He described himself as ‘a skinny guy with a funny name’ and ‘an improbable life story’ and Hthat shot him to the international prominence with a keynote address at the ’04 Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2000, he was not given a floor pass to the 2000 Democratic National Convention. To rephrase the statement, I may also write that he was denied entry. I hope you know that I am talking about Barack Obama.
Born out of an African father and an American mother, the biggest serendipity of America seems to get the first Afro-American President of the United States. Barack Obama’s win might be inspirational but how strategically he won the race is something that our generation ought to know. No win is so easy in life and no work is so difficult in this world provided there is a process followed and the ground realities are taken into cognizance.
His improbable life story which can be read in the book “The Audacity of Hope” goes like this. Obama was born parents met at the University of Hawaii. After their marriage on February 2, 1961, they separated when Obama was hardly two years old. His mother later married an
Indonesian who taught him boxing and advised him, “Protect yourself”. Having studied briefly at a Madrasa, he returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents till high school graduation in 1979.
A graduate from the Columbia University, he joined the Harvard Law School in 1988 and was elected the first black president of Harvard Law review in 1990. He was elected to the Illinois senate in 1996, 1998 and 2002 but unfortunately lost in 2000. He got married to Michelle Robinson in 1992 and is blessed with two daughters Malia and Natasha.
Like a true leader, he likes detailed meetings and gets opinions of everyone in the room and that is where he proves himself as an informal leader where he makes people working with him, feel important about themselves. More than coming at things with an ideological predisposition, he prefers looking at the ground realities and then designs a pragmatic plan of approach to it. He is the first candidate for the presidential elections to turn down public financing in presidential elections. He raised a whopping $640 million, way ahead of McCain’s $358 million. He tried out various things which no other candidate for the U.S elections had ever tried before. He was clear in his ideas and followed a proper course of action to realize it. Many other non Americans like Colin Powell, Condolezza Rice, must have been a prey to racism, but their contribution to the political process in the U.S has built up their recognition in the world. Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Campbell and Rihanna are the ones with whom you can relate very well if you are not much into politics. They all have done well and are different from their contemporaries.
Barack Obama was no different. With “Hussein” as his middle name, there were ugly rumors spread by his opponents of his Muslim background and his connection to the unsavory characters. What made Obama so popular is something we must analyze.
He turned his adversities to his advantages. He brought all his savvy to the political arena and hired the best talents to build a grassroots movement that people are only now beginning to understand and admire. He accepted all the allegations made by Hillary Clinton while contesting for the primaries and explained each one of them to the audience and left it on to the audience to decide.
I would say his crushing victory could not have been possible without the blind and outright support of all the black Americans. But the allegations did put the voters at stake and after a line of victory in the primaries; Hillary snatched a few constituencies to her favor.
Remaining calm on his strategy, he finally defeated Clinton to prove the world wrong that there would be a white woman to a Black man for the race of the White House. He had always maintained cordial relations with his opponents. 
Jyoti Shokhanda
BA (Journalism, Psychology &
English)
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