Barack Obama

A candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 Idaho General Election

Party: Democrat

Age: 62

City: Washington, D.C.

Occupation: President of the United States; lawyer

The 44th president of the United States had no primary challenger, but his toughest opponent may be an economy that hasn’t budged much since he took office in 2009.

Obama was swept into office on a platform of hope and change, but he found jump-starting the economy to be a difficult proposition. An $814 billion stimulus did not drop the unemployment rate, though the White House argued that things would have been much worse without the aid to state workers, tax cuts and infrastructure project funding the stimulus provided.

He fought a bruising battle to overhaul America’s heath care system, only to watch his party lose control of the House of Representatives and trim its majority in the Senate.

On Obama’s watch, Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down. But he is pilloried by the right for being soft on Iran, and by the left for keeping detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

He let the Bush-era tax cuts stand, outraging liberals who want the wealthy to pay more. But his attempts to raise taxes on the rich get tarred as “class warfare” by conservatives.

He and his wife, Michelle Obama, have two children. Her served in the U.S. Senate and in the Illinois legislature prior to that. Obama is a lawyer by profession.