What does three-quarters of a billion dollars buy? If you're former President Barack Obama, it buys you a 19.3-acre presidential library complex that blends a museum, park, and community hub on the city's South Side into a huge, sprawling campus. There are basketball courts, a picnic area, a Chicago Public Library branch, and community gathering spaces.
Visitors can get a sneak peek at some of the facilities prior to their opening on Juneteenth (June 19).
The actual library soars 225 feet above Jackson Park, perhaps the ugliest architecture in a city celebrated for buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnham, among many others.
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The roughly $850 million project on Chicago's South Side covers the political and personal realms of the nation’s first Black president. Campaign memorabilia and presidential artifacts are displayed while public spaces of the sprawling… pic.twitter.com/gYeqOb9Mbi
The most interesting aspect of the complex may be the boast that it's the very first fully digital presidential museum with interactive displays and some pretty cool gee-whiz tech.
For that kind of money, it'd better knock a visitor's socks off.
You can enter the hallowed ground of the library and museum for $30, which is more than twice as much as the fees for entering the libraries of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton ($12). Abe Lincoln's presidential museum in Springfield, Ill., will only cost you $15. But Lincoln only freed the slaves. Obama? I'll get back to you on that.
The Chicago Sun Times helpfully explains the significance of the library opening at this time.
But the sprawling campus on South Stony Island Avenue in Jackson Park debuts at a time when democracy is blatantly under threat. And while a museum touting democracy may feel insufficient for young people piloting through perilous times, Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett said Wednesday in a press preview that a sense of discovery awaits them.
“They’ll discover that ordinary people have the capability to do extraordinary things if they put their mind to it, through the stories that we tell of the history of our country, which has been really challenging at times,” said Jarrett sitting in kitchen classroom near the Eleanor Roosevelt fruit and vegetable garden and a Rashid Johnson mosaic in the background.
If I have to hear one more time that "democracy is under threat" from hysterical left-wingers, I'm going to be sick.
One of the main attractions in the museum is a life-sized replica of the Oval Office. Visitors can walk through, sit in a chair behind the Resolute desk, and pretend they're the president. Apparently, this is a real favorite among schoolchildren. And I'm sure that Valerie Jarrett snuck in a couple of times and sat in that chair, pretending she could order the execution of all her political enemies.
This may be the biggest sop to the biggest egotist to enter the White House.
Other sections of the museum detail the Affordable Care Act, immigration policies, and smaller moments such as when Obama unexpectedly sang during a 2015 eulogy for those killed in a South Carolina church shooting. A large television screen plays a clip of Obama singing “Amazing Grace.”
Peppered throughout are areas for personal reflection, which museum organizers say is key.
“We’re passing that baton and inviting people to bring change home, however change may be defined, both small or large,” said Louise Bernard, the museum’s director.
Did Barack Obama really change anything? He was the first black president who acted and spoke like a standard-issue Democratic Party politician. All his initiatives on health care, immigration, and foreign policy were either beaten down by Congress and the courts or watered down like Obamacare.
There was nothing revolutionary about Obamacare. Democrats had been pushing national health insurance since the 1960s. What Congress eventually passed was worse. Not quite nationalized health care, not quite free market reforms, Obama tried to please all sides and ended up with a hugely expensive, unworkable turkey that only the insurance companies liked.
A mediocre man with a mediocre mind and a gift for public speaking rose far beyond his station because of a weak Republican opposition and because the American people wanted to feel good about voting for a black man for president. The historical forces that converged to give Obama the presidency won't be seen again.
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