Politics and ascent to the presidency of Barack Obama

McCain attacked Obama, a first-term senator, for his lack of experience, and to match his rival’s inexperience, Obama named as his running mate Joseph Biden, a senator from Delaware who had been in the Senate since 1972 and had an extensive record on foreign policy. Obama and McCain waged a hard-fought, expensive race. Obama, still buoyed by a wave of popular support, declined federal financing of his campaign and raised hundreds of millions of dollars (much of it over the Internet in small donations from a record number of donors). His enormous fund-raising advantage allowed him to buy an unprecedented amount of advertising and to establish an extensive, grassroots organization in key battleground states and in states that had voted Republican in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

The two candidates provided voters with a stark ideological choice. Obama called for a rapid withdrawal of most combat troops from Iraq and a restructuring of the tax code that would reward lower- and middle-class voters with greater tax relief. On the other hand, McCain vowed to fight for victory in Iraq and questioned Obama’s qualifications to be president, charging that the eloquence of his oratory masked shortcomings and a lack of specifics on a range of issues. Just weeks from election day, in what may have been a turning point in the race, Obama’s campaign seized on the economic meltdown that followed the catastrophic failure of some of the country’s largest banks and investment firms in September and argued that it was the direct result of the free-market policies of the eight-year Republican administration of George W. Bush.

On election day, Obama won handily, capturing nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. Not only did he carry every state that John Kerry had won in the 2004 election, but he also captured a number of states (e.g., Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia) that the Republicans had won in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. On election night some 200,000 people filled Chicago’s Grant Park to see Obama’s victory speech. Shortly after his election, Obama resigned from the Senate. On January 20, 2009, hundreds of thousands more gathered in Washington, D.C., to witness his inauguration as president of the United States.