Cool, calm, not easily ruffled, and charismatic. All those words describe our next President, but who is he really? To answer that question, you have to go back to his childhood.
Remembering that most of what defines a person is determined by the time he is 5 years old, looking at Obama's early years is very telling as to who he is and why. He was born of a mixed race relationship at a time when that was not socially acceptable. Even as a toddler, the strain of a relationship with that kind of problems can shape a child.
Barack's father left when he was two. People do not usually have many memories before they are 3, so the father he was missing was just a fantasy figure he created, as he said in his book. .
It's hard enough growing up without a father, but being a mixed race child as well in those days had to shape his attitudes. He loved his mother and grandmother, but felt he had to choose one side, one race or the other. He chose the more difficult road, being a black child in America. Identifying himself as black instead of mixed gave him a firm identity, but it also undoubtedly made his path harder to trod.
It seems that all his life, he has taken the more difficult path, but always for the right reason. He has always wanted to help people. Perhaps this is because of his upbringing, and the undoubted suffering he experienced as a small child. .
Things like being uprooted from his home in Hawaii and taken to Jakarta, where he was forced to go to a Muslim school, learn a new language, and fit into a place where he knew he didn't belong must have left some indelible scars on him. Compounding this was his mother's decision to send him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, while she stayed in Indonesia.
Because of all this, he has always felt the need to prove himself. His struggle to find his identity led him to study race and social injustice. He proved that he would not let his background stand between him and what he knew he could achieve.