Thought I would do a little checking on Mr. Obama since it appears that he will be the Dem.'s Pres. candidate.
His father and mother separated when Barak was 2 and divorced when he was 4. The senior Obama was a Harvard educated economist (as stated above) and moved to Kenya shortly after earning his Phd. Other than one short return trip, during which he saw Barak, he spent his remaining years in Africa where he was killed in a car wreck in 1982.
His mother's second marriage was to a man from Indonesia and Barak spent some time with them in Jakarta before returning to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. The move was initiated in order to take advantage of better schooling in Hawaii. I couldn't find out much about his stepfather. His mother is deceased.
Sounds like he has not had a lot of attention from either his father or his step-father.
In my opinion if any one of us were to find ourselves sitting on a cross country train trip with Mr. Obama (or any of the other candidates for that matter) we would probably come away from the meeting thinking that he is essentially a pretty good guy.
>>>T_O_B