When the Democrats nominated Barack Obama to represent their party in the 2008 presidential election many voters consoled themselves with this thought: “Well, at least it’s not Hillary.” Unfortunately, preventing her from taking up residence in the White House was the last useful thing he did for the country. Indeed, from the moment he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a participation trophy during his first year in office, it became clear that there would be a huge gap between his actual accomplishments and the celebration of his presidency. The grotesque monolith that towers over the South Side of Chicago is the perfect symbol of that chasm.

Obama’s foreign policy was also disasterous. In Russia, China and  the Middle East, he left the world more dangerous than when he first took the oath of office.

There is, however, no such gap between Obama’s grandiose self image and the monument to himself that he has now inflicted on the Chicago skyline. All presidential libraries are vanity projects, of course, but the Barack Obama Presidential Center radiates hubris in a way that would have embarrassed Ozymandius. It all but screams, “I am Barack Obama, president of presidents: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Unlike Percy Bysshe Shelly, the author of that prescient poem, Obama clearly has no clue that the sands of history will eventually bury him. Etched in gigantic letters on the exterior of the monolith is an excerpt from Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma.

“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.”

For those who can’t get enough of Obama’s wisdom, inane phrases like the following appear on almost every wall of his monument to himself: The Audacity of Hope, Change We Can Believe In, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, ad nauseum. One thing that is conspicuously absent from the Barack Obama Presidential Center is a library containing a physical archive where historians and biographers can do research. Instead, the Obama Foundation partnered with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish the first fully digital presidential library. By keeping the center separate from the traditional federal library system, Obama retains control over the campus and how his legacy is presented to the public.

This is convenient considering the many failures of Obama’s presidency. His most spectacular failure was, of course, the ironically named “Affordable Care Act.” Obama famously promised that Obamacare would reduce health care costs while increasing access and quality. Obama signed it into law in March of 2010. That year, according to a KFF report, “In 2010, the U.S. spent $2.6 trillion on health care, an average of $8,402 per person.” Fourteen years later, according to a CMS report, National Healthcare Expenditures had skyrocketed to a stunning “$5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person.” Moreover, as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) pointed out when he introduced the “Health Care Freedom for Patients Act”:

There were signs from the start that Obamacare would not work, which is why not one single Republican voted for it. That is also why the Democrats created the premium tax credits in the first place: they did not trust the one-size-fits-all nature of Obamacare to lower costs or to expand options. Instead of decreasing, over the last 15 years, Obamacare premiums have increased over 220 percent. A family of four pays $10,000 more for coverage today than they did before Obamacare, and their deductibles have doubled. Insurance providers have dried up and rural hospitals are struggling.

But Obamacare was by no means Obama’a only failure. Here’s what he predicted when the Democrats nominated him to be president in 2008: “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Looking back, it’s difficult not to laugh aloud at this. Obama’s foreign policy was also disasterous. In Russia, China and the Middle East, he left the world more dangerous than when he first took the oath of office. Even in race relations, our first Black president somehow contrived to significantly increase tensions.

These failures perhaps portended the sheer ugliness of his monument. He reportedly interfered with its architects, and personally dictated important aesthetic choices. Maybe his hubris is such that he believed he knew more than the professionals. This is certainly an accurate reflection of his presidency.  It doesn’t matter in the end. Obama’s legacy, like that of Ozymandias, will amount to nothing  more than a colossal wreck of the monument he built to himself.

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