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Nobody runs for president without a robust ego, and winning two elections for the nation’s highest office is unlikely to lower anyone’s self-regard. Still, it takes a special kind of nerve to bulldoze local opposition, pave over what used to be historic parkland, construct a monument to yourself and then describe it as a gift to your neighbors. Now our 44th president, Barack Obama, posts on X: Chicago is where Michelle was raised, where I got my start as an organizer, and where we built a family together. When the Obama Presidential Center opens next June, it will be our way to give back to a city that has given us so much. The city sure has given them a lot—including more than 19 acres of what used to be treasured green space in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park for Mr. Obama to erect his self-tribute. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 19th century, the park has long been included on the National Register of Historic Places. Whatever the public will be given in return,
it will likely not include the ability to conduct thorough research on the Obama administration. The sprawling campus will not be a presidential library managed by the National Archives, but instead a sort of museum operated by the private Obama Foundation. Lee Bey recently reported for the Chicago Sun-Times on the center’s first completed building, a 60,000-square-foot facility called Home Court:
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