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.[87] In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.[88]
Expense reimbursements
Palin lives in Juneau during the legislative session and lives in Wasilla and works out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is far from Juneau, while she works there, state officials say she is legally entitled to a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she has taken (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she has not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla.[89] She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef.[90] In response to criticism for taking the per diem, and for $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business, the governor's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that Palin's gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski,[91] and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation."[89]
Federal funding
In her State of the State Address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]."[92] Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; as of 2008, Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.[93]
While there is no sales tax or income tax in Alaska, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008, For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.[94] Palin’s decreasing support for federal funding has been a leading source of friction between herself and the state's congressional delegation; Palin has requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.[95]
Bridge to Nowhere and Knik Arm Bridge
See also: Gravina Island Bridge and Knik Arm Bridge
See also: Use of "Bridge to Nowhere" in 2008 campaign
In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges was passed in the U.S. Senate as part of an omnibus spending bill. The Gravina Island Bridge was proposed to connect Ketchikan to sparsely populated Gravina Island where an international airport serves over 200,000 passengers per year and the existing ferry carries 400,000 passengers per year.[96] The Knik Arm Bridge (also known as "Don Young's Way" after Alaska's Congressman Don Young) was proposed to provide an alternate link between heavily-populated Anchorage and Wasilla.[97] The Gravina Island Bridge proposal became nicknamed the "Bridge to Nowhere" because of the island's population of 50.[96] More rarely, the term "Bridges to Nowhere" has been applied to both bridge proposals.[98] Critics of the two bridge proposals gave them national attention as symbols of pork-barrel spending, and Congress responded to the intense criticism by stripping the earmark from the bill before final passage in November 2005 and instead giving the $442 million to Alaska as transportation money with no strings attached.[99]
Sarah Palin holds up a t-shirt reading "Nowhere Alaska 99901" while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the zip code for the area is 99901.
Sarah Palin holds up a t-shirt reading "Nowhere Alaska 99901" while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the zip code for the area is 99901.
In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform, supporting the use of state and federal funds to construct the two bridges. She said she sympathized with members of a community that had been characterized by politicians as "nowhere".[100] She also urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."[101]
As governor, however, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to what she called "inaccurate portrayals of the projects."[102] She opted not to return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.[103] Palin did maintain her support for a controversial highway on the bridgeless Gravina Island, committing $25 million in federal funds to the project saying through her spokesperson that it would open territory for development. Alaska state officials said if the money were not used for the road it would have had to have been returned to the federal government.[104] She also directed state officials to explore other ways to provide access to the island.[102]
Later, as a vice-presidential candidate, emphasizing her efforts to end abuses of "earmark" spending, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." This angered many Alaskans in Ketchikan who said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community.[105] Meanwhile, some critics complained that this statement was misleading, since she had repeatedly expressed support for the spending project and even kept the Federal money after the project was canceled. [106]
Palin continues to support the Knik Arm project,[97] although in June 2008, she ordered a funding and feasibility review.[107] According to news reports, local residents and officials of Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which would be connected by the bridge and causeway, are divided over the matter. Many residents feel a strong need for a more direct and less congested route linking the two areas, but many local officials have recently expressed concern that the bridge and causeway may be too expensive. Officials have discussed a ferry as an alternative, although Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough have disagreed as to the appropriate sites for ferry landings.[108]
Gas pipeline
See also: Alaska Gas Pipeline
In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Continental United States through Canada.[109] The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project.[110] It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion.[109] Newsweek described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor,"[111] but it faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations (aboriginal peoples).[111]
Predator Control
See also: Palin's Predator Control policy
In 2007, Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters.[112] In March 2007, Palin's office announced that a bounty of $150 per wolf would be paid to the 180 volunteer pilots and gunners, to offset fuel costs. Wildlife activists sued the state, and a state judge declared the bounty illegal on the basis that a bounty would have to be offered by the Board of Game and not by the Department of Fish and Game.[112][113]
Public Safety Commissioner dismissal
Main article: Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal
Sarah Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues."[114] Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from the Governor, her husband, and her staff, including State Attorney General Talis Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father.[115][116] Monegan stated he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others.[116] He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed.[117] When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue;[116] he later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing.[118] Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so.[114][117] Monegan's replacement resigned on July 25, amid charges of sexual harassment in his previous job.[119]
Legislative investigation
On August 1, the Republican-dominated[120] Alaska Legislature hired an investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to review the Monegan dismissal. Legislators stated that Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten.[121][122] The atmosphere was bipartisan and Palin pledged to cooperate.[121][122][123] After she ordered her own internal investigation, Palin stated on August 13 that "pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it."[124] Palin announced that officials had contacted Monegan or his staff about two dozen times regarding Wooten,[117] that she had only known about some of those contacts, that many of those contacts were appropriate, and that she had not fired Monegan because of Wooten,[125] who remained employed as a state trooper.[126] She placed an aide on paid leave due to one tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide appeared to be acting on her behalf and complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.[127]
Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate", Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate.[122] In a news story published on September 2, the state senator running the investigation complained that Palin's hiring of private lawyers hampered the investigation, and suggested that the results of the investigation were "likely to be damaging to the Governor's administration."[128] On September 1, Palin asked the legislature to drop its investigation, saying that the state Personnel Board had jurisdiction over ethics issues.[129] The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Palin’s predecessor, and Palin reappointed one member in 2008.[130] On September 19, the Governor's husband and several state employees refused to honor subpoenas, the validity of which were disputed by Talis Colberg, Palin's appointee as Alaska's Attorney General.[131] On October 2, a court rejected Colberg's challenge to the subpoenas,[132] and seven of the witnesses, not including Sarah and Todd Palin, eventually testified.[133]
Branchflower Report
Main article: Branchflower Report
On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without officially endorsing,[134] the Branchflower Report in which Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten.[135] The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired."[136] The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office [...] to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."[136][137]
On October 11, Palin's attorneys responded, condemning the Branchflower Report as "misleading and wrong on the law";[138] one, Thomas Van Flein, said that it was an attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo."[139] Van Flein further argues that Branchflower's findings are flawed because Palin received "no monetary benefit" from her actions.
