Obama changed his position on a number of things between being in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. And as he spent most of his lone U.S. Senate term running for president it's hard to tell where exactly he stood on just about anything. And very curious(suspicious?)that he wouldn't allow anyone to see his college papers. Guess we'll just have to go with the fact that he started his political career in the home of two former members of the Weather Underground. Guess that'll suffice. Funny that I've spent the last 50 years reading voraciously but because I was a courier have to constantly put up with people who think they're superior but often quickly show they aren't as informed as they think they are. Such is life.Sure, Jan. First, there’s no chance you would actually read any academic papers. Second, he could have written Atlas Shrugged and you would have still called him a socialist. Obama had been in government, that’s a good place to start on where he stood politically.