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Old Posted Jan 8, 2014, 9:29 PM
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nomarandlee nomarandlee is offline
My Mind Has Left My Body
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 3,334
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/us...ream.html?_r=0

Obama’s Library, Advisers’ Dream


Published: December 16, 2013

........Already, suitors from Mr. Obama’s home and adopted states — and even New York, where he lived for two years as an undergraduate — are expressing interest in landing the library. But it is Chicago where the competition is most fierce.

“I’m going to make sure that the city of Chicago is well positioned,” said its mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who argued that “a world-class library” would serve as an engine of economic development and be a natural fit for the Obamas. “We’re not just relying on the family historical foundations, that this is where he launched his public life, where his wife’s from and the hometown where his kids were educated, though I’m happy to remind him of it.” ...........

On a recent Friday evening, the president and Michelle Obama hosted an intimate dinner at the White House residence with Mr. Emanuel, as well as some of Mr. Obama’s wealthiest supporters, including the entertainment mogul Haim Saban and the Chicago billionaires James S. Crown and Michael Sacks. The very fact of the dinner struck some Obama insiders as indicative of an effort to soften up big targets for an eventual ask.............

A couple of months ago, Mr. Nesbitt, the outside leader of the library effort, met with Mr. Crown, a friend and University of Chicago trustee, to discuss the school’s effort to land the project.

“We are getting some indications of places that are interested,” Mr. Crown recalled Mr. Nesbitt saying.

“Who else is interested?” Mr. Crown said.

“Other places in Chicago, Hawaii,” Mr. Nesbitt replied. “And New York.”

The prospect of the Obama library ending up anywhere other than Chicago — and especially New York — is mortifying to a city that plays such a central role in Mr. Obama’s political narrative. This is the place where the itinerant outsider found a community, a wife, raised his children and laid his roots. It’s the place where he skyrocketed to political stardom, and the home base for many of his closest political advisers and best friends............

John Rogers, an Obama family friend and University of Chicago trustee, argued that a South Side library for the first black president would create a “perfect symmetry” with Lincoln’s library and museum in Springfield. He declined to comment on his conversations with the Obamas and other administration intimates about the subject, but said, “We are a research university; we are studying how others have gotten this done.” .........
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