Two questions:
1. The article states that he went to Hawaii's top prep school - does anyone know if it was Iolani or Punahou? I know it wasn't Hawaii Prep.
2. How left is he?
That aside, he appears to be potentially dangerous future Jackass Party candidate for a national office, based just on his speaking skills and appearance (shovels it well/just needs a few sex scandals to make the soccer moms quiver)
Punahou, according to Matthew Continetti's article in the Weekly Standard.
Punahou is where he went to school. I took some summer classes there and went to swim meets there.
It couldn't have been a Kamehameha school, because they only take students of Hawaiian blood. A year ago, a white kid sued to get into the school, and all the liberal locals protested his action. It didn't get much antional attention, however.
Punahou
"The article states that he went to Hawaii's top prep school - does anyone know if it was Iolani or Punahou?"
Punahou Class of '79.
Because government schools in Hawaii are so unbelievably bad, there is fierce competition to get into private schools. As a result, it is more difficult to get into Punahou and Iolani than Harvard in terms of the percentage of acceptances (although both prep schools have a lot of alumni children "legacies").
Punahou was founded in 1841, Iolani in 1863. Both are generally ranked in the top ten or fifteen prep schools in the United States. Other well-known alumni or students of Punahou are Steve Case (of AOL-Time Warner fame), Sun Yat-Sen (president and founder of post-imperial China--he also went to Iolani), Hiram Bingham (explorer who discovered Machu Picchu and was later a U.S. Senator from Connecticut), Samuel Chapman Armstrong (Civil War Union general and subseqent founder of Hampton University, the first college for blacks), and of course golfer Michelle Wie.
Given Hawaii's cosmopolitan makeup, Punahou would not have granted Obama "preference" simply because he was part black. He would have competed to get in just like everyone else. He then did well there. I therefore would suspect he got into Columbia and Harvard because of merit, not affirmative action.
"Progressive" (and we all know that is code for communist/socialist), is how I've heard him described by some proud Dems.