{"id":305,"date":"2026-06-17T04:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2026-06-17T04:39:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:39:00","slug":"barack-obamas-monstrous-carbuncle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=305","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama\u2019s monstrous carbuncle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Five years ago, the messiah came to Chicago. He was dressed in a dark suit and crisp white shirt. No tie, of course. The messiah is a laidback kind of guy. He was in Chicago to break ground for a temple where his spirit would dwell forever. After some\u00a0grandiloquent remarks, he grabbed a shovel, got down in the dirt and dug. Then, as he\u2019s wont to do when cameras are around, he cracked a smile.<\/p>\n

Read more Why England can\u2019t win the World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n

And as he planned it, so it is. Later this week, in Chicago, the Barack Obama Presidential Center opens its doors to the public, making it the 14th presidential library in the United States. For a $30 admission fee \u2014\u00a0by far the most expensive of the lot\u00a0\u2014 visitors will be treated to the Obama greatest hits. It\u2019s been a while, but surely you can intone them: Yes We Can, The Audacity of Hope, Change We Can Believe In.<\/p>\n

Like other presidential libraries, the Obama Center is a vanity project that tells us how its namesake wants to go down in history. But it feels too on the nose to convince anyone beyond starry-eyed supporters.\u00a0According to its website, the Center has four floors of \u201cdynamic exhibits\u201d\u00a0that \u201cexplore the promise and power of democracy through the legacy of President Obama and Mrs. Obama\u201d and connect them to the \u201csocial movements that made their work possible\u201d. Picture John Lewis leading civil rights activists across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, or Martin Luther King waxing lyrical about his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The implications of all this dynamism: Obama is the moral conscience of America. And why not? After all, just like Dr. King, and unlike the sitting president, he has a Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

To top it all off, there\u2019s also a\u00a0full-size replica of Obama\u2019s Oval Office, where visitors can sit at the resolute desk and play commander-in-chief for a minute or two. While that might sound like it\u2019s worth the price of admission, former presidents\u00a0have been building replicas\u00a0of the Oval Office since Harry Truman in 1957. And\u00a0admission to the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, is only $12.<\/p>\n

Modern US presidents all have their own\u00a0presidential libraries, financed by private donations. Though\u00a0these \u201cpresidential temples\u201d\u00a0have gotten more extravagant since Truman\u2019s time, they all serve the same dual purpose: they contain an exhibit on the tenure of each president, and house the archives of his administration. More than\u00a0a million people\u00a0visit them every year, according to the most recent figures. The most popular, with nearly 250,000 tourists, is the Reagan Library in California.<\/p>\n

Not for long. Over the next year, 700,000 visitors\u00a0are expected\u00a0to flock to the South Side of Chicago, the high temple of the Midwest messiah. Like all auspicious sites, the location wasn\u2019t picked at random. With presidential libraries, setting is storytelling. For instance, the Eisenhower Library is in his hometown of Abilene, Kansas (population: 6,000), which serves to underscore his folksy nature. The Reagan Library, meanwhile, sits atop a hill surrounded by open space. As the\u00a0historian Sarah Mackay\u00a0points out, this reinforced the conservative\u2019s image as an intrepid cowboy. As for the power-hungry Lyndon B. Johnson, one location wasn\u2019t enough for him. In addition to his official library in Austin, he also built a replica of the house where he was born in the Texas countryside. He wanted the world to be wowed by his hard-scrabble background.<\/p>\n

Much has been made about how Obama chose \u2014 scrap that,\u00a0insisted\u00a0on\u00a0\u2014 the South Side, historically where Chicago\u2019s working-class black communities have lived. It was there, too, that the former president spent his formative years as a community organizer. \u201cThe best education I ever had,\u201d\u00a0Obama later said. Placing his library on the South Side is a way to bring economic opportunity to the people who made him.<\/p>\n

Or so the official narrative goes. But as David J. Garrow, author of the\u00a0definitive\u00a0Obama biography explains, the 44th president\u2019s library is actually located at the top of the South Side, near Hyde Park, which \u201cfor decades has been this integrated, middle class, upper middle class island built around the University of Chicago and very separated\u201d from the rest of the South Side. \u201cGoing further south,\u201d Garrow says it\u2019s important to realize, \u201cthere\u2019s another 70-plus blocks\u201d.<\/p>\n

