I know at least some of you are interested in the politicking behind presidential libraries (Anthony Clark’s The Last Campaign is due out next month!). So you might just be interested in the Washington Post‘s report on how “Two Chicago universities, one private and one public, vie for Obama library“:
… Sometime soon, probably before the end of March, President Obama’s foundation is expected to announce a development partner for the Barack Obama Presidential Center. Two of the finalists, culled from an initial field of 13, are Columbia University, the private Ivy League school in Manhattan where Obama earned a bachelor’s degree, and the University of Hawaii, the public flagship of his native state.
The other finalists are a pair of universities here that could hardly be more different.
The private University of Chicago, founded in the 19th century, has 15,000 students and a neo-Gothic campus in Hyde Park with echoes of Oxford and Cambridge. It has deep ties to the president and the first lady. Barack Obama was a senior lecturer at the university’s law school for several years until his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate. Michelle Obama was a vice president for community and external affairs at its medical center and also an associate dean of student services…
The public University of Illinois at Chicago, just west of downtown, took shape after World War II during boom years for state-funded higher education. UIC’s stark modernist campus of concrete and brick has a close-up view of expressways and skyscrapers, including the Willis Tower, once known as the Sears Tower. While the University of Chicago is ultra-selective, turning down 92 out of every 100 undergraduate applicants, UIC is far more accessible, admitting 70 percent of applicants and serving many more students from families with financial need.
UIC officials say their 28,000-student research university is in sync with Obama’s philosophy. “We don’t pay attention to diversity just because it’s convenient,” said Alfred W. Tatum, UIC’s dean of education. “It’s truly at our core.”…
The choice is entirely up to the Obamas, and they will work with a recommendation from the foundation’s board of directors, which includes Obama’s friend Martin Nesbitt; his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng; and political strategist David Plouffe. The foundation, responsible for raising money for a project that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, declined an interview request. Obama discussed library plans with foundation officials Thursday in a visit to Chicago. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that no decision had been made….
There’s a not-wholly-glorious precedent for siting the Obama Library in the city of Chicago but away from “his” university. The JFKennedy Library & Museum was built way out on the Columbia Point peninsula, best known at the time for public housing projects & garbage dumps, because the original Harvard-based proposal fell through. (And it’s still folk legend that the well-to-do Brattle Street Cambridge owners volubly rejected any connection with that ‘jumped-up bootlegger’s brat’ JFK and the busloads of Catholic-school kids the ‘unseemly shrine to an accidental martyr’ would attract.) The Harbor Point area, as it is now known, has gentrified considerably since then… but then, of course, so has most of the city of Boston.
Baud
Whatever location Obama chooses, it’ll prove how much he hates America.
Mike J
@Baud: Also, that he’s actually a Republican who has sold us out under the bus,
Major Major Major Major
I demand more reasons to visit Hawaii. I haven’t been there since January!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: also too that he’s always been well to the right of Reagan
@Mike J: oops, just saw you beat me to it
Baud
@Mike J:
Jeb!’s campaign slogan should be:
“I’m better than Obama. I won’t sell you out!”
Tree With Water
If Obama has a sense of humor he’ll locate the library in Nairobi.
Baud
@Tree With Water:
He should also inscribe “Thanks, Obama” over the entrance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, too, also, Obama is apparently doing a town hall on immigration with Jose Diaz-Balart, as the Republicans, particularly in the House, prepare to shut down the department of homeland security over Obama’s immigration actions, which actions were prompted by the refusal of the Speaker of the House to allow a vote on the Senate immigration bill. Both sides are equally to blame.
Peale
@Tree With Water: or demand that University of Chicago change its name to the Madrassa of the Midwest.
