Enkhbayar graduated from high school in Ulaanbaatar in 1975, and went on to the Literature Institute in Moscow, the Soviet capital at the time. He earned an undergraduate degree in literature and language in 1980, and spent a year at Leeds University in Britain a few years later. It was there that he encountered uncensored media for the first time in his life, and was particularly stunned by news coming out of the Soviet Union. Back in Ulaanbaatar, he began a career that would eventually bring him to the top post at the Association of Mongolian Writers by 1990, the year that the MPRP relinquished control and multiparty elections were held that July for the first time in Mongolian history.
Enkhbayar, a MPRP member, became part of the new political order almost immediately, serving as a vice chair of a government arts committee for the first two years of democratic rule. In 1992, he was elected to the State Great Hural, or parliament of Mongolia, on the MPRP ticket. Somewhat unusually for a former Soviet satellite state, Mongolia voted to retain the MPRP during its first venture into democratic elections, and Enkhbayar was appointed to serve as the country's minister for culture. He held that post until 1996, when the MPRP was ousted in elections that year, ending its historic record as the longest ruling political party in the world. A group of former dissidents, organized into the Mongolian National Democratic Party, came to power, but the next few years were marked by accusations of high-level corruption and general incompetence.
In 1997, Enkhbayar's MPRP colleagues elected him to lead the party. He held onto his seat in the Mongolian parliament, where he held the title of minority leader, and shepherded the party through a triumphant return to office in 2000. A year earlier, the country had been hit by one of its infamous zud spells, when summer draught and cold-weather blizzards combined to produce severe food shortages and the loss of thousands of cattle and horses. Because a third of the country's population are nomads and thus livestock-dependent, the MPRP received an unexpected boost from the climatological disaster, the worst to hit the country in six decades.
With the MPRP in control of the Great Hural once again, Enkhbayar became the country's prime minister. He embarked on an ambitious plan to improve the infrastructure and encourage foreign investment. These included the new Millennium Road, the first to traverse Mongolia's 600,000 square-mile territory from east to west, and an agreement with a Canadian group to begin gold mining. Four years later, however, the MPRP lost half their seats in parliament to the Motherland Democratic Coalition, a new political entity. Enkhbayar retained his own seat, however, and also served as parliament chair for the next year. He entered the race for president in the spring of 2005, and campaigned by helicopter to cover the sparsely populated country, where even permanent settlements are often spaced miles away from one another. Later that year, he welcomed U.S. President George W. Bush for an official visit, the first one ever of a sitting U.S. president to the country.

Mongolia has won international respect for its peaceful transition to democracy in the post-Cold War era, and the continuance of multiparty elections despite occasional crises. While his presidential powers are limited by the constitution, Enkhbayar hopes to leave a more lasting legacy as a model government for the region. As prime minister and president, he has worked to forge ties with North Korea, the world's most isolated and authoritarian regime. The diplomatic efforts are carried out with the hope of encouraging Kim Jong-il, North Korea's autocratic leader, to enact democratic reforms. "Being democratic makes you more stable and makes you more … protected," Enkhbayar explained to Washington Times writer Bill Gertz. "You feel safer when you are a democracy because you see other countries in the region, North Koreans for example, are not safer, although they are trying to keep their old regime as long as possible. So we think that democracy means a safer security."