There are other question marks too. Obama\u2019s first job in Chicago was deep in those blocks, in the neighborhood of Roseland. And yet, Garrow says, \u201cit\u2019s still not connected to the public transit system,\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s virtually all black\u201d. Had the Obama Center been built in Roseland, it would have been a godsend for the people there. Instead, in Garrow\u2019s laconic observation, \u201cwe just get a little bit of an extension of Hyde Park.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, the almost mythical connection between Obama and Chicago\u2019s progressive activist circles is grossly exaggerated. As Garrow shows in his book, as soon as Obama went to Washington to become a senator, he ghosted them. Politics is ruthless, yes, but not everyone has behaved like this. Presidents from JFK to Reagan were loyal to their collaborators. They knew they could trust them more than Washington courtiers. Obama preferred the latter. As Hermene Hartman, one of his early backers and an influential figure in Chicago\u2019s black community,\u00a0put it back in 2011: \u201cIn Chicago politics, that\u2019s rule number one: be loyal\u2026 I was very loyal to Barack, but he has not been loyal to some of the people who were there for him from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the narrative around the Obama Center is spurious, at least the building itself looks good, right? Obama is nothing if not stylish. He knows how to do vibes. Alas, not this time. The Center is as disappointing as the man once you learn about him. This doesn\u2019t really come as a surprise given that the architecture of presidential libraries usually reflects their subjects. It\u2019s like the concrete embodiment of their psyche.<\/p>\n

Take the LBJ Library, an awesome edifice, all hard lines and travertine. When it opened,\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0dubbed it\u00a0\u201cthe big daddy of all US presidential libraries\u201d. It showcased the gargantuan hubris of a president who had sworn he would build a \u201cgreat society\u201d and ended up being responsible for the Vietnam debacle. By contrast, the Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa, is a modest neoclassical building. From afar, it looks like it could be your local high school. That\u2019s the point: it befits a taciturn president who avoided the spotlight, even during the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

Designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the Obama Center is more Johnsonian than Hooverian. A thick tower with sharp, angled faces, it\u2019s covered in gray granite. There are barely any windows. At the top is a \u201csky room\u201d. The shape of the building, Obama Foundation deputy director Kim Patterson\u00a0informed us recently, is \u201cmeant to mimic four hands coming together to show the importance of collective action\u201d. Some social media users have compared\u00a0it to a trash can. While that\u2019s taking it a bit too far, there\u2019s nothing architecturally distinctive about the Obama Center. It looks like the HQ of a Fortune 500 company.<\/p>\n

Spread around the tower is a \u201ccampus\u201d that feels more like a mall. There\u2019s a branch of the Chicago public library (because Barack is an intellectual), a gym with basketball courts (because Barack is sporty), artwork from emerging and renowned artists (because Barack is hip), a cafe and fine dining restaurant\u00a0where you will\u00a0\u201cexperience the vibrant connection between food and community impact\u201d (because Barack is a foodie with a social conscience). Of course, there\u2019s also\u00a0a shop to\u00a0\u201cgrab your swag\u201d.<\/p>\n

Read more Makerfield: crucible of resentment<\/a><\/p>\n

Credit where it\u2019s due: the Obama Center has way more going on than other presidential libraries. Amenities are usually restricted to a cafeteria and a gift shop selling bobbleheads, themed plates and books. But, yet again, this corporate sensibility was to be expected. Since leaving office a decade ago, Obama has been in his mogul era, signing lucrative deals with\u00a0Netflix\u00a0and\u00a0Spotify.<\/p>\n

What presidents do after the White House, especially when they are relatively young, is always revealing. Jimmy Carter was a failure in office but went on to dedicate himself to\u00a0humanitarian work. Thanks to his efforts, guinea worm disease\u00a0has been nearly eradicated. Bill Clinton, too, has\u00a0made a positive difference\u00a0with the Clinton Foundation. George W. Bush, at least, has had the decency to keep a low profile.<\/p>\n

Despite his reputation as a high-minded intellectual, Obama is enamored with the trappings of wealth and status. Not without reason\u00a0did he like to say\u00a0that his favorite \u201cperk of being president\u201d was having his own plane. His post-presidency has been one long succession of flexes signifying nothing. One week, he\u2019s with\u00a0Oprah\u00a0and\u00a0Bruce Springsteen\u00a0on a yacht in French Polynesia. Another, he\u2019s hanging with\u00a0George and Amal Clooney in Lake Como. In between, he\u2019s imparting his wisdom about democracy to the readers of the New Yorker<\/em>. Ultimately, the former president is like the ambitious hero in a Balzac novel: all style, no substance. As Garrow concludes in his biography, \u201cwhile the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so is the Obama Center. Nothing makes this point more plainly than the fact it is a presidential library without any archives. Every other library has a research room \u2014 operated by the National Archives and Records Administration \u2014 where anyone can go and examine records from that president\u2019s time in office. But in the case of the Obama Center,\u00a0the research room is \u201cdigital\u201d only. It\u2019s just a website. There is no physical space for historians to actually work.<\/p>\n

