He earned praise from the public for his response to the disaster, which claimed over 90 lives and caused an estimated economic damage of up to USD 50 billion.
Born Barack Hussein Obama, Jr, to white-American Ann Dunham and Kenya-born Harvard-educated economist on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, he was elected the 44th President of the US on November 4, 2008 after he defeated then Republican candidate John McCain and was sworn in on January 20, 2009.
Obama had reached the White House exactly 45 years after the Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King challenged Americans to embrace his “dream” of equality.
Seeking to bring in the “real change” in the US, Obama, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, would take the oath of office for his second term on January 21, 2013 as the Constitutionally-mandated January 20 inauguration date falls on a Sunday.
