MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Steven Spielberg And The Temple of Obama: Building the Barack Obama post-presidency, one liberal billionaire at a time.
The closest I’ve ever come to glimpsing hell was on Monday, when I read an article in the New York Times headlined, “With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency.”
Reporters Michael D. Shear and Gardiner Harris reveal the “methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady, and a cadre of top aides map out a post-presidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion,” or about as much as Obama fundraised for the 2012 campaign.
This effort began in November 2012, shortly after his reelection, when the president hosted filmmaker Steven Spielberg at the White House for a screening of Lincoln. President Obama was “spellbound,” the Times reports, as Spielberg held forth “about the use of technology to tell stories.”
Such technology, Spielberg went on, could also be used to tell Obama’s story—to somehow convince future Americans, against all evidence to the contrary, that his presidency was an experience they would like to repeat. “Ideally, one adviser said, a person in Kenya could put on a pair of virtual reality goggles and be transported to Mr. Obama’s 2008 speech on race in Philadelphia.” I’m sure they’ll be banging on the door to get into that exhibit.
The president has raised, to date, “just over $5.4 million from 12 donors,” which puts him $994.6 million from his goal. Those donors include “technology entrepreneur” Jim Symons, whose co-CEO Robert Mercer, a Republican, was described by the Times the very next day as a “hedge-fund magnate.” These two billionaires are business partners—can’t they both be magnates? Or are some technology entrepreneurs more equal than others?
More remarkable than the Times‘s bias, however, is the fact that Obama’s team, led by a former Washington Post reporter, has been unable to come up with a unifying idea—or even a single location—for his post-presidency.
Can’t we just wake up in bed next to Suzanne Pleshette and discover it was all a crazy dream?