MS NOW Exclusive | Hope Comes Home: Inside the Obama Presidential Center - Part 1

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The president, like no other, is back where it all began, opening a new chapter on the south side of Chicago. His legacy and his dream on display. Generosity towards each other. Everybody counts and everybody matters. Her legacy and dream as well. It was important for me that kids like me could be right in their neighborhood and see world-class art. Tonight, we hear from the former president and first lady, and give you a tour of the museum and the sparkling new campus. Welcome to Hope Comes Home, inside the Obama Presidential Center. Good evening, I'm Michelle Norris. Welcome to Hope Comes Home, inside the Obama Presidential Center. The campus is now open to the public. It opened on Juneteenth. And almost everything about this center is meant to be different from any other presidential library or monument that's come before it. The Obamas wanted this place to be an inspiration, a resource, an incubator for leadership. They don't just want you to look back at what he did during his eight years in office. They want you to feel some sense of responsibility for what needs to happen next. Maybe a way to think about the presidential center and what at least we tried to create is some touchstones, some markers, some tools for people to just be reminded of, oh, yeah, this is what our democracy is. This is who we are. We don't have to distrust each other. We don't have to hate each other. We don't have to scapegoat each other. We could actually try to find common ground and work together to do some good. We're going to hear so much more from President Obama tonight, as well as former First Lady Michelle Obama. We had a chance to have a good long chat with both of them, and they talked about their vision for this place and much more. And if you're not here in Chicago, well, you might as well be, because we have gotten an early look inside this sprawling center. And tonight we're going to give you an inside look at the building, the campus, and the story Barack and Michelle Obama want to tell the nation and the world. If you had asked the young Barack Obama what he wanted to be when he grew up, he might have told you that his dream was to be an architect. That boyhood ambition of his helps to explain why the story of the Obama Presidential Center starts not with a traditional library or a monument or even a dusty box of papers from the archives, but with the walls themselves. What you see here is the main building at the Obama Presidential Center, more than 200 feet tall, built from granite, the president handpicked himself. The architects based their design of the building on the image of four hands joined together. They wanted the building to look as if these hands are holding a lantern or a light of some kind, like a giant beacon here on Chicago's south side. And there, as you can see in the top corner curving around the edge of the building, is the text of the speech President Obama delivered on the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. You are America, unconstrained by habit and convention, unencumbered by what is, because you're ready to seize what ought to be. For modern-day presidents, building a library is yet another civic duty once they leave office. Every president since Herbert Hoover has built a presidential library. There are monuments to the men who serve their country, and a kind of glorified warehouse to store all the papers and documents from their time in office. As Obama advisor Marty Nesbitt discovered, they can end up being rather lonely places. Every presidential center I went to, the archives were empty. There was nobody there. It was idle space. When we looked at the history of presidential libraries, we found that sort of they opened with a lot of fanfare and interest. And then over time, as sort of history progresses, time progresses, they become less and less relevant. President Obama decided to break with tradition to preserve his papers inside a fully digital library in lieu of keeping all those files inside a physical building. Instead, he tried to create a place where people, everyday people, not just scholars, would gladly visit over generations. That was the driving mission and the catalyzing challenge for what ultimately became not the Obama Presidential Library, but the Obama Presidential Center. That distinction is important. The Obama Presidential Center is so much more than just a library. I think because they chose Chicago, the south side of Chicago, where it's really home for them, they wanted it to be a gift. And if it had just been a museum, it wouldn't be the gift that it is today. The goal was to create a campus that would remain relevant over decades to make this place feel alive. I've had a chance to watch the project evolve over 10 years from dream to reality. The Obama Foundation assembled a storytelling committee of historians, scholars and storytellers to serve as a resource. I was on that committee and got a firsthand look at the thinking behind the exhibits, the architecture and the commitment to create a campus that served the surrounding community. Today, the Obama Presidential Center is more than a museum or a space for archival study. The $850 million campus has a regulation-sized basketball court, an auditorium and performance space, a recording studio for creators. And since Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in this same neighborhood, it's not surprising to see that the center also has classrooms and meeting spaces for workshops and organizing. There's a teaching kitchen and a fruit and vegetable garden, a flourishing beehive that's part of a sustainable ecosystem. Barbecue grills dot the walking paths. There's also a brand new branch of the Chicago Public Library and a children's playground. That equipment has been stress tested by the president himself. himself. The Obamas want this place to be a community hub, a place for kids to frolic in a fountain when it's hot. The water terrace is named for his mom, Stanley Ann Dunham, or come in from the Chicago cold to check out a book or just hang out in a comfortable chair under the artwork in the lobby. A place where families could picnic or where