Speculating on the Obama library

Last updated on: February 24, 2015 at 9:34 pm by Jane the Actuary

Speculating on the Obama library 2015-02-24T21:34:44-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Here in Chicago, as I’ve mentioned before, the city is tripping over itself in its eagerness to offer up to Obama a presidential library set on city parkland — and not just any parkland, but one of the major parks of the city. Skeptics who point out that there are multiple non-park sites available, including the vacant land formerly the site of the Michael Reese Hospital, close to the lakefront, midway between downtown and the Hyde Park area, but it’s taken as an article of faith that the president is such a heroic figure that only the best, most worthy site, should be offered as tribute and monument to him.

Boosters also take it for granted that the museum/library will provide jobs for and bring about the revitalization of the entire South Side of Chicago, or at any rate, the surrounding neighborhoods, which seems fairly unlikely — after all, once the museum is built (and how likely are they to spend the extra cash involved in turning its construction into a jobs training program in construction for South Siders?), there’ll be a few docents and security guards, but it’s not as if all the visitors are going to decide to patronize local businesses on their way to or from the building. They are also taking it for granted that the city will spend substantial cash on upgrading the mass transit links to the site — but if this is cash the city has on hand (which they don’t), there’s no reason to wait, and I find it unlikely that museum donors would spend on city infrastructure.

(Sorry, I don’t have quotes or links for the above — it’s more of an accumulation of Tribune articles over the past several months.)

But anyway: what do you imagine the museum, the permanent exhibits, would be like, in the Barack H. Obama Presidential Museum and Library?

If you do a google search for presidential library attendance, the first hit is an article from Salon: “Presidential libraries are huge failures,”the gist of which is that, after the initial fanfare, attendance drops, and the government should stop spending money on museums intended to serve as “partisan shrines” and limit their funding solely to archives.

Now, some elements of a presidential library seem half-way reasonable: using the location of a particular president’s archival materials to provide a combo history and civics museum, by fitting that particular president into the bigger picture of the era he lived in, and providing the visitor an keener feel for how Washington works. For instance, the George W Bush library features exhibits around 9/11 and a “Decision Points theater” intended to foster an understanding of the decisions he made, and, by extension, any president makes. The George H.W. Bush library features exhibits on sections on his experience on a WWII aircraft carrier, his experiences in the Texas oil industry, a piece of the Berlin Wall, and the like. The Ford museum talks about Watergate and Vietnam. And pretty much every library features a replica Oval Office (oddly, the Clinton Library claims they have the only full-size Oval Office replica, but I suppose they haven’t updated their website, because the GW Bush library has one, too). The Reagan library tops them all, since it houses an old Air Force One.

At the same time, to greater or lesser degrees, these museums are shrines to the individual men. Of the recent libraries with enough detail on their websites, the Clinton library seems unusual in focusing almost exclusively on Clinton’s presidency, and without being organized around major historical events (maybe because there wasn’t much?) but around such themes as The Campaign, The Inauguration, The Vice President, The White House At Work, and so on. And the GHW Bush library, as much as it seems to provide a lot of context, also spends a lot of time telling you about family details such as their wedding, and Barbara’s family history.

Bottom line, in my view: using a presidential library as a means of making connections to American history and government, good. Focusing overmuch on one man, and presenting him as exceptional, bad.

So: what would the Obama library look like? You can’t deny that a lot has happened internationally — but will Obama really have the chutzpah to present the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring, or the Russian “reset” as foreign policy successes? And how will he turn Obamacare into a museum exhibit? And given his thin resume prior to the White House, how will they make his dates with Michelle and his time as Community Organizer and State Senator into Larger Than Life history?

Perhaps my imagination just isn’t big enough. What do you think?

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