WSJ: “Now Obama says he’s giving back”

The sort of thing Trump would do…? This is almost funny.

The former president finds a new way to honor himself.

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:

The facility has six multipurpose rooms and an exercise area with equipment.

Home Court’s largest single space is the 13,000-square-foot professional-sized basketball court with seating. It occupies the rear of the building and has a wall of windows providing eastward views to Jackson Park and the lake.

The Obama logo — the letter “O” set against a striped curved horizon — is the center court emblem. The space also doubles as a banquet hall.

Remember when liberals were obsessed with preserving wetlands in their pristine natural state? The Obama project suggests that those days are definitely over.