Barack Obama

Born in Honolulu in 1961, Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago before Harvard Law School, where he became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004 while climbing through Illinois politics - state senator in 1997, U.S. senator in 2005. After a tight primary against Hillary Clinton, he won the 2008 election with Joe Biden and entered office as the financial crisis peaked. His first term brought the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, two Supreme Court appointments, the end of the Iraq War, and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Re-elected in 2012 over Mitt Romney, he spent his second term on climate policy, the Paris Agreement, gun control advocacy after Sandy Hook, the Iran nuclear deal, normalized Cuba relations, and became the first sitting president to support same-sex marriage. He left office in 2017, remains active in Democratic campaigns, and ranks highly in presidential historian surveys.