Palin said that she was "very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there".[140] Among the commentators disputing her interpretation was a columnist for The Washington Post:
Whether or not the Branchflower report -- which was launched by a bipartisan committee -- was a partisan smear job is debatable. What is not debatable is that the report clearly states that she violated the State Ethics Act. Palin has reasonable grounds for arguing that the report cleared her of "legal wrongdoing," since she did have the authority to fire Monegan. But it is the reverse of the truth to claim that she was cleared of "any hint of any kind of unethical activity."[139]
Another view was expressed by McClatchy's Kansascity.com, The Kansas City Star: "It’s just Steve Branchflower’s opinion that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both the complete right to perform and other very good reasons to perform."[141]
State Personnel Board investigation
The State Personnel Board (SPB) has been reviewing this matter at Palin's request.[142] On September 15, she filed arguments of "no probable cause" with the SPB.[143][144] The Palins' attorney, Thomas Van Flein, stated Palin and her husband will both give depositions on October 24 outside the state. The SPB has hired independent counsel Timothy Petumenos, and each interview with the Palins is expected to take up to three hours.[145][146]
2008 Vice-presidential campaign
Main articles: John McCain presidential campaign, 2008 and Republican Party (United States) vice presidential candidates, 2008
This section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election.
Content may change as the election approaches.
Palin addresses the 2008 Republican National Convention
Palin addresses the 2008 Republican National Convention
On August 29, 2008, in Dayton, Ohio, Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate.[147] According to Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for John McCain, "John McCain first met Governor Sarah Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February of 2008 and came away extraordinarily impressed."[148] He called Palin on August 24 to discuss the possibility of having her join him on the ticket.[149] On August 27, she visited McCain's vacation home near Sedona, Arizona, where she was offered the position of vice-presidential candidate.[150] Palin was the only prospective running mate who had a face-to-face interview with McCain to discuss joining the ticket that week.[149] Nonetheless, Palin's selection was a surprise to many as speculation had centered on other candidates, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, United States Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.[147]
Palin is the second woman to run on a major U.S. party ticket. The first was Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984, who ran with former vice-president Walter Mondale.[147] On September 3, 2008, Palin delivered a 40-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that was well-received and watched by more than 40 million viewers.[151]
Several conservative commentators met Palin in the summer of 2007 when they sailed on cruises that docked in Juneau.[152] Some of them, such as Bill Kristol, urged McCain to pick Palin, arguing that her presence on the ticket would provide a boost in enthusiasm among the religious right wing of the Republican party, while her status as an unknown on the national scene would also be a positive factor for McCain's campaign.[153]
Since Palin was largely unknown outside Alaska before her selection by McCain, her personal life, positions, and political record drew intense media attention and scrutiny.[154] Some Republicans felt that Palin was being subjected to unreasonable media coverage, a sentiment Palin noted in her acceptance speech.[155] A poll taken immediately after the Republican convention found that slightly more than half of Americans believed that the media was "trying to hurt" Palin with negative coverage.[156]
The Palins and McCains in Fairfax, Virginia, September 2008.
The Palins and McCains in Fairfax, Virginia, September 2008.
