HillBuzz

There are resolutions underway in Hawaii to build the Obama Presidential Library on Oahu once the current president’s term ends in January 2013.

We do not believe for a minute the current First Family will return to Chicago once they’re booted from the White House.

For a number of reasons, including the cold, but mainly because it will be too humiliating for him to return here, to Chicago, after his defeat, back in the same neighborhood in Hyde Park where he’d be surrounded by all the old kooks and lunatics who helped him rise meteorically to where he is now.  Crashing back down to Earth will be hard, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll ever need any of the whackadoodles like William Ayers, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Bernadine Dohrn, or the rest of Chicago’s motley crew of miscreants ever again.

Also, that mansion convicted felon Tony Rezko helped Dr. Utopia buy will seem mighty small after the White House.  Especially since Michelle’s mother, Mrs. Robinson, will probably still be living with them.  That woman, in particular, has grown quite fond of having servants come running whenever she rings her silver bell, and the Rezko Mansion is too small for that sort of largesse.

We’ve joked before that we think Dr. Utopia will try to hole up in Iolani Palace in Honolulu once he’s out of office, nursing his wounds Nixon style in warm exile a world away from the Windy City.

Michelle and her mother would love it there.  No one currently resides in the building.  It’s one of the few places on Earth large enough to contain the Obamas’ combined egos.  The only other alternative we can think of is Versailles, but after the way this president has been treating the French, and President Sarkozy in particular, that doesn’t seem like an option.  Besides, it gets cold there.  This is a First Family, you remember, that insists the White House thermostat be kept at a sweltering 79 degrees in the dead of winter — so hot the candles on the older chandeliers wobble and sweat from the heat, in a building that wasn’t designed to be kept as a sauna.

Chicago’s failed Olympics bid included a scheme to re-use the land the temporary Washington Park stadium occupied in the drawings as the site of the Obama Presidential Library, once the Games were over.  That means his Library wouldn’t have started construction until more than three years after he left office, seeing as how Chicago vied for the 2016 Games and Obama’s solitary term ends in January 2013. So, we never believed Chicago’s scheme was going to work out.

We also wonder if Mayor Daley really and truly wants the Obama Library in Chicago.

This is DALEY’S fiefdom.

There’s Daley Bicentennial Park.  The Daley Center.  Daley Plaza.

When this current Mayor dies, we’re sure something even more enormous will be named after him — perhaps Millennium Park will be renamed “Daley Millennium Park”, which would actually have our support, since he did in fact conceive the project and bully everyone imaginable into making it happen.  Kudos to him for that, and we mean it.  It’s our favorite thing about Chicago.

Why would an egomaniac like Richard Daley actively court a rival attraction like an Obama Library and Museum?

It just doesn’t fit with how things are done in Chicago…and isn’t in keeping with Obama’s own need to be worshipped.

It’s our belief he’ll try to maintain and expand his cult of personality after leaving office.  Plus, as a disgraced one-term president, he’ll also be desperate to justify his presidency, which will require a great deal of public speaking and endless presentations reminded everyone of his glory.  For all of this to happen, we believe he’ll want to live close to wherever his Library is, the way Jimmy Carter practically sleeps in the replica of his Oval Office at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

So, we believe the Library will be built less than 30 minutes away from wherever the Obamas move to post-White House.

Everything fits, with this logic, for that Presidential Library to go to Hawaii.  More likely than not, a futuristic I.M. Pei glass monstrosity will be built for this purpose — something hanging over the water, in a circular shape like Obama’s personal brand, his campaign “O” emblem.  Pei is the architect behind the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which he built to look like a giant record player floating on a harbor of Lake Erie.  We picture something similar for Dr. Utopia, with smurf-blue windows and a childlike fixation on using as much campaign branding as possible on a building that will look anachronistic and pathetic before most of the paint’s dried.

“I’m proud of buildings for the first time in my adult life,” we’re sure Michelle will growl, under her breath, as President Palin dedicates the building somewhere in 2015 or so.

But, we’re sure Michelle would be much more proud of the Library were just built right into Iolani Palace itself, ripping out whatever Hawaiian history got in the way of her ambition, the way Michelle said she wanted to scratch President Clinton’s eyes out during the 2008 primary campaign.  We can’t imagine her being any more classy as a former First Lady than she is currently, or how she was on the campaign trail, but we’ll have to wait a few years to see what she really does on the Library’s dedication day.  We don’t plan on ever visiting that place, so we’ll just have to read about it on the Internet or watch it on FOX or CBS — since we don’t believe MSNBC, NBC, or possibly even CNN will be around by then.

Whether Hawaii wants these people or this Library or not, we think that’s where the Obamas are headed.

Whoever is writing these resolutions asking for the Library is really very smart — because then they can say “See, I made this happen!”.

Though, honestly, it’s been really obvious to everyone since November 4th, 2008 where this Library would one day be built.  All of us on the ground here in Chicago knew that once the Obamas tasted life in the White House, they would not deign to return to Chicago.  They host lavish parties every night now, which they can’t do in the Rezko Mansion.

But, just imagine what opulence they could get up to at Iolani Palace!

Even Michelle might crack a smile every week or two then.