When President Obama Was Just Barry: WAPO’s David Maraniss looks at Barack Obama’s childhood, education, and path to politics
As far as childhoods go, Barack Obama’s was far from ordinary. Born to a teenage mother and an absent Kenyan father, Barry Obama, as he was known then, spent much of his youth in Indonesia before living with his grandparents to attend prep school in Hawaii. In Barack Obama: The Story, associate editor David Maraniss of the Washington Post looks at Obama’s roots, tracing back generations on both his mother’s and father’s sides, and examines Obama’s childhood, education, and path to politics. Maraniss recently spoke with U.S. News about what kind of student Obama was and his experience as a community organizer. Excerpts:
Why is it important to understand Barack Obama’s ancestry?
All of us are shaped by our ancestors and by the geography and sociology and history of our forebearers. In this particular case, because Obama is a creation of the world in a sense, that makes what came before all the more important. It also gave me the opportunity to write about the modern world through the sort of Roots-like story of his family.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
What qualities did Obama inherit from his father?
In terms of the nature of Obama, I think two key things he inherited from his father that he never knew were, one, his deep voice, which sounds superficial but I doubt he would be president today if he didn’t have that sort of authoritative voice, and second, a sort of inherent self-confidence. The most important thing, of course, is that he inherited the color of his skin from his father, which has sort of been at the center of his life ever since.