During the campaign, controversy erupted over alleged differences between Sarah Palin's positions as a gubernatorial candidate and her position as a vice-presidential candidate. While campaigning for vice-president, Palin touted her stance on "the bridge to nowhere" as an example of her opposition to pork barrel spending.[100] In her nomination acceptance speech and on the campaign trail, Palin has often said, "I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere."[157] Although Palin was originally a main proponent of the Gravina Island Bridge, McCain-Palin television advertisements assert that Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."[158] These statements have been widely questioned or described as misleading or exaggerations[159] by many media groups in the U.S.[160] Newsweek remarked, "Now she talks as if she always opposed the funding."[161]
McCain chose Palin, in part, due to her potential to rally Christian conservatives behind his campaign.[149]
Sarah Palin signing an autograph at a campaign rally in O'Fallon, Missouri
Sarah Palin signing an autograph at a campaign rally in O'Fallon, Missouri
After McCain announced Palin as his running mate, Newsweek and Time put Palin on their magazine covers,[162] as some of the media alleged that McCain's campaign was restricting press access to Palin by allowing only three one-on-one interviews and no press conferences with her.[163] Among the news organizations that criticized the restrictions were Palin's first major interview, with Charles Gibson of ABC News, met with mixed reviews.[164] Her interview five days later with Fox News's Sean Hannity focuses on many of the same questions from Gibson's interview.[165] However, Palin's performance in her third interview, with Katie Couric of CBS News, was widely criticized, prompting a decline in her poll numbers, concern among Republicans that she was becoming a political liability, and calls from some conservative commentators for Palin to resign from the Presidential ticket.[165][166] Other conservatives remain ardent in their support for Palin, accusing the columnists of elitism.[167] Following this interview, some Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol, questioned the McCain campaign's strategy of sheltering Palin from unscripted encounters with the press.[168]
Palin was reported to have prepared intensively for the October 2 vice-presidential debate with Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden at Washington University in St. Louis. Some Republicans suggested that Palin's performance in the interviews would improve public perceptions of her debate performance by lowering expectations.[169][165][170] Polling from CNN, Fox and CBS found that while Palin exceeded most voters' expectations, they felt that Biden had won the debate.[171][172]
Upon returning to the campaign trail after her debate preparation, Palin stepped up her attacks on the Democratic candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama. At a fundraising event, Palin explained her new aggressiveness, saying, "There does come a time when you have to take the gloves off and that time is right now."[173] In a campaign appearance on October 4, Palin accused Obama of regarding America as "so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." The accusation referred to a New York Times article describing Obama's contacts with Bill Ayers, a founder of the 1960s radical group called the Weathermen.[174] The Obama campaign called the allegation a "smear",[175] citing newspaper commentaries critical of Palin's attack. Obama has condemned the Weathermen's violent actions.[176]
Personal life
"Levi Johnston" redirects here. For the football player, see Levi Johnson.
In 1988, Sarah eloped with her childhood sweetheart Todd Palin because, according to her mother, Sarah believed that her parents "couldn't afford a big white wedding."[177] Todd Palin works for the London-based oil company BP as an oil-field production operator and owns a commercial fishing business.[178][20] The Palins have an estimated combined net worth of over $1 million.[179]
Palin family members at announcement of vice-presidential selection, 29 Aug 2008. From left to right: Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol and Trig.
Palin family members at announcement of vice-presidential selection, 29 Aug 2008. From left to right: Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol and Trig.
Palin describes herself as a hockey mom. The Palins have five children: sons Track (b. 1989)[180] and Trig (b. 2008), and daughters Bristol (b. 1990), Willow (b. 1995), and Piper (b. 2001).[181] Track enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 11, 2007,[182] and was subsequently assigned to an infantry brigade. He and his unit deployed to Iraq in September 2008, for 12 months.[183] On September 1, 2008, Palin announced that Bristol was five months pregnant and that she intends to keep the baby and marry Levi Johnston, the father of the child.[184] Palin's youngest child, Trig, was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.[185]
Palin was born into a Catholic family.[186] Later her family joined the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church.[187] Palin attended the Wasilla Assembly of God until 2002. Palin says she switched to Wasilla Bible Church because she preferred the children's ministries there.[188] When in Juneau, she attends the Juneau Christian Center.[189] Her current home church is the Wasilla Bible Church, an independent congregation.[190] Palin described herself in an interview as a "Bible-believing Christian."[186] After the Republican National Convention, a spokesperson for the McCain campaign told CNN that Palin "doesn't consider herself Pentecostal" and has "deep religious convictions."[39]
Political positions
The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (October 2008)
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Main article: Political positions of Sarah Palin
See also: Public image and reception of Sarah Palin
Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982 and has described the Republican Party platform as "the right agenda for America".[191] Palin is a social conservative. A lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), she believes the right to bear arms includes handgun possession, and is against a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons.[192] She has supported gun safety education for youth.[193] She supports capital punishment.[194] In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, responding to a question asking the candidates whether they would support teaching creationism in public schools, Palin stated that she supported teaching both creationism and evolution. Shortly after that debate, however, Palin said in an interview that she had only meant to say she supports allowing the discussion of creationism in public schools, but says it does not have to be part of the curriculum.[195] Palin opposes same-sex marriage and supported a non-binding referendum for an Alaskan constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples; however, early in her gubernatorial term she vetoed such a bill, citing its current unconstitutionality.[115][196] Palin has called herself "as pro-life as any candidate can be"[196] and has called abortion an "atrocity."[197] Palin has stated that abortion should be banned in nearly all cases, including rape and incest, except if the life of the mother is endangered.[198][199] Palin has stated that she does not support embryonic stem cell research.[192] She supports sex education in public schools that encourages abstinence but also discusses birth control.[197][200]
Palin has promoted oil and natural gas resource exploration in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.[80] She brought suit to overturn the listing of polar bears under the federal Endangered Species Act,[201] and also opposed strengthening protections for beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.[202] The official Alaska press release stated that she had "asked [the National Marine Fisheries Service] to work with the state and other scientists to finalize and implement a conservation plan for the Cook Inlet stock of belugas."[203]
