Obama’s Presidential Center, Brought To You By The Oligarchs

With his presidential library, former President Barack Obama is unveiling an oligarch-funded shrine to himself amid everyone in America being fleeced by oligarchs. It’s a perfect bookend of a presidency that bailed out its Wall Street donors who were throwing millions of Americans out of their homes (and no, the bailouts were not “paid back”).Obama says he wants his $850 million Obama Presidential Center, slated to open in June, “to put my presidency in context” — and in a sense, that’s what the shrine does. Its sponsor list is context for a presidency that promised hope and change and then used a massive electoral mandate to deliver more of the same. Indeed, the list is a who’s who of the winners of the Obama era: tech moguls, financial giants, telecom behemoths, a health insurance giant, and other bold-faced names of the oligarchy.Of course, that kind of donor list is now standard fare for presidential foundations, but the timing of Obama’s celebration of his shrine seems especially tone-deaf: this is a moment when most Americans can’t afford anything, in part, because of the oligarchs that were enriched during his presidential tenure.And the shrine being built on the South Side of Chicago, despite community protests that it would exacerbate the very housing crisis that defined Obama’s presidency . . . if that plot point were in a screenplay, Hollywood executives would insist that it was too on the nose.During his interview this week with Stephen Colbert inside his shrine, Obama dinged Donald Trump’s corruption, saying, “A good policy that I’d like to see followed is that the president of the United States shouldn’t have a bunch of side hustles.”He’s clearly correct — but he understates the problem. For a long time, it has seemed as if the entire presidency has become a grand side hustle for a life of postpresidential celebrity, riches, and, yes, shrines, er, presidential “libraries.” Same thing for Congress — where serving a few terms and then retiring into the lobbying business and speaking circuit is now so routine it’s barely news.This is the kind of systemic corruption — or, better yet, capture — that exists beyond more obvious conduits of influence, like campaign donations and super PAC spending. It is a system of implicit rewards hidden in the shadows of unenforced disclosure laws and barely discussed by the media. And yet it is an integral part of the carrot-and-stick system that imperceptibly shapes policy — or at least political ambitions — by letting public officials know that there are rich rewards for corporate complicity.Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street and was given a postpresidential empire. After the corporate pillaging that defined his presidency, George W. Bush got his own shrine too.In Obama’s case, it’s the same dynamic: a president who didn’t fire the bankers who cratered the economy, who didn’t do much to limit tech companies taking over society, and who didn’t fulfill a promise of a public option to compete with health insurers is now getting a shrine built to himself by Wall Streeters, tech companies, and a health insurer.For everyone else who was thrown out of their homes, targeted by tech predation, and bilked by health insurers? They get the chance to buy empathy hats for $35.