• Mike Huckabee grew up in a rented house in the tiny
little town of Hope, Arkansas, where people always asked, "do you
really think that some obscure, unknown governor born in Hope has
any chance to be president of the United States" until Bill
Clinton put their question to rest.

• He spent his entire childhood in Hope and his formative
years were influenced by his father, mother, sister and the
community in Hope where "people kind of looked after each other".


• Though there was little money and influence found in
Hope, the young Huckabee never had a defeatist attitude.

• He had a modest childhood and still recalls the old days
when his family used scratchy lava soap, humorously adding, "It
wasn't until I got to college that I realized showers were not
supposed to hurt."

• An eight-year old Huckabee, along with his father, went
to see Governor Orville Faubus, "deliver a speech and dedicate a
lake". This is perhaps one of the chapters in his life that
heralded the illustrious political future that awaited little
Huckabee.

• From a very young age Huckabee had been a smooth talker
with the dynamism of a natural leader and a heightened political
sensibility. He once said, "I was a true-blue, conservative,
family-oriented young Republican."  

• He preached his first sermon at the age of fifteen and
wanted to grow up to be a rock star. Even today, he never misses
a chance to pick up his guitar and strum to the beats of his
music band 'Capitol Offense'.
		

• Born of a Kenyan father and an American mother, Barack
Obama's childhood has been a mélange of diverse cultural climates
that helped imbibe in him a deep-seated respect for different
traditions.

• Obama talks thus of his multi-racial childhood, "my
father looked nothing like the people around me - that he was
black as pitch, my mother white as milk - barely registered in my
mind."

• Throughout his childhood years, Obama was known both at
home and at school as 'Barry'.

• Up to the age of ten, Obama lived with his mother Ann
Dunham, step-father and half-sister, in the populous Muslim
country of Indonesia. His childhood in Jakarta differed vastly
from his formative years in Honolulu under the care of his
maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham.

• Obama attended the local schools and was a Cub Scout
while living in Jakarta, Indonesia where classes were taught in
the Indonesian language.

• In 1971, he moved to Hawaii to live with his
grandparents in their downtown apartment while attending the
prestigious Punahou where Obama remembers 'feeling like a misfit'
in his 'Indonesian sandals' and struggling with his racial
identity.

• Obama also proudly remembers "the opportunity that
Hawaii offered... became an integral part of my world view, and a
basis for the values that I hold most dear".

• Obama's first boyhood four-bedroom, single-storey home
can still be seen on the Kalaniana'ole Highway, in the Kuli'ou'ou
area between 'Aina Haina and Hawai'i Ka.i.