On global warming, Palin said that "a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."[204] She later said that "man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue" and that "John McCain and I agree that we gotta do something about it."[83][204]
Regarding foreign policy, Palin supports the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, but is concerned that "dependence on foreign energy" may be obstructing efforts to "have an exit plan in place".[205] [206] Palin supports preemptive military action in the face of an imminent threat, and supports U.S. military operations in Pakistan. She declined to give a yes or no answer regarding whether U.S. military forces should make cross-border attacks into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government.[207] She supports NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia,[207] and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations.[208]
Barack Obama
"Barack" and "Obama" redirect here. For other uses, see Barack (disambiguation) and Obama (disambiguation).
Semi-protected
Featured article
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Junior Senator
from Illinois
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 4, 2005
Serving with Richard Durbin
Preceded by Peter Fitzgerald
Member of the Illinois Senate
from the 13th district
In office
January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded by Alice J. Palmer
Succeeded by Kwame Raoul
Born August 4, 1961 (1961-08-04) (age 47)
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Nationality American
Political party Democratic
Spouse Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
Children Malia Ann (b. 1998),
Natasha ("Sasha") (b. 2001)
Residence (Kenwood), Chicago, Illinois
Alma mater Harvard Law School
Columbia University
Occidental College
Profession Attorney, Politician
Religion Christian (United Church of Christ)
Signature Barack Obama's signature
Website Barack Obama—U.S. Senator for Illinois
More detailed articles about Barack Obama
————————————
Early life and career · (Family · Memoir)
Illinois Senate career
U.S. Senate career
Presidential primaries · Obama–Biden 2008
Policy positions · Public image
Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major political party for president.[1] A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Obama announced his presidential campaign in February 2007, and was formally nominated at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with Delaware senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
Early life and career
Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas.[2] His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student.[3] They separated when he was two years old and later divorced.[4] Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.[5] After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979.[6] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia to complete fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.[7] As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.[8][9]
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[10] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[11] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation[12] and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[13][14]
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side, and worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988.[13][15] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[16] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[17] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.[18]
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.[19] In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors.[20] Obama's election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.[20] During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[21] After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.[19]
The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations.[22] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.[22] He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.[22]
Right-to-left: Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro with their mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham in Hawaii (early 1970s).
Right-to-left: Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro with their mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham in Hawaii (early 1970s).
Obama directed Illinois' Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African-Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[23][24]
Beginning in 1992, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, being first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.[25]
He also, in 1993, joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve 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, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.[13][26][27]
Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.[13][28] He served from 1993 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation.[13] Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995–1999.[13] He 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.[13]
State legislator, 1997–2004
Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois' 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.[29] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws.[30] He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[31] 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.[32]
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.[33] 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.[34][35]
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.[36] 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.[31][37] 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.[38] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.[39]
2004 U.S. Senate campaign
See also: United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004
In mid-2002, Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate; he enlisted political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.[40] Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.[41] Obama's candidacy was boosted by Axelrod's advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois.[42] He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.[43]
Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[44]
In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.[45] After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."[46] Broadcasts of the speech by major news organizations launched Obama's status as a national political figure and boosted his campaign for U.S. Senate.[47]
In August 2004, two months after Ryan's withdrawal and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan.[48] A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination.[49] In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.[50]
U.S. Senator, from 2005
Main article: United States Senate career of Barack Obama
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005.[51] Obama was the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected.[52] He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.[53] CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. In 2005 he was ranked sixteenth, and in 2006 he was ranked tenth.[54][55] In 2008, he was ranked by Congress.org as the eleventh most powerful Senator.[56]
Legislation
See also: List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate
Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act.
Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act.[57]
Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.[58] In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act.[59] Obama introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons,[60] and the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.[61] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.[62]
Obama sponsored legislation requiring nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks.[63] 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.[64] 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.[65] He introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections.[66] Obama also introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.[67]
Obama and Richard Lugar visit a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility.