tourists might enjoy a meal in the restaurant. Almost every space on this campus is open to the public, much of it free of charge. It is designed to be a magnet for people to meet and gather and organize. This is the humility of Barack and Michelle Obama. It's not about them. It's about their place in this arc of American history and about how do we empower everybody else in our communities, in our world, to continue that journey to make the world a better place. The permanent exhibit in the museum could have opened with memorabilia from Barack Obama's childhood or his early life in politics or a list of his accomplishments in office. Instead, it begins with our nation's founding contradictions. The Declaration of Independence spoke of universal equality in a country that also institutionalized slavery. Our nation was rooted in the right to vote, but not for all. Inalienable rights, but not for all. Progress for some alongside poverty for many. So instead of launching immediately into the timeline of Barack Obama's life, you see the historic preamble to his story. Behind glass is a ballot from 1876, when the first black man was elected to the Illinois General Assembly, an early draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Buttons from the Civil Rights Movement, picket signs from labor strikes. The presidential pen used to sign the Voting Rights Act. Artifacts belonging to the people who fought these fights before Barack Obama ever entered politics. The suffragists and the civil rights workers and the labor organizers who put everything on the line to shove our country forward and create the possibility for a black man to be elected president of the United States. the first words you see on the way into the exhibit space remind visitors that america has always been a work in progress this museum surrounds visitors with that idea the push and pull of progress and the evidence that america has always been arguing with itself about who belongs and who gets to decide who counts and who is forced to the margins today i say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. The very existence of this center celebrating America's first black president becomes part of that argument, an assertion that leadership rooted in hope and pluralism can exist in America. Are you fired up? The center opens its doors at a time of deep anxiety and division, a moment when Americans are worried about the values they hold dear and the health of American democracy, worried for good reason. This place is designed to be a reminder from the moment you step in the door that an imperfect, contradictory, and sometimes confounding system can birth a multiracial democracy and make it stronger over time. What will resonate for people of all backgrounds is they will see themselves in these floors. America will see itself. Coming into the space can be heavy. It's powerful. But many of the visitors have told us that it also feels like an oasis. One magazine writer said the exhibits feel like a pep talk from a more hopeful era. And while presidential libraries are not usually associated with merriment, there are elements of joy throughout the center. You will hear the music of the Obama era at the White House. Aretha and Prince and Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder. you'll see art everywhere, stained glass and sculpture and floor to ceiling installations The President and Mrs Obama commissioned 28 different pieces of original art placed all around the campus And then, of course, you can take a trip down memory lane through two presidential terms. Copies of big speeches the President marked up by hand, a binder full of bugs and critters named after Barack Obama, the marshmallow air cannon from the White House science fair. Oh! Good luck charms the president carried around in his pocket. The momentous day in June of 2015 when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. And then later that same day, the president sang Amazing Grace at a funeral for a victim of the Charleston church shooting. Amazing Grace. The place shows visitors the details, big and small, of the Obama White House and the Obama story. By the way, my suitcases were not on top of the car. And not everything here is behind glass. I like this. It's tactile. Here you can lay your own palm on top of a clay imprint of the president's hand when he was just a young boy. or touch samples of the fabric of Mrs. Obama's dresses and gowns or feel the difference in Sonny and Beau's black and white fur as you rub your hand across a display panel that describes their life in the White House. The museum tries to meet you where you are and then draw you in. We wanted to mimic the walk that the president took each day that he was in residence from the residence to the Oval Office. and so he'd walk past the Rose Garden along the colonnade. We hear the birdsong, the rustling of leaves, the sounds of people going about their work to maintain this beautiful space. Someone actually recorded that in that space. We did, yes. We're hearing sound captured from the White House. The official text does not say anything about this, but visitors clearly understand that a walk through the Rose Garden from the Obama years is a stark contrast to that same space today, honoring a paradise that has since been paved. Beyond the trinkets and birdsong, you'll also find artifacts from the big moments, too. The major inflection points of President Obama's eight years in office, the passing of the Affordable Care Act, the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, the financial crisis, the raid that captured Osama bin Laden. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world. that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. A memory shared by White House photographer Pete Souza and longtime advisor Valerie Jarrett, shared, but from very different vantage points. I was like jammed in this corner. This is Brigadier General Brad Webb. He was at the head of the table, and when President Obama walked in, general, he stood up to give up the chair. And President Obama said, no, you stay right where you are. You're doing something. I'm just going to pull up a chair next to you, which is why he's sitting where he is. My butt was literally against a laser printer. So you can imagine the anxiety that they must have been feeling that I felt because of watching their faces. I felt that anxiety. And you talk to any of the men and women that were in that room, when they've done interviews, they use the word anxiety. They all use it. It was palpable. If it had gone wrong, it could have been devastating for the president's political career. From the time he took office, he said to President Bush, I will not stop until I find him. And in fact, a story I have not told before, that afternoon, his chief of staff called me and he said, I need to get a hold of President Bush. Can you get a hold of him? I said, sure. So I called President Bush's chief of staff and I said, President Obama would like to talk to President Bush. And the chief of staff said, why? I said, I can't tell you, but I promise you he'll want to take this phone call. He wanted to tell President Bush first. This place is filled with discoveries like that, with history that surprises you or calls you to action yourself. Alongside the successes of the Obama presidency, you will also see the moments where it fell short. The designers of the museum want you to see the unfinished business, as the president calls it, the work that remains. And so it is perhaps fitting that the end of the museum experience is up here in the clouds, the Sky Room. No more exhibits and artifacts, no buzzy videos to watch or posters to read. Up here, it's just you and your ideas. as you look out through President Obama's own words from Selma with an expansive view of the South Side. It's a place designed for people to ask themselves, now what can I do? Tonight we will roam around the museum and the grounds with the people who built it, and we will hear directly from the former President and Mrs. Obama now that their center, more than a decade in the making, is open to the world. We have so much more to get to tonight, and we're so glad to have you with us for this special event. Hope Comes Home, inside the Obama Presidential Center. We'll be right back. At Power Home Remodeling, we believe every home has a better home inside it. And we do everything in our power to bring it out. Our standard? Setting the new standard with a lifetime commitment to customer support, top-of-the-line products, and highly trained pros. But if you really want to see what we're about, just look across the street. For new windows, roofing, siding, and doors, visit us at PowerHomeRemodeling.com. Power. Our work. Shows. Enjoy even more before you spin with Caesars Palace Online Casino. 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I am so glad that we have a chance to talk to you about this. Ten years in the making? Yeah. Really almost 12 now, right? You start thinking about this in your last year in office. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that would be 2016. So that was 10 years ago when you're starting to conceive of it. And that's when you start thinking about selecting the site and the architects and so forth. How excited were you when you started to think about it? Some people have said it's almost, oh, and now I've got to do this. It's almost like a burden. Did it feel like an opportunity? It didn't feel like a burpee, but it felt like a distraction because at the time you're still working on presidential stuff. So you delegated a bunch of decisions and say, I'll worry about that later. But look, it's been a long journey. You had COVID in between, which obviously threw off schedules and budgets in all kinds of ways. We literally started construction and then suddenly COVID hits. That changed things a lot. We're not alone in that. and the great thing about it though was I think there was a consistency of vision on what we were trying to accomplish with the center that didn't vary much um Michelle and I had a very clear sense that we wanted this to be a place that would attract visitors from around the world that would, you know, record what happened during my presidency, but that more than anything was a vital, alive, dynamic place for the south side of Chicago and the city of Chicago for kids in the neighborhood, that it was going to be used. And that, I think, more than anything, shaped how we thought about what this thing would end up being. The location, in part, was determined by the fact that this is the epicenter of my life in Chicago. within a four or five mile radius of that site. I first came to Chicago. I got my first apartment there. I met my wife there. My children were born there. My wife grew up there. We were, our wedding reception was there. I made my announcement for my first presidential, for my first political campaign there. I taught law school there. So that was part of what made that site so attractive to us. But as you say, one of the things that I learned when I moved to Chicago and one of the things that Michelle had firsthand experience with growing up in Chicago was even though the south side of Chicago runs on the lakefront, just like the north side of Chicago does. for a whole bunch of historical reasons. The parks, the open spaces, the public facilities in those communities were underinvested in relative to other neighborhoods in Chicago. And so for a long time, I would drive through Lincoln Park in the north side of Chicago, and you'd look around, and there are people playing volleyball. There are tennis courts and there are kiosks and there's programming and museums. And then Jackson Park, which was just as beautiful, was empty. Yeah. And that sent a message. And when I was organizing and when I was serving as a state legislator, I was always shocked when you'd hear stories from kids. who would say, well, I've actually never gone to the lakefront. Even though they lived on the south side. They lived in Englewood, but it's just, it felt foreign to them. More to come. