Although Former President Barack Obama’s 8-year presidential term is considered largely unproblematic — especially compared to some of his predecessors and successors — it wasn’t completely without its controversies. The “Dreams from My Father” author got an unfortunate taste of the drama he would have to endure during his first term while on the campaign trail in 2008. At the time, there were several rumors that Obama was ineligible for the presidency because he wasn’t born in the U.S. To combat this, the presidential hopeful shared a digital scan of his birth certificate, which confirmed that he was born in Hawaii. 

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Unfortunately, even that wasn’t enough to put an end to the Obama birth certificate controversy, as people believed that the scan was edited and continued to question his roots. So, in 2011, the then-president released the long-form copy of his birth certificate to lay the conspiracy to rest once and for all. “The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” a statement from The White House read. “It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country.” 

But the bizarre controversies didn’t stop there. While the Democratic leader delivered a speech at the Rose Garden alongside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013, it started raining, and he requested that Marines shield the two men with their umbrellas. This simple request caused a stir in the conservative world as critics called Obama out for being inconsiderate and breaking official protocol. Somewhat surprisingly, though, one of the beloved politician’s biggest controversies wasn’t related to politics at all. 

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During Barack Obama’s second term, he managed to cause major controversy with an ostensibly innocuous outfit. When the then-president spoke to the press about America’s involvement in several crucial world issues, in August 2014, he wore a tan suit that seemingly distracted everyone from listening to a single word he said. On paper, an ordinary fashion choice like this shouldn’t have caused such a stir. However, in Obama’s case, it was a stark departure from the dark-colored power suits he normally wore. 

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Additionally, many found it rather inappropriate for the serious topics the commander-in-chief was discussing at the time. Some critics on X, formerly known as Twitter, even likened the suit to something their father may have kept in the back of his closet, out of view. Of course, people couldn’t miss an opportunity for a good pun, so they created “Yes, we tan” to poke fun at Obama’s famous campaign slogan. While many joked about the strange fashion choice, Republican Representative Peter King spotted a bigger issue with it.

In a chat with NewsMaxTV, he stated that the unserious choice of suit was a severe let-down to the American public, who were eagerly waiting to hear Obama’s thoughts on pressing world issues. However, in typical fashion, the president wasn’t fazed by the bizarre backlash. In fact, in 2024, Former Vice President Kamala Harris donned a similar tan suit during her own presidential campaign, and the bestselling author shared an Instagram post with his thoughts. Attaching a side-by-side comparison of them in their tan suits, Obama wrote, “How it started. How it’s going. Ten years later, and it’s still a good look!”

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According to a 2010 Politico report, then-President Barack Obama and U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi actively bickered behind the scenes. An insider explained that although the then-Speaker of the House seemed like she had Obama’s back publicly, she actually wasn’t too pleased with his work. Apparently, the House Representatives were greatly frustrated with the president because, although they were consistently working hard to meet his demands, none of it was coming to fruition because of ongoing issues with the Senate. 

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The source asserted that Pelosi shared the sentiment. “Then the answer is, ‘You just need to twist enough arms to pass the Senate bill,'” they continued. “You can twist arms if you’ve got a handful of them to twist. You can’t twist over 100 arms. There needs to be some reality check there.” An example of her frustrations with Obama seeped through in January 2010. During a press conference, a reporter asked if she intended to fulfill Obama’s campaign trail promise of permitting C-SPAN to film talks between the Senate and the House. 

According to HuffPost, Pelosi could only laugh in response and quip, “Really? There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.” It didn’t seem like the politicians’ relationship greatly improved during Obama’s second term either. In June 2015, the representative made her way to the House floor to make it clear that she didn’t support the president’s free trade agreement. And he was ultimately outvoted on the key issue.

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Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reported feud began when they went head-to-head for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Their discord was evident at the January 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate as the political rivals hurled insults at each other. According to CNN, one of Clinton’s supporters struck her opponent below the belt by telling the press that Obama’s drug use in his teen years made him unfit for office. However, a confidant clarified that Clinton had arranged a meeting with Obama to apologize for the offensive jab and to let him know that she hadn’t prompted it personally. 

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Unfortunately, things went south during their onstage meeting, and the two had a heated exchange when Clinton called her opponent out for his campaign’s many disparaging remarks about her. But they seemed to have put everything behind them after Obama took office. Unfortunately, that may not have actually been the case behind the scenes. During a January 2016 chat with the Des Moines Register, the former secretary of state subtly took a jab at the then-president by arguing that she could rally the members of Congress behind her far better than Obama because she better understood how to guide them. 

Of course, the bestselling “A Promised Land” author didn’t shy away from hitting Clinton where it hurt. After she lost the 2016 presidency to Donald Trump, Obama seemingly told reporters that he agreed with the general public sentiment that her strategy to primarily campaign in more prominent voting areas had ultimately been Clinton’s downfall. “We have to show up everywhere,” he acknowledged, per Politico. “We have to work at a grass-roots level, something that’s been a running thread in my career.”

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Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have a complicated friendship, to say the least. In Edward Klein’s 2014 biography, “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas,” he posited that Bill didn’t see the then-president in the best light and had made his dislike clear to his inner circle by admitting, “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived.” According to the author, Bill also felt that Barack had crossed the line by implying that he was racist during his 2008 presidential campaign. Former First Lady Michelle Obama reportedly wasn’t too fond of her predecessor, Hillary Clinton, either and had even nicknamed her “Hildebeest.” 

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However, the bestselling author eventually convinced Bill to keep their differences aside and support his 2012 campaign publicly. Of course, their truce wasn’t enough to align the former presidents’ thoughts. While Barack’s campaign was desperately trying to convince people that his Republican opponent Mitt Romney’s businessman roots made him less fit for office, his predecessor told a different story. 

Bill gave Romney a pat on the back for his business acumen on CNN‘s “Piers Morgan Today,” enthusing, “There’s no question that in terms of getting up and going to the office and, you know, basically performing the essential functions of the office, the man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.” Bill and Barack’s relationship went through another rough patch in 2016 because, as Klein documented in his book, he wasn’t too forthcoming about endorsing Hillary.

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In 2009, Barack Obama decided to visit Dresden in Germany instead of the country’s capital city, Berlin. Unfortunately, the largely uncontroversial choice caused a major stir because many believed he had skipped the capital to avoid seeing Angela Merkel. Some local German media outlets even suggested that Obama had no interest in meeting the German chancellor because she hadn’t supported his decision to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg Gate during his 2008 presidential campaign. Reuters reported that Obama had also declined Merkel’s invitation to walk around Dresden together. 

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According to TIME, the American president and the German chancellor ultimately had an hour-long meeting at Dresden Castle. Additionally, Obama swiftly laid the swirling stories about his Dresden visit to rest. “Most of the speculation of my schedule in Germany doesn’t take into account simple logistics,” he pointed out, before knowingly joking, “We have enough problems out there without having to manufacture problems.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only international controversy from his two terms since Obama also broke royal protocol with Queen Elizabeth II. 

According to a May 2011 report by CNN, the monarch delivered a toast to the American president while they were at a state dinner and when she was done, the American national anthem played. Unfortunately, Obama only managed to utter “To Her Majesty the queen” before the orchestra started playing “God Save the Queen,” apparently believing he had concluded his toast. However, the president didn’t let that stop him and continued his toast over the song, breaking royal protocol in the process.

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