Why So Much?

Serving as the 44^th President of the United States, from 2009 until 2017, Barack Hussein Obama is awaiting completion of a presidential library to commemorate his time in office.

According to internet sources, this Barack Obama Presidential Center is being constructed on the South Side of Chicago.

Varying sites proudly announce this complex as the first fully digital presidential library in existence.

Presidential libraries, as presidential libraries are concerned, contain a wide variety of materials to lead visitors and admirers through an historic journey about the person being honored by these archives.

Photos and accompanying deeds of former residences, old family photographs, and diplomas, are among the notable documentation on display for all to ogle.

Letters of famous past interactions, swearing-in bibles, along with historic clothing, are also prominently placed in glass cases and mounted upon over-sized foam boards for wall displays.

Inside the Reagan Library

President Obama’s library is still in the building phase and is estimated to cost roughly $500,000,000.  That’s a half-billion dollars.

Not modest in cost by the wildest imagination, that money is being contributed by the University of Chicago, according to Wikipedia.  (Perhaps they could lower tuitions to make academe more affordable, instead.)

As a note of interest, the Reagan Library was built at a cost of $60,000,000, in 1988; that is equivalent to $101,000,000, in 2018. 

That being said, the Barack Obama Presidential Center is likely to house digital images of notable times in President Obama’s political career, and times leading thereto.

His brief time as an Illinois state senator, then a United States Senator, clearly aided his successful run up to the presidential elections of 2008.  Being a “community organizer” and a teacher of Constitutional law, such unremarkable endeavors paved Obama’s way to the presidency breaking an imaginary barrier as the first black United States President.

Supposedly creating a “post racial” America, Obama’s election to the Presidency was touted as the beginning of racial healing in a perceived divided country.

Eight years of “us-versus-them” actions and policies emanating from The White House only encouraged further division among America’s populace.

But the odd thing about Obama’s time in office, and the decades prior, was the lack of documentation about his early life.

According to his account, he was born in Hawaii.  That fact became contentious when he refused to provide an actual copy of his birth certificate that would verify his being an American citizen.

The waters were further muddied when he continuously misrepresented the truth by denying being in the company of overt racists, communists, and relatives, whose goals were to overthrow the United States government.

Repeated denials were the norm for his political stint as President, and any and all questions about his past affiliations were met with accusations of racism and hatred.

Attempts to discover the background of someone practically anonymous soaring from a mundane career as a mediocre Senator to the Oval Office, were met with roadblock after roadblock.

No one had yearbook photos, family photos, or wedding photos of the Obama’s.  Neither were there any written essays, test papers, or term papers, available to reflect Obama’s intelligence.

Also notably missing were report cards, interviews from fellow students, and comments from co-workers and neighbors.

He traveled around the world for years to both live and study, and wound up being elected to the presidency.  But there is no trail of his accomplishments or trials.

Which begs the question: what will the Barack Obama Presidential Center display?