Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) was officially sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. On the steps of the nation's Capitol, just a short distance from where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama took oath using the same bible which Abraham Lincoln did for his Inauguration. Barack Obama defeated John McCain on November 4, 2008, and became the first African-American to be elected president of the United States, and was the first to be nominated for president by a mojor U.S. political party. He is also the first candidate born in Hawaii to have been nominated and subsequently elected president.
