Introduction

Abstract

The election of Barack H. Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States in November 2008 was a dramatic moment in U.S. history. On the one hand, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the accession of an African American man to the highest political office in the world’s most powerful country—particularly given the profound combined legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the civil rights movement in American history. On the other hand, the 2008 election outcome and transition of power from the Republican George W. Bush administration to a new, Democratic administration marked the apparent end—or at least the beginning of the end—of a tumultuous period in U.S. history, politics, and foreign policy.