TaMara (BHF)
You guys crack me up. 8 comments in and I already feel better about the day.
dmsilev
That article is a pretty cursory look at a …complicated situation. For instance, it glosses over the whole park situation (short version: the bid from the University of Chicago assumed, without asking anyone in the city Parks Department, that they could have several acres worth of Olmstead-designed parkland as a site. Shenanigans ensued). Then you have all sorts of ‘rich university vs poor neighborhood’ issues. Etc. etc.
Rob in Hawaii
The O Library belongs here in Hawaii — the site is RIGHT ON THE WATER! Top That, Chicago!
jl
Doesn’t make any difference whether Obama is a commie!! or a crypto-fascist traitor!! to perfect progressivism. He is a shape-shifting time traveling anti-Christ. The demon docents running the place will poke you through whichever alternative reality portal you don’t want, with their pitchforks.
Your visit will be an hallucinogenic mishmash inadequate blah and complete nightmare, which will get worse when you find out you have to pay double the ticket price to a jackbooted government bureaucrat thug (or crooked privatized government contractor who will give it all to Obama’s corprorate masters, depending on where you end up) in order to leave. IF you can leave, that is, bwahahaha!
dmsilev
Oh, and my favorite conspiracy theory about the Obama library and the University of Chciago is the one which states that the University tore down a childhood home of Ronald Reagan (true) in order to put up a parking garage (also true) to serve as parking for the Obama library (false; the garage was in planning since before Obama became President, and isn’t anywhere near the proposed library sites). In a triumph of dramatic irony, the Reagan-worshippers asked Big Govermnment (the local landmarks commission) to intervene, but were told to go piss up a rope.
Baud
@jl:
They prefer the term “dementors.”
shortstop
@dmsilev: what you said. The second-layer politics of this thing are the most interesting.
I’m pulling for UIC for several reasons, not least because it’ll be easier for tourists to reach and it’s an institution more in keeping with what we as Democrats are trying to achieve.
Heliopause
I don’t understand why you need an entire library to house a copy each of the Koran and Das Kapital.
Baud
@Heliopause:
Don’t forget the Saul Alinsky wing.
agorabum
Hmmm, locating it in Hawaii does give him the excuse of ‘I need to go check up on my Library’ from November to April…
jl
@Heliopause: There is the hundred lane expressway from Mexico to Canada. All the Ameros. The black helicopters. The FEMA re-education and work camp exhibit. The time machine and all the electroglide hyper-drive dilithium crystal magnetos needed to power it. A room for the mind control demonstrations. Oh, they’ll need lots of room.
Edit: need replicas of Oval Office AND the Gates of Hell. They’ll need lots of room.
sharl
The Obama Presidential Library – working name: Barack HUSSEIN!!! Obama Saul Alinsky Terrorist Fist-Bump Madrassa – should be located in Kenya, the land of his birth.
mai naem mobile
Nairobi is a beautiful city to have the Obama library located. Absolutely perfect weather with tons and tons of year around flowers. The land would probably cost more than Chicago. I personally hope it doesn’t go to the U of C because I forever will.connect the U of C to voodoo economics.
Suzanne
@sharl: I doubt I have been good enough in life for such hilariousness.
Blue Stater
Um, sorry, guys, but the JFK Library was sited on the “Columbia Point Peninsula” because, in addition to public housing projects and garbage dumps, that’s where the campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston is located. No campus, no library.
Bill Arnold
@jl:
The NAFTA Super-highway from Mexico to Canada was originally a GWBush administration project. Not Obama’s fault, unless he somehow instigated it with his time machine. It wouldn’t take much, e.g. a slight nudge to a spermatozoon to cause it to win a sperm race. Piece of cake if one has god-like calculation powers.
(And rather crude, if one has god-like calculation powers.)
Anya
Is Obama going to name a wing for his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis?
jl
@Bill Arnold: You’ll understand after you go to the library and see the time machine and mind control exhibits. You gullible sheeple, you!
