The U.S. celebrates the Obamas - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

On Thursday of last week a commentary show I usually watch on an American channel didn’t talk about U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest rants, as it usually does. Instead, it was devoted to the opening of the Obama Presidential Centre.

 

The opening was attended by all living presidents, both Democratic and Republican, except for Donald Trump, who wasn’t invited. Other guests included many domestic and foreign dignitaries, including former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Speaking at the opening were both former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. Both were eloquent, unlike the stumbling, bumbling current President.

 

The centre is a multi-functional institution with a museum focusing on the history of the Obama presidency, a recreation and sports facility, and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, all set on a 19.3-acre expanse of public park, gardens and playground.
The centre’s work includes digitizing the Barack Obama Presidential Library with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to create the first fully digitized presidential library.

 

Across the top of the museum tower’s south and west sides, in concrete letters five feet high, are excerpts from Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama: “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. 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.”

 

In May of 2026, it was projected that the Presidential Center would get over 700,000 visitors each year.

 

The Obamas felt, that as the first Black occupants of the White House, they have a special obligation to represent their people. It’s hard to believe that the U.S. population went directly from supporting the first Black President to supporting Donald Trump, who hates Obama and often targets Black residents, as if he would prefer to take the U.S. back to the way it was before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

 

After the Central Park Five, five Black and Latino boys who were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman jogging in New York City in 1989, Donald Trump paid for full page newspaper ads to suggest they should be executed. In the long run they were found to have been wrongly accused, yet Trump accused them again in 2015 (they’re suing).

 

Obama’s era was an era of war in Afghanistan beginning with his 2009 decision to temporarily increase the U.S. troop presence there. The larger force was used to implement a strategy of protecting the population from Taliban attacks and supporting efforts to reintegrate insurgents into Afghan society. The decision was a failure, with the U.S. ultimately withdrawing in 2021 under President Joe Biden after some 2,400 service members were killed and some 20,700 others wounded. Canada withdrew in 2014 after 158 troops were killed.

 

One of the victories for Obama in this period was the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011, during a targeted raid by U.S. Navy SEALs. The operation, codenamed Operation Neptune Spear, took place at his fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden had been responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks where 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes in a co-ordinated attack against the United States, killing 2,977 people in New York and Washington. Obama sat nervously in Washington listening to reports of the 2011 covert operation.

 

Ironically, one of Donald Trump’s targets for prosecution is one of the chief reasons he was originally elected back in 2014. James Comey was head of the FBI back then and undercut Obama’s successor, Hillary Clinton, by investigating her use of non-official e-mail. She had been leading the election when he announced the investigation, but Trump won.

 

However, Comey also oversaw an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, a portion of which focused on possible co-ordination between Russia and members of the 2016 Trump campaign. Donald Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017.

 

Barack Obama was not perfect as U.S. President. He only seems so when compared to the chaos and dishonesty of the current president.