President Barack H. Obama

Source:The White House- President Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) 44th President of the United States.

"Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. The framers of the Constitution always hoped that our leadership would not be limited to Americans of wealth or family connections. Subject to the prejudices of their time—many of them owned slaves—most would not have foreseen an African American president. Obama’s father, Barack Sr., a Kenyan economist, met his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, when both were students in Hawaii, where Barack was born on August 4, 1961. They later divorced, and Barack’s mother married a man from Indonesia, where he spent his early childhood. Before fifth grade, he returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents and attend Punahou School on scholarship.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995), Obama describes the complexities of discovering his identity in adolescence. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University, where he studied political science and international relations. Following graduation in 1983, Obama worked in New York City, then became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, coordinating with churches to improve housing conditions and set up job-training programs in a community hit hard by steel mill closures. In 1988, he went to Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Returning to Chicago, he joined a small law firm specializing in civil rights." 

From The White House 

There's that old saying that every American can be exactly what they want to be, they just have to want it and go get. Well, maybe no one has actually said that exactly and of course that's not true for everybody, but the life of Barack Obama shows that just about every American can be exactly what they want to be in life and achieve whatever they want, regardless of how they start out in life, where they were born, their race, ethnicity, color, religion, sexuality, gender, etc. 

Barack Obama's life is the American dream for a lot of Americans, just as Kamala Harris's life the life of so many Americans. They've shown millions of Americans that it's not about race, ethnicity, or gender that has to determine how your life works out in America, but what you are willing to do for yourself, how hard you work, your own talents and intelligence that you bring to the table that determines your quality of life in America. 

There's the old term pragmatic Progressive (the real Progressives) and my definition of that is very simple: someone who believes in moving the ball forward and creating progress. Ronald Reagan (a pragmatic Conservative) said that he rather get 70 or 80% of what he's looking for right now, even if that means giving up and giving in to things right now to get most of what he wants now and can come back for the rest of what he's looking for later on. 

I believe one of the reasons why Barack Obama has been so successful as a politician personally is because he's never been a hardcore ideologue (which is why the Far-Left hates him) and has always been a pragmatic Progressive. And a reason why he's one of my political heroes. 

Barack Obama