Don’t be disappointed if you’re anxious to attend the Biden Presidential Library’s opening. It almost certainly will never exist. D.C. swampsters are trying to bury the record, hoping the public forgets how bad things were. Its subject will soon be either in the ground or too incapacitated to solicit funding. Biden staffers retaining criminal defense counsel have no interest in a library containing evidence for prosecutors to mine. No reporters from press outlets complicit in enabling chaos are hounding Biden. DOGE revelations testify to his administration's wholesale graft. FBI servers were purged of controversial data, unburdening what had been.
There theoretically is a Joseph R. Biden Presidential Library. But it’s only virtual. The closest to a physical library was boxes stacked in his garage next to the Corvette. Biden has no plans. “I’ve talked to former presidents, apparently building the library is a gigantic undertaking. And so I haven’t made that decision yet.” A Biden library would only occur if his entourage of grifters sought a vehicle for raising cash, taking a page from Clinton’s and Obama’s playbooks.
Too much Biden administration funny business must never see daylight. Why would the Big Guy showcase incriminating evidence, even that which isn’t a Schedule II controlled substance? The linked headlines below reveal the empty reality.
President Biden is reportedly struggling to raise cash for his planned presidential library as he tries to secure the $200 million to $300 million it will cost. The Biden Presidential Library is in its nascent stages. A site hasn’t been selected, nor has Mr. Biden formed a committee to operate and build the structure. …One reason the library proposal hasn’t advanced is the lack of funds, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper said some “resistance” has come from donors and that he hasn’t been soliciting funds.
Half a continent from Biden’s Delaware, a spectacular presidential library is rising, setting new standards Biden could never approach. Chicago’s Taj Barack -- officially the Obama Presidential Center (and Mausoleum) -- is closing in on a $1,000,000,000 price tag after cost overruns, construction delays, defective concrete, litigation, and DEI initiatives. The initial cost estimate was $350 million. Cue the inevitable army of grifters these projects attract. The center includes a gymnasium and a regulation-size NBA court. The price is especially steep considering it‘s the first fully digital presidential library. The OPC “seek[s] to inspire, empower, and connect the next generation of global leaders to embrace the ‘glorious task’ of making change in their own communities.” Mamdani must have been among those gloriously inspired.
Now that DOGE is foreclosing Democrats’ slush funds, it wouldn’t be surprising if Obama struggles to fund cost overruns. The Daily Mail provides details:
A black-owned concrete subcontractor is suing the structural engineering firm behind the project for $40 million claiming that they were discriminated against. …Valerie Jarrett, raked in a cool $740,000 in a single year, to run the OPC straight into the ground. …Contributions first started drying up back in 2023 when donations plummeted by 50 percent from the year before. “He's arrogant,” one erstwhile backer reportedly said of Obama last week. “There's no quid pro quo because it's a one-way street.”
…Clinton's presidential library reportedly raised more than 10 percent of its $165 million cost from foreign sources [and] the royal family of Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to George H.W. Bush's library. These presidential vanity projects are just vehicles for ex-presidents to keep the party going long after they leave the White House.
As the building emerges, its banality reprises Soviet brutalist or North Korean architecture. It makes one want to visit the brand new Harding Presidential Library and Museum, completed almost a century after his death. Admission is only $16 ($15 for seniors).
Below are 2023 total compensations (as reported to the IRS to maintain a “nonprofit” status) for the battalion of executives employed by Obama’s library, which won’t open until Spring 2026, five years late. But wait, there’s more. In addition to boasting no less than 15 VPs (including three token males), $27 million in additional salaries were paid that year, along with $1 million in lobbying expenditures (politicians need to eat, and especially drink, too). Top donors include $125 million from Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and $100 million from Jeff Bezos. Any resemblance between this and a slush fund is coincidental.
The building’s 83-foot-tall stained glass masterpiece echoes Jackson Pollock as updated by Hunter Biden. It allegedly depicts the rising sun. Trigger warning: those of artistic dispositions might be traumatized by viewing it. An inspirational quote from an Obama speech adorns the building’s exterior. Reverberations from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address are obvious. One wonders if Saint Kamala provided input:
You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, because you’re ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there’s new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. And it is you, the young and fearless at heart, the most diverse and educated generation in our history, who the nation is waiting to follow. ...America is not the project of any one person. Because 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.
Obama and Biden antedated Trump, a tough act to precede. Trump sucks up the available historical oxygen, making predecessors seem even smaller. His successors will also face this dilemma. It's difficult to imagine historians poring through Obama's or Biden’s archives to document positive achievements, for either Hope or Change. Democrats can commiserate with the sane: the less recalled from Biden’s administration, the better.
Douglas Schwartz blogs at The Great Class War, applying pattern recognition of historical cycles to place current events into context.
Image: AT via Magic Studio