ABSTRACT

Barack Obama was the unlikeliest of presidents. A one-term senator from Illinois, he had little national or international experience and faced a formidable array of opponents, led by New York Senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also sought the Democratic nomination in 2008. Beyond his purely political disadvantages, the race issue also loomed large. The son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, Obama would test the idea of whether America was ready for an African American president.