Barack Obama: analyse af 'By the People'

By the people is a documentary, following Barack Obama, an unknown presidential candidate running for president in 2008. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both ran for the democratic party. The film mostly focuses on winning the in Iowa and Ohio and the various challenges he faced on his way, and how he eventually won the primary election, and became the candidate for the democratic party even though he was a gigantic underdog compared to Hillary Clintons experience in policy, and the recognition she gets for being married to former president, Bill Clinton. In the presidential election Barack ran against John McCain and won.

During his campaign Barack Obama faced many difficult challenges and set-backs on his way. First of all, he was considered an underdog, compared to his rivals, right from the beginning. During the primary election his opponent Hillary Clinton already had a lot more attention to her because of her marriage to former president Bill Clinton, and the fact that she had been involved and had been active in policy for many years. She used that to her advantage and argued that Barack Obama didn´t have the experience needed to lead the country. Some citizens in the United States had different theories, all meant to make Obama look bad. Some meant Barack Obama wasn’t a “real” American because he was born in the state of Hawaii. Other people thought he were a terrorist given his middle name, Hussein. In my opinion it´s wrong to even link a name like that to terrorism, just because it’s an Arabic name. Also no one actually had any evidence supporting their accusations, and I think it was a bad attempt to make him look bad. Barack Obama also faced problems caused by some of his own men, for instance his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright came with some controversial remarks regarding terrorist attacks on USA. Many people saw him as a racist, and Barack were advised to get rid of him in his campaign because some people associated Obama with the same thoughts as the pastor had expressed. But instead Barack Obama used it as a set off to give a phenomenal speech about race that helped him win the election. Race was a topic he on purpose avoided talking about, because the population were very split up on that topic, and he would not reach as many people’s opinions as if he focused on other things.