Obama’s Hideous Monument to Hubris

When the Democrats nominated Barack Obama to represent their party in the 2008 presidential election many voters consoled themselves with this thought: “Well, at least it’s not Hillary.” Unfortunately, preventing her from taking up residence in the White House was the last useful thing he did for the country. Indeed, from the moment he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a participation trophy during his first year in office, it became clear that there would be a huge gap between his actual accomplishments and the celebration of his presidency. The grotesque monolith that towers over the South Side of Chicago is the perfect symbol of that chasm.

There is, however, no such gap between Obama’s grandiose self image and the monument to himself that he has now inflicted on the Chicago skyline. All presidential libraries are vanity projects, of course, but the Barack Obama Presidential Center radiates hubris in a way that would have embarrassed Ozymandius. It all but screams, “I am Barack Obama, president of presidents: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Unlike Percy Bysshe Shelly, the author of that prescient poem, Obama clearly has no clue that the sands of history will eventually bury him. Etched in gigantic letters on the exterior of the monolith is an excerpt from Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma.

“You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

For those who can’t get enough of Obama’s wisdom, inane phrases like the following appear on almost every wall of his monument to himself: The Audacity of Hope, Change We Can Believe In, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, ad nauseum. One thing that is conspicuously absent from the Barack Obama Presidential Center is a library containing a physical archive where historians and biographers can do research. Instead, the Obama Foundation partnered with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish the first fully digital presidential library. By keeping the center separate from the traditional federal library system, Obama retains control over the campus and how his legacy is presented to the public.