Barack Obama turns 57 tomorrow - and has marked his birthday week with a return to politics.
After keeping a fairly low profile since leaving the White House, the former US president has announced his endorsements of 81 Democratic candidates in the nation’s midterm elections later this year.
Obama said in a typically eloquent statement on Wednesday that he was “proud to endorse such a wide and impressive array of Democratic candidates - leaders as diverse, patriotic, and big-hearted as the America they’re running to represent”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Even putting aside party affiliations, Obama cuts a very different figure to his successor in tone and temperament, as NBC News noted when Donald Trump took office in January 2017.
“It’s No-Drama Obama vs. Drama-All-The-Time Trump,” said the news site. “The nation’s first African-American president vs. the man who led the so-called birther campaign against him. ‘Yes We Can’ vs. ‘Make America Great Again’.”
Nowhere is this difference more apparent than in their speaking styles. “Barack Obama was, as president, eloquent,” says The Conversation. “His language was sophisticated. He spoke in measured tones and advanced informed, reasoned dialogue.”
Click on the gallery above to see seven of his greatest quotes.
-
West Africa’s ‘coup cascade’The Explainer Guinea-Bissau takeover is the latest in the Sahel region, which has quietly become global epicentre of terrorism
-
Daddy Pig: an unlikely flashpoint in the gender warsTalking Point David Gandy calls out Peppa Pig’s dad as an example of how TV portrays men as ‘useless’ fools
-
Codeword: December 3, 2025The daily codeword puzzle from The Week
-
‘It’s critical that Congress get involved’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Appeals court disqualifies US Attorney Alina HabbaSpeed Read The former personal attorney to President Donald Trump has been unlawfully serving as US attorney for New Jersey, the ruling says
-
The military: When is an order illegal?Feature Trump is making the military’s ‘most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts’
-
Ukraine and Rubio rewrite Russia’s peace planFeature The only explanation for this confusing series of events is that ‘rival factions’ within the White House fought over the peace plan ‘and made a mess of it’
-
The powerful names in the Epstein emailsIn Depth People from a former Harvard president to a noted linguist were mentioned
-
Honduras votes amid Trump push, pardon vowspeed read President Trump said he will pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving 45 years for drug trafficking
-
Congress seeks answers in ‘kill everybody’ strike reportSpeed Read Lawmakers suggest the Trump administration’s follow-up boat strike may be a war crime
-
Andriy Yermak: how weak is Zelenskyy without his right-hand man?Today's Big Question Resignation of Ukrainian president’s closest ally marks his ‘most politically perilous moment yet’
