Obama presidential library campaign begins

Obama will have to decide whether to build the library in Hawaii or in Chicago. | Reuters

Even though his second inauguration is still weeks away, the work of his presidential library starts soon: Libraries take years of planning and decisions by the president and his inner circle, from choosing a location to picking achievements to highlight. It’s a chance for Obama to begin shaping his legacy, and has in the past been an increasingly large priority during presidents’ second terms.

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But it requires the kind of personal fundraising that Obama clearly dislikes, full of potential pitfalls that led his predecessors into trouble.

Add more complications for Obama: He’ll have to decide whether to build the library in his birthplace of Hawaii or his adopted hometown of Chicago and possibly raise funds for a presence in both. Even for one, he could need to raise close to $500 million. Though much of the work will be done by a circle of close friends who will begin mobilizing in the coming months — including one longtime friend of the first lady already starting to make way for the library to be associated with the University of Chicago — much of the fundraising is going to come down to Obama himself.

“It’s like a third term contribution,” said Skip Rutherford, a longtime friend of Bill Clinton who was involved in the planning for the library in Little Rock. “These are the friends and associates and supporters of a particular president, and they all want attention from him.”

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Clinton’s library cost $165 million and George W. Bush has brought in more than $300 million for his library, due to open next year. But Obama will need to raise even more, since Congress has hiked endowment requirements for future libraries to at least 60 percent of the cost of construction.

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Presidential libraries are constructed and endowed with private funds, before being handed over to the National Archives. Federal employees staff the facilities, which include archives, museums and presidents’ final resting places. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to oversee a library being built, and putting one together has become an assumed part of serving in the White House.

Now it’s Obama’s turn — and that starts with fundraising, lots of it, even after a year’s worth of promises that he was done. His pledge that this was his last time asking for money became such a familiar part of his speeches that at one July event in New York, a Wall Street veteran interrupted with a joke.

“So you’re not going to call us for the library?” the donor said.

“Somebody else will make that call,” Obama shot back.

But with big donors being pressed for large checks, based on past library efforts, Obama will have to make calls, host visits and otherwise accommodate the people giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Donors will inevitably demand it.

Obama can’t be disconnected from the process.