The Barack Obama Story

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Author says, in this thread, Barack Obama's father survives his 1982 car crash in Kenya. Our interest of course is to look more broadly at the significance of fathers in our lives, concluding here that Obama could have achieved even more without this personal tragedy.

In 1961, on this day future world statesman Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Walking a straight line in a crooked world

His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Following an unremarkable record of educational achievement in Hawaii and subsequently the continental United States, Obama entered North America's premier professional men's basketball league where he signed for the Chicago Bulls in 1982.
In his autobiography Dreams of My Father he describes how Barack Obama, Senior survived a near-fatal car crash in Nairobi that very same year. Interpreting this miraculous escape from death as an act of destiny, his father travelled from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Siaya District to find his son in Chicago. He was shocked to find him addressing himself by the anglicized name Barry and suffering a profound identity crisis. Following a furious argument, his father experienced a change of heart only after he found a scrap of poetry in which his son had written that he was Walking a straight line in a crooked world .
Writing of his political awakening in The Audacity of Hope , Obama stated that if not for the re-union with his father, it is unlikely that he would have found the sense of purpose and direction to launch a political career, to become someone - the President of Kenya.

In 1995, on this day Times Books published Dreams from My Grandmother: A Story of Race and Inheritance by a little known but upcoming Kenyan Government Minister called Barack Hussein Obama II (pictured).

Dreams from my Grandmother

The autobiography describes an unhappy, confused period of his life in the continental United States before the author returned to his father's home in Nyang'oma Kogelo, Siaya District and reconnected with his African identity.

Following an unremarkable record of educational achievement, he entered North America's premier professional men's basketball league where he signed for the Chicago Bulls.

His father had been shocked to discover him suffering a profound identity crisis, addressing himself by the anglicized name Barry.

Despite this sadness, the author described his profound sense of love for his white grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham (pictured in 1979).

The strength of his transracial family would ultimately power this African icon to the pinnacles of global leadership. Elected as Kenya's first dual heritage President in 2008, Obama would be uniquely qualified to serve as UN Secretary General, an appointment he received in 2015.

In 2006, Housing Minister Barack Hussein Obama II visited Kibera, one of Africa's largest slums in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. You are all my brothers and sisters, Mr Obama told crowds of excited residents who craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the Minister (pictured).

The The Audacity of Hope

Everybody in Kenya needs the same opportunities to go to school, to start businesses, to have enough to eat, to have decent clothes, he said over a loudspeaker.

At least six hundred thousand people, many without jobs or legal title to the land they inhabited had been given fresh hope for a brighter future. Thw Minister's Community Action Policies had helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization.

Unquestionably, his most significant contribution was in organizing finance for the program. Sponsorship funding had been obtained from sources as diverse as the Chicago Bulls, Irish Rock Band U2 to the United Nations office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Obama was creating an international profile that would propel him to the position of UN Secretary General in 2014, and a dramatic confrontation with the forty-fourth President of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 2014, the former President of Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama II was confirmed as the ninth Secretary General of the United Nations.

Common Ground

A gleeful Mama Sarah (pictured) proudly accompanied her grandson on his flight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi. At an official ceremony in New York City, Mr Obama was sworn in as the organization's chief administrative officer under Article 97 of the UN Charter.

The first Secretary General of dual heritage, his upbringing across three continents made Mr Obama uniquely qualified for the challenges that he would shortly face in the role. In Dreams of My Father, he joked that family meal-times in Hawaii were actually like a meeting of the United Nations, with his Indonesian step-father at the head of table.

Twelve months later, and not so far from that family home, Mr Obama would be drawn into a bitter confrontation at the United States deep-water naval base at Pearl Harbour. His adversaries would be the belligerent forty-fourth US President, Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Prime Minister of Japan, General Toshio Tamogami.

Absolutely nobody would describe Tamogami as the product of diversity. Shortly before Clinton's election in 2008, the General lost his job as chief of staff for Japan's Air Self-Defense Force after saying in an essay entitled True Perspective of Modern and Contemporary History that it is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation [in World War Two].

Tamogami experienced a dramatic reversal of fortune in the second decade of the twenty-first century. His re-armament of Japan placed him on a collision course with Mrs Clinton. And it would be for Mr Obama to find common ground between the two.

In 2015, on this day the UN Secretary General Barack Hussein Obama II arrived at the United States deep-water naval base at Pearl Harbour. The former Kenyan President would have absolutely no time to reflect on the personal significance of this odd home-coming, rather he had to focus all his attention on an international showdown with the forty-fourth US President, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Homecoming Showdown

The crisis had begun the day before Clinton's election in 2008 when General Toshio Tamogami (pictured) lost his job as chief of staff for Japan's Air Self-Defense Force after saying in an essay entitled True Perspective of Modern and Contemporary History that it is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation [in World War Two].

The state-run China Daily commented that The denial of the aggression history by Toshio Tamogami comes in as an element of disharmony, Yet, as long as the Japanese government has a right attitude to this question, the smooth development of ties between the two neighbors will not be derailed by such discordant notes.

However since his election as Prime Minister of Japan during the summer, Tamogami now was the head of government in Tokyo.

Clinton had spent much of her Presidency building good relations with China and was determined to bring Tamogami and Japan's recently rediscovered belligerence to heel.

Yet in Washington, neoconservatives were eyeing the November 2016 election with glee. Retired General David Petraeus had formed a Presidential Committee. Perhaps Tamogami was the strong man that America needed in the region, combatting both the inexorable rise of China, and also the war on terror with the Islamic forces in Indonesia. Because the hanging of Saddam Hussein had taught the neocons a big lesson about the geopolitical value of such regional strong men. America had been forced to watch the great nation of Iran fill the power vacuum created by his departure ...

Steve Payne

Editor of Today in Alternate History, a Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today.

Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting fictional blog.

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