The Shady Side Of Barack Obama

Former President Barack Obama knows he's not the flawless leader some might paint him to be, but he takes pride in steering clear of controversies that could have derailed his presidency. However, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find he's got a few skeletons in his closet.

When he left the Oval Office, the Pew Research Center reported that roughly 45% of Americans remembered Obama as being "above average" or "outstanding." The rest of the world appears to have a favorable view of him, too, with the think tank noting that 65% of people in the 40 countries polled still trust him. Obama himself is quite proud of his clean record, boasting at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (via CNN), "We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us ... I know that seems like a low bar ... Generally speaking, you didn't hear about a lot of drama inside our White House."

But just because he has a relatively clean image doesn't mean Obama is without his shady moments. Especially in his younger years, the former president did some eyebrow-raising things. From schoolyard scraps to dodgy cheating rumors, here are a few of the shadier sides of Obama that you might not know about.

Barack Obama might not strike you as the type to get into physical brawls, but in his memoir "Dreams From My Father," he revealed a seventh-grade incident in which he left a friend with a bloodied nose. The trigger? The friend called him a racial slur, and young Obama didn't hesitate to throw a punch.

The former president detailed this in a guest appearance on Bruce Springsteen's "Renegades: Born in the USA," telling the singer that his reaction was pure instinct. "It's one of those things where he might not even known what a [the slur] was. What he knew was, 'I can hurt you by saying this,'" Obama said. "I remember I popped him in the face and broke his nose ... It was just reactive. I said, 'What?!' and I popped him. He was like, 'Why'd you do that?' and I explained to him, I said, 'Don't you ever call me something like that.'"

To cut the guy some slack, Obama wasn't out there picking fights for fun — he simply stood up for himself. Elsewhere in the podcast, he said that he later realized that racism is all about people making themselves feel superior. "The point is, what it comes down to is an assertion of status over the other," he said.

Barack Obama has admitted to some more shameful moments from his youth, including tossing around homophobic slurs, despite having a beloved closeted relative. In his memoir "A Promised Land," he got real about his past ignorance regarding LGBTQ+ issues.

"I grew up in the 70s, a time when LGBTQ life was far less visible to those outside the community, so that [Obama's grandmother] Toot's sister (and one of my favorite relatives), Aunt Arlene, felt obliged to introduce her partner of 20 years as 'my close friend Marge' whenever she visited us in Hawaii," he recalled (via LGBTQ Nation). At the time, he admitted that he and his friends "sometimes threw around words like 'f*g' or 'gay' at each other as casual put-downs — callow attempts to fortify our masculinity and hide our insecurities."

It wasn't until Obama stepped foot in university that he finally woke up to the realities of LGBTQ+ life and realized how damaging those slurs were. "Once I got to college and became friends with fellow students and professors who were openly gay, though, I realized the overt discrimination and hate they were subject to, as well as the loneliness and self-doubt that the dominant culture imposed on them," he added. I felt ashamed of my past behavior — and learned to do better."

It's no secret that Barack Obama used to be quite the smoker. While it's been years since he quit, he previously shared that he picked up the habit when he was a teenager, and during particularly stressful periods in his life, he would almost polish off a whole pack in a single day. "Probably at my peak I was smoking seven or eight a day," he told Men's Health. "More typical was three. ... There have been a couple of times during the campaign when I fell off the wagon and bummed one, and I had to kick it again."

But it wasn't just tobacco. Obama also dabbled in more illicit substances during his younger years. He admitted to smoking pot and even trying out cocaine in college, something he's definitely not proud of. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it," he wrote in his 1995 memoir. "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man."

And if you ask his friends, Obama wasn't just a participant but a trend starter of sorts when it came to smoking. He introduced trends like "Total Absorption," "Roof Hits," and "Interception" to his friends. According to author David Maraniss in "Barack Obama: The Making of the Man." Maraniss noted that way back when, Obama had a knack for getting more out of a joint. "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!,' and took an extra hit," he wrote.

Barack and Michelle Obama may be the definition of couple goals now, but early on in their relationship, the former president was reported to have kept in touch with Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his ex-girlfriend and the woman he almost married. The two dated for three years in the mid-80s, with Obama proposing to her twice, but Jager had rejected him both times.

In 1987, Jager moved away, and not long after, Obama met Michelle at the law firm where he was working as an associate. However, David J. Garrow's book "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama" dishes that Jager came back to the U.S. in 1990 and kept in touch with Obama. "Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-1991 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Barack's relationship with Michelle Robinson," Garrow penned, according to People. "'I always felt bad about it,' Sheila confessed more than two decades later."

Per The Guardian, details of what went down between them are hazy, but Michelle spilled some tea in her memoir "Becoming," revealing she had been cheated on — but not by her husband. She was burned by "men who were less sure of themselves and what they wanted," unlike Obama, who was "direct and clear about what he wanted."

But that's not the only cheating controversy Barack Obama has been tangled up in. In the book "Barack and Michelle: The Love Story" by Christopher Andersen, it's noted that Michelle Obama was none too pleased with her husband's friendliness toward Vera Baker, a member of Obama's presidential campaign team — so much so that she allegedly orchestrated a way to get Baker booted off the team.

"When Baker suddenly and inexplicably vanished from the campaign and resurfaced on the Caribbean island of Martinique, tongues reportedly began wagging. A jealous Michelle, it was suggested, had engineered Baker's departure," Anderson wrote, adding that when Baker was put on the hot seat by a reporter, her response was straightforward: "Nothing happened. I just left."

Baker even took legal action, filing a defamation complaint against the tabloid that reported the rumor. According to Courthouse News Service, she claimed the story was likely planted by Obama's political rivals. "Defendants had a complete disregard for the harm that the story would cause Baker because it was looking for anything they could use to sully the reputation of President Obama, even if it meant harming others," her complaint reportedly read.