Obama and Richard Lugar visit a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility.[68]
Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges.[69] He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.[70][71] 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.[72]
Committees
Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.[73] 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.[74] He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.[75] As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama has made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before he became President of Palestine, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption in the Kenyan government.[76][77][78][79]
2008 presidential campaign
This section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election.
Content may change as the election approaches.
Main articles: Barack Obama presidential primary campaign, 2008 and Barack Obama presidential campaign, 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.[80][81] The choice of the announcement site was symbolic since it was also where Abraham Lincoln in 1858 delivered his historic "House Divided" speech.[82] Throughout the campaign Obama has emphasized the issues of ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care, at one point identifying these as his top three priorities.[83]
Obama on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois.
Obama on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois.
Obama's campaign raised $58 million during the first half of 2007, of which "small" donations of less than $200 accounted for $16.4 million. The $58 million set the record for fundraising by a presidential campaign in the first six months of the calendar year before the election.[84] The magnitude of the small donation portion was outstanding from both the absolute and relative perspectives.[85] In January 2008, his campaign set another fundraising record with $36.8 million, the most ever raised in one month by a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries.[86]
Among the January 2008 DNC-sanctioned state contests, Obama tied with Hillary Clinton for delegates in the New Hampshire primary and won more delegates than Clinton in the Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina elections and caucuses. On Super Tuesday, he emerged with 20 more delegates than Clinton.[87] He again broke fundraising records in the first two months of 2008, raising over $90 million for his primary to Clinton's $45 million.[88] After Super Tuesday, Obama won the eleven remaining February primaries and caucuses.[89] Obama and Clinton split delegates and states nearly equally in the March 4 contests of Vermont, Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island; Obama closed the month by winning Wyoming and Mississippi.[90]
In March 2008, a controversy broke out concerning Obama's former pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright.[91] After ABC News broadcast clips of his racially and politically charged sermons.[91][92] Initially, Obama responded by defending Wright's wider role in Chicago's African American community,[93] but condemned his remarks and ended Wright's relationship with the campaign.[94] Obama delivered a speech, during the controversy, entitled "A More Perfect Union"[95] that addressed issues of race. Obama subsequently resigned from Trinity United Church "to avoid the impression that he endorsed the entire range of opinions expressed at that church."[96][97][98]
General David Petraeus gives an aerial tour of Baghdad to Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel.
General David Petraeus gives an aerial tour of Baghdad to Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel.
During April, May, and June, Obama won the North Carolina, Oregon, and Montana primaries and remained ahead in the count of pledged delegates, while Clinton won the Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and South Dakota primaries. During the period, Obama received endorsements from more superdelegates than did Clinton.[99] On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all of the Michigan and Florida delegates at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama's delegate lead while increasing the delegate count needed to win.[100] On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold to become the presumptive nominee.[101][102] On that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7.[103] Since then, he has campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.
On June 19, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election[104] since the system was created in 1976, reversing his earlier intention to accept it.[105]
On August 23, 2008, Obama selected Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.[106] At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Obama's former rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in strong support of Obama's candidacy and later was the person that called for Obama to be nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate by acclamation.[107][108] On August 28, Obama delivered a speech in front of 84,000 supporters in Denver and viewed by over 38 million on television. During the speech he accepted his party's nomination and presented details of his policy goals.[109][110]
Political positions
Main article: Political positions of Barack Obama
See also: Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008
Obama campaigning in Pennsylvania, October 2008.
Obama campaigning in Pennsylvania, October 2008.
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.[111] On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,[112] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza,[113] speaking out against the war.[114] On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq,[115] Obama addressed an anti-Iraq War rally and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.[116]
Obama stated that if elected he would enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in "unproven" missile defense systems, not "weaponize" space, "slow development of Future Combat Systems," and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons. Obama favors ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status.[117]
In November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran.[118] In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although not ruling out military action.[119] Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions.[120][121][122] Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.[123]
In a December 2005, Washington Post opinion column, and at the Save Darfur rally in April 2006, Obama called for more assertive action to oppose genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.[124] He has divested $180,000 in personal holdings of Sudan-related stock, and has urged divestment from companies doing business in Iran.[125] In the July–August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Obama called for an outward looking post-Iraq War foreign policy and the renewal of American military, diplomatic, and moral leadership in the world. Saying "we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission," he called on Americans to "lead the world, by deed and by example."[126]
In economic affairs, in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security.[127] In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor.[128] Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama said he supports universal healthcare in the United States.[129] Obama proposes to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.[130]
Obama speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina.
