Chicago, Hawaii Fight Over Obama Presidential Library

Chicago & Honolulu Begin Fight for Obama Library

Politico

As President Barack Obama prepares to battle with Republicans for a second term, another fight is already brewing: where to enshrine his legacy once he leaves office. The effort to play host city to Obama’s presidential library is being complicated by the peripatetic life he has had. His diverse background — a fixture of his political brand — is now fueling a debate at a time when the White House would like to focus on anything but where to store the Obama archives. The University of Hawaii, which Obama’s parents and sister attended on the island where he was born, claims the president as a native son and is actively pursuing his presidential library. Officials there have formed four working groups to study the matter, including a site-selection committee and a museum and archives committee. There are plans to make a pitch for a library set in Oahu’s signature lush mountains or on a spot with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean. Officials are expected to settle on a location over the next few months as they look to a target opening date of 2019 or 2020 — presuming the president wins that second term and chooses Hawaii. “We have mostly a two-term strategy,” said Robert Perkinson, an American studies professor at the University of Hawaii who is leading the effort. “It’s like bidding for the Olympics, except there are no rules and no formal criteria.” But while Perkinson is busily working on the University of Hawaii’s pitch, the University of Chicago — the city where Obama turned to politics and launched his first campaigns for office — isn’t ceding an inch of presidential ground. The University of Chicago is playing like the cool front-runner. It’s a luxurious vantage point given the president and first lady’s ties to the institution; he lectured on constitutional law, and first lady Michelle Obama, who was born and raised on the South Side, was a top executive there for years. Many of the first couple’s closest friends still live there, and Obama’s top White House advisers have connections to the city as well as the institution. “Identifying his home state — the one that’s most his home — is a little bit more complicated than other presidents,” said Benjamin Hufbauer, a University of Louisville professor who wrote “Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory.” Obama also has a personal connection to Columbia University, where he was an undergraduate student, and Harvard University, where he attended law school and edited the Harvard Law Review. So far, however, those institutions have stayed out of the fray. “We would of course be proud to host the presidential library of our distinguished Columbia alumnus, but this is clearly a matter for President Obama and his team to determine in their own way in their own time,” said Columbia University spokesman Robert Hornsby. The White House is keeping even more distance from the topic.