And, the fiendish Obama was going to widen it, anyway. Nyah nyah nyah.
jl
@Bill Arnold: This might be a double post, but you’ll understand after you see the time machine and mind control exhibits.
mai naem mobile
@Anya: i thought it was Saul Alinsky. The rumor is that the library’s flag is going to have a hammer and sickle on it and the islamic symbol. Louis Farrakhan is going to do the religious bit at the opening ceremony. Also, an unnamed source told me that the library is going to have a combination of Russian onion shaped top and moorish mosque feel to it and the front entrance will be facing east as islamic custom requires. The back.entrance is where white people will be required to enter the building because thats what Michelle has requested.
Jay C
@Baud:
They won;t need a wing: they can just put it in one of the minarets…
Jim C
Talk about paving paradise: the UIC Medical Center stands on the ground where the Chicago Cubs last won a World Series: Wood & Taylor, the location of the old West Side Grounds.
Once? I’ve never met a local who still doesn’t call it the Sears Tower.
Tokyokie
Whenever I travel, I visit the local college bookstores to get a T-shirt, because the campus bookstores are where you’re most likely to find the good ones. Because of this, I’ve been on a lot of college campuses, and hands-down, the prettiest one I’ve ever stepped foot on is Hawai’i-Manoa. (Although UCLA and Oregon are very nice as well.) So for that reason alone, I think it should go there.
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
You make a good point about the public land, but pardon my French..The University of Illinois’ bid is utter bullshyt. Barack nor Michelle Obama have ANY connection to the school. The article would have a point, if it was between U Of Chicago and Chicago State University, which is a predominantly Black school on the South Side. But since they knocked out Chicago State’s bid, as well as the one on the former Michael Reese Hospital site, then it should go to those muthaphuckas at U Of Chicago. The President began his career and family on the South Side, and that is where the Library should be. Of course, they should force U Of Chicago to fork over their PRIVATELY HELD LAND for the Library, rather than public park land, which goes completely against the Burnham Plan.
JCT
@Jim C: Heh – a colleague of mine’s office was right where home plate used to be! He had a great document describing all of this.
Daughter (U of C, Class of 2012) is pretty amped about the possibility of Obama’s library ending up on the South Side.
Mike in NC
@Blue Stater: I attended UMB during construction of the JFK Library. Never did get to see it, though.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Tokyokie:
I suspect that many presidential scholars agree with you. Not to mention the National Archives staff who would be in charge of getting the library set up.
Anya
@mai naem mobile: I have it on good authority that the library will be blessed by the Al Qaeda’s number three leader. He will recite several quranic verses on jihad.
Also, too, we will finally hear the whitey tape.
delk
@Jim C: I was actually at the UIC Medical Center last week. There is an orthotics place in the basement. I went to get my brace adjusted.
Hildebrand
@JCT: Yep, my son (a first year at UChicago) is geeked beyond measure that the library could be started whilst he is still there. He is in the good part of UChicago, he is in physics and molecular engineering, so, as far away from the Econ crowd as one can get. His roommate is an Econ major, my boy thinks he is as bright as a turnip, and disses the Econ department whenever he can, I am so proud of him!
The Ancient Randonneur
@Heliopause: Most of the building will be an open furnace where you can burn copies of the Bible and American Flags with another wing full of paper shredded for your copies of the Constitution.
mak
@shortstop:
And let’s not forget that UIC is/was the home to (retired) Professor Comrade Bill Ayers.
On the other hand, Saul Alinsky graduated from UofC, so maybe it’s a wash.
The Other Bob
@Rob in Hawaii:
Chicago can build it on the water, and Chicago’s water is drinkable.
Tripod
I would think Macolm X College would be a no-brainer. Added bonus – they’ve already got that campus all torn up.
What UIC\IMD has going for it is Daley the lesser bulldozing everything south of Roosevelt. Plenty of lots available and nobody gives a shit about Adams\Medill Park vs. the Park Boulevard System. Neither school has a particularly noble history when it comes to removal of less desirable neighbors.