Obama speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina.[131]
In September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code.[132] His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut,[133] close corporate tax loopholes, lift the income cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS.[134] Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a ten year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.[135] Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.[136]
Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups.[137] In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.[138] Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier.[139] He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" and not be ashamed of it.[140] Before the conference, eighteen anti-abortion groups published an open letter stating, in reference to Obama's support for legal abortion: "In the strongest possible terms, we oppose Rick Warren's decision to ignore Senator Obama's clear pro-death stance and invite him to Saddleback Church anyway."[141] Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged "so-called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all too eager to exploit what divides us."[142]
A method that political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU).[143] Based on his years in Congress, Obama has a lifetime average conservative rating of 7.67% from the ACU,[144] and a lifetime average liberal rating of 90 percent from the ADA.[145]
Family and personal life
Main article: Family of Barack Obama
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.
Obama met his wife, Michelle Robinson, in June 1989 when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.[146] Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial offers to date.[147] They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.[148] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998,[149] followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), in 2001.[150]
Applying the proceeds of a book deal,[151] the family moved in 2005 from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to their current $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood.[152] The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's indictment and subsequent conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.[153][154]
In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million.[155] Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.[156]
Obama playing basketball with U.S. military in Djibouti in 2006.
Obama playing basketball with U.S. military in Djibouti in 2006.[157]
In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. "Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations," he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."[158] Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family, six of them living, and a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband.[159] Obama's mother is survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham.[160] In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.[161]
Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[162] Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking.[163]
Obama is a Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."[164][165]
Cultural and political image
Main article: Public image of Barack Obama
With his Kenyan father and white American mother, his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, and his Ivy League education, Obama's early life experiences differ markedly from those of African American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement.[166] Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough," Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that the debate is not about his physical appearance or his record on issues of concern to black voters. Obama said that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong."[167]
Echoing the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation."[168]
In March 2007, Global Language Monitor added "Obama" to its English lexicon based on the use of Obama- as a root for neologisms such as: obamamentum, obamaBot, obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, obamanomics, obamican, obamafy, obamamania, and obamacam.[169][170]
Many commentators mentioned Obama's international appeal as a defining factor for his public image.[171] Not only did several polls show strong support for him in other countries[172], but Obama also established close relationships with prominent foreign politicians and elected officials even before his presidential candidacy, notably with former British Prime minister Tony Blair, whom he met in London in 2005[173], with Italy's Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni, who visited Obama's Senate office in 2005[174], and with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also visited him in Washington in 2006.[175]
Works
* Obama, Barack (1995). Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307383415. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word[176]
* Obama, Barack (October 17, 2006). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Crown Publishing Group / Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307237699. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word[177]
* Obama, Barack (March 27, 2007). Barack Obama in His Own Words. PublicAffairs. ISBN 0786720573.
* National Urban League (April 17, 2007). The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male, Foreword by Barack Obama, Beckham Publications Group. ISBN 0931761859.
* Obama, Barack (July-August 2007). "Renewing American Leadership". Foreign Affairs 86 (4). Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
* Obama, Barack (March 1, 2008). Barack Obama: What He Believes In - From His Own Works. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604501170.
* Obama, Barack; McCain, John (June 13, 2008). Barack Obama vs. John McCain - Side by Side Senate Voting Record for Easy Comparison. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604502495.
* (September 9, 2008) Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise, Foreword by Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307460452.
Notes
Semi-protected
Featured article
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Junior Senator
from Illinois
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 4, 2005
Serving with Richard Durbin
Preceded by Peter Fitzgerald
Member of the Illinois Senate
from the 13th district
In office
January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded by Alice J. Palmer
Succeeded by Kwame Raoul
Born August 4, 1961 (1961-08-04) (age 47)
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Nationality American
Political party Democratic
Spouse Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
Children Malia Ann (b. 1998),
Natasha ("Sasha") (b. 2001)
Residence (Kenwood), Chicago, Illinois
Alma mater Harvard Law School
Columbia University
Occidental College
Profession Attorney, Politician
Religion Christian (United Church of Christ)
Signature Barack Obama's signature
Website Barack Obama—U.S. Senator for Illinois
More detailed articles about Barack Obama
————————————
Early life and career · (Family · Memoir)
Illinois Senate career
U.S. Senate career
Presidential primaries · Obama–Biden 2008
Policy positions · Public image
Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major political party for president.[1] A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Obama announced his presidential campaign in February 2007, and was formally nominated at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with Delaware senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
Early life and career
Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas.[2] His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student.[3] They separated when he was two years old and later divorced.[4] Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.[5] After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979.[6] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia to complete fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.[7] As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.[8][9]
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[10] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[11] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation[12] and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[13][14]
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side, and worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988.[13][15] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[16] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[17] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.[18]
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.[19] In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors.[20] Obama's election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.[20] During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[21] After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.[19]
The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations.[22] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.[22] He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.[22]
Right-to-left: Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro with their mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham in Hawaii (early 1970s).