To understand quite how absurd this is, you have to go back to why presidential libraries even became a thing. The year was 1941, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Up until then, no system existed to catalog the archives of US presidents. Some went to the Library of Congress in Washington, others to the president\u2019s relatives or private collectors. FDR changed that with the FDR Library, a colonial-style cottage erected on his family estate in Hyde Park \u2014 not Chicago, but leafy Upstate New York. For the first time, Roosevelt said, presidential archives\u00a0would remain\u00a0\u201cwhole and intact in their original condition, available to scholars of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 80 years later, I was one of those scholars, at the FDR Library for\u00a0my Master\u2019s dissertation. I remember feeling emotional while holding ink-stained letters FDR had received after his first fireside chat in March 1933. It was the height of the Great Depression, and the country was starving. Ordinary Americans were pouring their hearts out to the president, telling him how much he meant to them. One lady even\u00a0compared him\u00a0to Moses. The experience would have been infinitely less moving had I been on a laptop in my bedroom.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the intellectual camaraderie of the research room. During my PhD, I spent long days poring over obscure Cold War archives at the JFK Library in Boston. At lunch, me and my fellow researchers would grab sandwiches and discuss our interpretations of the Kennedy presidency. The absence of a research room at the Obama Center will prevent such scenes from ever happening. What a failure of community building for a man who never lets us forget that he was once a community organizer.<\/p>\n

Yes, presidential libraries are vanity projects. FDR himself wasn\u2019t entirely altruistic when he dreamed up the first. As an opponent\u00a0said at the time: \u201cOnly an egomaniac would have the nerve.\u201d Every egomaniac since has had the nerve. Even Richard Nixon, who had an exhibit about Watergate absolve him of any wrongdoing, presenting the whole thing\u00a0as a \u201ccoup\u201d by Democrats. (It was updated after his death to be historically accurate.)<\/p>\n

Some libraries take that idea of legacy even further. Eight presidents, including FDR and Reagan, are buried on the grounds of their libraries. When you come to think of it, that\u2019s the kind of thing you\u2019d expect from kings: to build shrines dedicated to their memory. It\u2019s a reminder that long before Donald Trump, who plans to open a\u00a0gold-decked library\u00a0in Miami, American presidents have been behaving like monarchs. All too often, the American people have merrily played along.<\/p>\n

And yet the US also has a deep-running democratic culture. Presidential libraries, for all their pomp, are a testament to that. By giving anyone access to archives, they are the ultimate democratic space. As Reagan\u00a0put it\u00a0when he broke the ground of his own library: \u201cThere\u2019ll be much to study here, much to discuss, and much to mull over. This library will allow scholars of the future to cast their own judgment on these years, and I would not presume to predict the result of their researches.\u201d<\/p>\n

This prospect probably unsettles Obama. He craves adulation and has enjoyed a ridiculously easy ride for most of his career. Outside of shrill conservative pundits, who he can dismiss as hacks, Obama has been feted by the mainstream media and pop culture. But that won\u2019t last. As years go by and memories of his magnetism fade, he will be treated like any other president. And just like any other president, the only thing that will matter is the record.<\/p>\n

No one rates FDR or Reagan because of how cool they were, or how impressive their libraries are, but because of their transformative records. And while it\u2019s too soon to render a historical verdict, Obama\u2019s record isn\u2019t looking like that of a significant president. His domestic achievements were lackluster, and his foreign policy left America weaker. Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act; the Snowden leaks; the Iran nuclear deal; the never-enforced \u201cred line\u201d in Syria; the advent of wokeism in the Democratic Party: all will be scrutinized for decades to come.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s nothing Obama can do to stop that. Research room or not, scholars will still access his archives \u2014 by law they must be made available over time \u2014 and cast their own judgment. The Obama Center, with its dynamic exhibits and shiny basketball courts and sky rooms and fine dining and swag, won\u2019t make a difference.<\/p>\n

Read more How America lost the art of association<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He was dressed in a dark suit and crisp white shirt. No tie, of course. The messiah is a laidback kind of guy. He was in Chicago to break ground for a temple where his spirit would dwell forever. 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