38 NEWSWEEK.COM FEBRUARY 28, 2020
from the Obama Foundation nor any top-level for-of the legacy-building process—the rules, so we can give them some advice.”says: “If somebody calls and says, we’re thinking of comment for this report—doing this, we can certainly say we know some of mer Obama aides returned calls or emails seeking In contrast, all smooth in Reaganland. Norquist It’s unclear whether Obama cares about this side and that may be part of neither anyone
“I don’t want to be too harsh, but with Barack having low-profile since he left office, making few public remarks or lamenting the Trump dismantling of his work. He (unlike his best-selling author wife) has yet to publish a memoir. Yes, he and Mthe problem. Obama himself has stayed remarkably formed a production company, Higher Ground, to create content for Netflix. But some Democrats have expressed frustration that he’s seen chilling with wealthy friends as opposed to defending his legacy. ichelle have
he has chosen the Jerry Ford option rather than Jim-how clever and effective the Obama camp was in my Carter option of a post-presidency,” Garrow says.idea whether he liked being branded or not, but a lack of Obama savvy in his post-presidency given gone the hanging-out-with-Richard-Branson route, creating iconography like the rising-sun logo and Hope posters to help get himlot of that went away when he started governing,” Torres-Spelliscy says she’s also surprised by the elected. “I have no
she says. “It definitely died down once he was in office. It’s really possible he just doesn’t care.”Democrats both look back and take stock and say, ‘We Republican state senators in Oklahoma filed a mea-life ended when he left office and then announced he suffered from Alzheimer’s. But Obama may still have decades of possible relevance ahead of him. “It’s not like he had a political life and now Republicans and should commemorate that,’” Norquist says.politician’s public service is not yet complete doesn’t always hold up. In November, for instance, a pair of Still, the notion that namings are premature if a
“a man who will no doubt be known in our nation’s 66 for President Donald Trump in order to honor 2012 in honor of that state’s former governor and first lady while she was Secretary of State and four named Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in sure to rename a 4-mile segment of the famed Route history as one of our most famous presidents.” Sim-ilarly, the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, was re-years before she ran again for the presidency.In Obama’s case, another thing that hasn’t
helped is the fact that the traditional linchpin of a president’s legacy, the library, has been mired in controversy and confusion. By this point in the post-presidencies of Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton, those landmarks had opened to huge fanfare. Those
It is typically the final major, obligatory public event events served as a launchpad for a certain level of ha-giography necessary to bolster a former president’s transition between the realms of politics and history. honoring the former president while they’re alive.one that eschews the formal relationship with the National Archives of other presidential libraries so his library can engage in advocacy work. Instead, it will operate independently as a 19-acre Obama Presi-Yet Obama opted for a new and different model,
30 million pages of Obama’s unclassified papers and make them available online.) In addition, Obama has run into years of harsh headlines in the local Chicago media over opposition to the campus being built in ment of affordable housing. The center, mired in dential Center in Chicago. (Rather than house actual presidential records, the center plans to pay to digitize Jackson Park as well as questions over the displace-litigation, has yet to schedule a date to break ground.
IF HILLARY HAD WON, THERE WOULD’VE BEEN MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR OBAMA ALUMNI
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