Right-to-left: Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro with their mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham in Hawaii (early 1970s).
Obama directed Illinois' Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African-Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[23][24]
Beginning in 1992, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, being first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.[25]
He also, in 1993, joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve 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, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.[13][26][27]
Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.[13][28] He served from 1993 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation.[13] Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995–1999.[13] He 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.[13]
State legislator, 1997–2004
Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois' 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.[29] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws.[30] He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[31] 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.[32]
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.[33] 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.[34][35]
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.[36] 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.[31][37] 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.[38] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.[39]
2004 U.S. Senate campaign
See also: United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004
In mid-2002, Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate; he enlisted political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.[40] Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.[41] Obama's candidacy was boosted by Axelrod's advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois.[42] He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.[43]
Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[44]
In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.[45] After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."[46] Broadcasts of the speech by major news organizations launched Obama's status as a national political figure and boosted his campaign for U.S. Senate.[47]
In August 2004, two months after Ryan's withdrawal and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan.[48] A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination.[49] In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.[50]
U.S. Senator, from 2005
Main article: United States Senate career of Barack Obama
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005.[51] Obama was the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected.[52] He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.[53] CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. In 2005 he was ranked sixteenth, and in 2006 he was ranked tenth.[54][55] In 2008, he was ranked by Congress.org as the eleventh most powerful Senator.[56]
Legislation
See also: List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate
Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act.
Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act.[57]
Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.[58] In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act.[59] Obama introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons,[60] and the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.[61] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.[62]
Obama sponsored legislation requiring nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks.[63] 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.[64] 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.[65] He introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections.[66] Obama also introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.[67]
Obama and Richard Lugar visit a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility.
Obama and Richard Lugar visit a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility.[68]
Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges.[69] He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.[70][71] 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.[72]
Committees
Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.[73] 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.[74] He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.[75] As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama has made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before he became President of Palestine, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption in the Kenyan government.[76][77][78][79]
2008 presidential campaign
This section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election.
Content may change as the election approaches.
Main articles: Barack Obama presidential primary campaign, 2008 and Barack Obama presidential campaign, 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.[80][81] The choice of the announcement site was symbolic since it was also where Abraham Lincoln in 1858 delivered his historic "House Divided" speech.[82] Throughout the campaign Obama has emphasized the issues of ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care, at one point identifying these as his top three priorities.[83]
Obama on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois.
Obama on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois.
Obama's campaign raised $58 million during the first half of 2007, of which "small" donations of less than $200 accounted for $16.4 million. The $58 million set the record for fundraising by a presidential campaign in the first six months of the calendar year before the election.[84] The magnitude of the small donation portion was outstanding from both the absolute and relative perspectives.[85] In January 2008, his campaign set another fundraising record with $36.8 million, the most ever raised in one month by a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries.[86]
Among the January 2008 DNC-sanctioned state contests, Obama tied with Hillary Clinton for delegates in the New Hampshire primary and won more delegates than Clinton in the Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina elections and caucuses. On Super Tuesday, he emerged with 20 more delegates than Clinton.[87] He again broke fundraising records in the first two months of 2008, raising over $90 million for his primary to Clinton's $45 million.[88] After Super Tuesday, Obama won the eleven remaining February primaries and caucuses.[89] Obama and Clinton split delegates and states nearly equally in the March 4 contests of Vermont, Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island; Obama closed the month by winning Wyoming and Mississippi.[90]
In March 2008, a controversy broke out concerning Obama's former pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright.[91] After ABC News broadcast clips of his racially and politically charged sermons.[91][92] Initially, Obama responded by defending Wright's wider role in Chicago's African American community,[93] but condemned his remarks and ended Wright's relationship with the campaign.[94] Obama delivered a speech, during the controversy, entitled "A More Perfect Union"[95] that addressed issues of race. Obama subsequently resigned from Trinity United Church "to avoid the impression that he endorsed the entire range of opinions expressed at that church."[96][97][98]
General David Petraeus gives an aerial tour of Baghdad to Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel.
General David Petraeus gives an aerial tour of Baghdad to Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel.
During April, May, and June, Obama won the North Carolina, Oregon, and Montana primaries and remained ahead in the count of pledged delegates, while Clinton won the Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and South Dakota primaries. During the period, Obama received endorsements from more superdelegates than did Clinton.[99] On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all of the Michigan and Florida delegates at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama's delegate lead while increasing the delegate count needed to win.[100] On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold to become the presumptive nominee.[101][102] On that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7.[103] Since then, he has campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.
