Barack Obama first came to national fame more than two decades ago with a stirring speech declaring that there was not a red America and a blue America, only a United States of America. And yet, all these years later, Mr. Obama is about to open a presidential museum that seems to prove the opposite.
It would be hard to visit the Obama Presidential Center, which has risen on Chicago’s South Side, and not come away thinking that there really are separate Americas. It is a trip to a parallel universe, one suffused in earnest talk of hope and change, not dark warnings about American carnage, one marching toward a multiracial, progressive future rather than dismantling a suffocating woke tyranny.
The opening of any presidential museum is a chance for a former commander in chief to tell his story to future generations and perhaps to rewrite it for history, celebrating the triumphs and setting aside the defeats. As Mr. Obama opens his center later this month, nearly 10 years after he left office, the 44th president is seeking to frame his legacy as that of a change agent who propelled the country to a better place, even as his volatile successor paints him as a villain who should be imprisoned.
“This is where hope has a home,” said Tina Tchen, executive vice president of programs for the center and a former chief of staff to Michelle Obama when she was first lady. The center, added Louise Bernard, the museum director, is a place to show the “uplifting, joyful experience of the Obama White House.” But that is a message decidedly out of step with today’s cynical zeitgeist.
