Talk about hubris and being self-important. If you want to know why US presidents, future, present and past, think they can preach to the whole world, a good place to start is with the 16 presidential libraries built since the 1930s as repositories for their papers and records.
No, the photo above is not of the JD Vance library. Vance was busy last week pontificating that murdered Southampton teenager Henry Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the west and the people who love it”. Copycat Nigel Farage immediately reposted this blatant falsehood on Musk-owned Twitter/X.
And neither is it of a learning centre dedicated to the current pontificator in chief, Donald J. Trump. He has already chosen a site in Miami, Florida, for a grandiose monstrosity expected to make the currently under-construction White House State Ballroom look like a mere doghouse. More than $60m has already been raised from two law suits he has won against two US media organisations – and they’ve been tagged for the Trump library fund. If he wins a pending $10bn suit against the BBC, your licence fee could help pay, say in 2036, for a bookshelf containing Trump-era records and memorabilia.
Instead, the photo above is of the Obama Presidential Center that opens next week in Chicago, the hometown of Barack Obama, US president from 2009 to 2017.
Obama has built an $850m monument
Financial Times architectural critic Edwin Heathcote writes: “What does this monument to the great communicator communicate? Hubris? A kind of detached arrogance embodied in an impenetrable building, an $850m project in a neighbourhood where a few thousand dollars could make a dilapidated home habitable?”
Heathcote continues about this centre in honour of America’s supposedly great liberal president: “Much of the South Side (where Obama began as a community organiser and where Michelle Obama grew up) is now a ragged landscape of dereliction and hopelessness. Over decades, the city has demolished empty, boarded-up houses, leaving a gap-toothed profile that makes the density needed for urbanity impossible.”
Heathcote does add that there are outdoor basketball courts on the grounds. One can well imagine that was constructed at Obama’s personal request so he could shoot a few hoops with the locals on opening day while cameras click away. To use an Americanism, “I’m from Missouri”, that is, I need to be shown, why are anyone’s writings and records so valuable that they need to be stored in a purpose-built building costing $850m or £630m.
It certainly gives them an aura of gravitas and profundity. And the library of Trump, who hates Obama with a passion, could well come in at a price tag of over $1bn! His ‘Truth Social’ messages will definitely require gold-plated vaults.
Read more about other US presidential libraries here. The one holding the papers and records of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US president from 1933 to 1945, is housed in a building that cost $376,000.
Obama’s centre opens on 19 June 2026. You can read how to buy tickets here if you happen to be in the Chicago area this summer. Subscribe to our regular updates to receive the latest articles, analysis and news direct to your inbox at https://theleftlane.media/subscribe/
