Test your Barack Obama IQ

The best place to learn more about : the Tribune's "Making of a candidate" series. The following questions, derived from that series and other reporting and presented in rough chronological order, will test your Obama IQ. Also, take our John McCain quiz.. Comments? Contact us.


Quiz tools

    • 1. Obama's camp touts his mom as a Kansas native. Where did she spend her teen years?
    • 2. In his third-grade essay, what did Obama say he wanted to become?
    • 3. Obama spent three years of his childhood at what kind of school in Indonesia?
    • 4. An Indonesian word Obama used when teasing friends there meant what?
    • 5. According to a friend at Punahou High School, what did he and Obama often discuss?
    • 6. What was Obama's most common choice of footwear during his freshman year at Occidental College?
    • 7. What personal vice has Obama battled since at least college?
    • 8. What kind of car did Obama buy to drive from Chicago to Harvard Law School?
    • 9. Whom did Obama randomly meet on a South Side street corner as a young community organizer -- an encounter that would later help propel his political career?
    • 10. In July 1995, who became one of Obama's first political contributors?
    • 11. What did Obama do in that first run for political office?
    • 12. Obama nearly came to blows with West Side Democrat Ricky Hendon over what?
    • 13. How long after taking office did it take Obama to give his first major speech on the Iraq war as a U.S. Senator?
    • 14. Just weeks after his arrival in the U.S. Senate, Obama met with his advisers to map his political strategy, which some dubbed the "2010-2012-2016" plan. Its broad outline:
    • 15. When did Obama first introduce legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq?
    • 16. As a freshman U.S. senator, Obama joined veteran Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on a fact-finding tour through the former Soviet Union to study what?
    • 17. Obama told the editorial board he made a "boneheaded" move by doing what?
    • 18. What is not part of Obama's plan to strengthen civil rights?
    • 19. What is not part of Obama's plan for "restoring fiscal discipline"?
    • 20. What is notpart of Obama's plan for immigration?

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