On June 19, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election[104] since the system was created in 1976, reversing his earlier intention to accept it.[105]
On August 23, 2008, Obama selected Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.[106] At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Obama's former rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in strong support of Obama's candidacy and later was the person that called for Obama to be nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate by acclamation.[107][108] On August 28, Obama delivered a speech in front of 84,000 supporters in Denver and viewed by over 38 million on television. During the speech he accepted his party's nomination and presented details of his policy goals.[109][110]
Political positions
Main article: Political positions of Barack Obama
See also: Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008
Obama campaigning in Pennsylvania, October 2008.
Obama campaigning in Pennsylvania, October 2008.
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.[111] On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,[112] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza,[113] speaking out against the war.[114] On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq,[115] Obama addressed an anti-Iraq War rally and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.[116]
Obama stated that if elected he would enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in "unproven" missile defense systems, not "weaponize" space, "slow development of Future Combat Systems," and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons. Obama favors ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status.[117]
In November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran.[118] In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although not ruling out military action.[119] Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions.[120][121][122] Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.[123]
In a December 2005, Washington Post opinion column, and at the Save Darfur rally in April 2006, Obama called for more assertive action to oppose genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.[124] He has divested $180,000 in personal holdings of Sudan-related stock, and has urged divestment from companies doing business in Iran.[125] In the July–August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Obama called for an outward looking post-Iraq War foreign policy and the renewal of American military, diplomatic, and moral leadership in the world. Saying "we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission," he called on Americans to "lead the world, by deed and by example."[126]
In economic affairs, in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security.[127] In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor.[128] Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama said he supports universal healthcare in the United States.[129] Obama proposes to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.[130]
Obama speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina.
Obama speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina.[131]
In September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code.[132] His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut,[133] close corporate tax loopholes, lift the income cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS.[134] Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a ten year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.[135] Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.[136]
Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups.[137] In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.[138] Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier.[139] He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" and not be ashamed of it.[140] Before the conference, eighteen anti-abortion groups published an open letter stating, in reference to Obama's support for legal abortion: "In the strongest possible terms, we oppose Rick Warren's decision to ignore Senator Obama's clear pro-death stance and invite him to Saddleback Church anyway."[141] Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged "so-called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all too eager to exploit what divides us."[142]
A method that political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU).[143] Based on his years in Congress, Obama has a lifetime average conservative rating of 7.67% from the ACU,[144] and a lifetime average liberal rating of 90 percent from the ADA.[145]
Family and personal life
Main article: Family of Barack Obama
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.
Obama met his wife, Michelle Robinson, in June 1989 when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.[146] Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial offers to date.[147] They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.[148] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998,[149] followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), in 2001.[150]
Applying the proceeds of a book deal,[151] the family moved in 2005 from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to their current $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood.[152] The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's indictment and subsequent conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.[153][154]
In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million.[155] Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.[156]
Obama playing basketball with U.S. military in Djibouti in 2006.
Obama playing basketball with U.S. military in Djibouti in 2006.[157]
In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. "Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations," he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."[158] Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family, six of them living, and a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband.[159] Obama's mother is survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham.[160] In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.[161]
Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[162] Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking.[163]
Obama is a Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."[164][165]
Cultural and political image
Main article: Public image of Barack Obama
With his Kenyan father and white American mother, his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, and his Ivy League education, Obama's early life experiences differ markedly from those of African American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement.[166] Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough," Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that the debate is not about his physical appearance or his record on issues of concern to black voters. Obama said that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong."[167]
Echoing the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation."[168]
In March 2007, Global Language Monitor added "Obama" to its English lexicon based on the use of Obama- as a root for neologisms such as: obamamentum, obamaBot, obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, obamanomics, obamican, obamafy, obamamania, and obamacam.[169][170]
Many commentators mentioned Obama's international appeal as a defining factor for his public image.[171] Not only did several polls show strong support for him in other countries[172], but Obama also established close relationships with prominent foreign politicians and elected officials even before his presidential candidacy, notably with former British Prime minister Tony Blair, whom he met in London in 2005[173], with Italy's Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni, who visited Obama's Senate office in 2005[174], and with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also visited him in Washington in 2006.[175]
Works
* Obama, Barack (1995). Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307383415. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word[176]
* Obama, Barack (October 17, 2006). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Crown Publishing Group / Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307237699. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word[177]
* Obama, Barack (March 27, 2007). Barack Obama in His Own Words. PublicAffairs. ISBN 0786720573.
* National Urban League (April 17, 2007). The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male, Foreword by Barack Obama, Beckham Publications Group. ISBN 0931761859.
* Obama, Barack (July-August 2007). "Renewing American Leadership". Foreign Affairs 86 (4). Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
* Obama, Barack (March 1, 2008). Barack Obama: What He Believes In - From His Own Works. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604501170.
* Obama, Barack; McCain, John (June 13, 2008). Barack Obama vs. John McCain - Side by Side Senate Voting Record for Easy Comparison. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604502495.
* (September 9, 2008) Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise, Foreword by Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307460452.
Notes
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