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by SoFi, the all finance app to bank borrow and invest Say goodbye to account fees and give your bank balance a glow up with a SoFi high yield savings account Get over eight times the national average savings rate and an epic welcome bonus when you sign up with eligible direct deposit. Sign up at SoFi.com slash SXM. SoFi checking and savings offer through SoFi Bank N.A. member FDIC. Terms apply. Have you ever considered surrounding your house with a moat to keep it safe? Would you hire a professional wrestler as a bodyguard for your car? Okay, maybe you wouldn't go that far. But if you'd go to great lengths to avoid dealing with your insurance company, you might have Insuranoia. And if you have Insuranoia, you should have NJM Insurance. They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders. Start relieving your Insuranoia today at NJM.com. I'm Cindy Lauper with fellow Cosentix advocate, Chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis, with psoriatic arthritis, and Dr. Panico will talk about the possible connection. Cosentix secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150 milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentix. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough. Had a vaccine or planned to. Or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTICS or cosentics.com slash Cindy. Welcome, His Majesty, King Abdullah, to the White House. Dem Fall der Mauer, das werden wir dem amerikanischen Volk nie vergessen. I think what she said was good. So this is early, this is May 8th, 2009. The President had only been there, had only been in office a few months. A few months, and this little kid comes in with his dad. and says, my friends tell me my haircut is just like yours. Oh, my goodness. He's five years old. And with that, Barack Obama bends over and says, go ahead and touch it. There's the exact moment that Jacob's touching his head. This picture says so much. This is America's first black president. Little black boy, African-American boy. This is in the Oval Office, yes? This is in the Oval Office. and I think it really resonated with young kids of color. Here's this five-year-old African-American kid touching the head of the President of the United States that looks like him. The Oval Office is almost synonymous with the American presidency. So in keeping with tradition, the Obama Presidential Center has an exact replica of the Oval Office, just as it was during President Obama's time in the White House. It's already one of the most popular exhibits in the museum. Visitors curl in long lines around the outside wall for their chance to sit behind the resolute desk, their chance to peek at the remarkable treasures in this space. The lamps, the curtains, the wallpaper, the trinkets on the shelves. every detail painstakingly recreated to look just like the original. Every detail except one. A detail everyone who's ever spent time in the real Oval Office will make sure you know. Do we think these are real apples? I do not. He actually ate the apples also. Yes, we all did. Everybody came in and took apples, particularly kids. Don't try to eat themselves. No, I figured those aren't real apples. What do you want people to take from this space? Is there some small... Not an apple, because they're not real anymore. That was Michael Smith. He's the interior designer who was chosen by President Obama in 2009 for the makeover of the real Oval Office. It was a case where Mr. Smith goes to Washington and then to Chicago to make sure the replica here is just right. Michael Smith is a close personal friend of the former president. Smith understands how the president thinks and how he works. And on our personal tour, he explained how they work together on every detail inside this room. including the apples. Well, here we are. Yes. In the Oval Office. Yes. Almost exactly as it was during those eight years. I mean, except for the view, it's pretty accurate. I always have, I have to tell you, I always start to tear a little bit. When you're watching, you still do? Still. Because it's so representational, you know, it reminds of eight years. And you were integral in creating this room. Now, it's interesting, though. So you didn't change the Oval Office right away because if we, you know, let's go back on the Wayback Machine. We remember that President Obama inherited a financial crisis. Relatively intense financial crisis. Yes. And so a decision was made that you were going to leave the Oval as it was, as he inherited it because? Well, it was just people were suffering. There was too much instability. and he being very moral and concerned would never, it just wasn't the right time. It wasn't the right time. So I think it took a long time. It gave me a chance to plan. And I think things like this carpet we're standing on is text, right? My saying was text. This is a president who loves text. I think text is so important to him. So to give him quotes that meant something to him, which is the basis of his carpet, was something much more interesting than a vase of flowers or cherubs or, you know, this is sort of fitted to him. The shelves are crazy with the detail. So one thing that's really interesting is this obsession with trying to find the detail, the thing that had meaning. When he called me, there were plates. They're Chinese. These bookcases for Reagan, Bush, had held a series of Chinese exports plates that had the presidential seal on them. It was just not his thing. So he called me and he said, I really don't like plates. I don't want plates. What can we have? I don't want dishes, I think is what he said. So I called the Smithsonian, and I said, what do you have in the way of workable models of patents? And they had, like, incredible, the cotton gin. This is a telegraph model. So that's what this is. It's a working model. I mean, this is a recreation of that working model. Samuel L.B. Morse. Working telegraph. Samuel Morse. Right. And my whole thing with these was, like, look, these are pieces of American ingenuity, American exceptionalism. They were beautiful sculptural, and they were so Barack Obama, right? So he would be curious. and he loved it. So the Smithsonian... Again, words. Words and an idea, a crystallization, a three-dimensional model of American exceptionalism and invention, literally invention. When you were creating it for the first time, how do you create a room that is warm and inviting but also has a sense of let's get down to work. My agenda was not to make it more propagandistic. I felt like you walk in, the room already has you. You know, you can't feel like it's not an impressive and sort of dramatic space because of the volume, because of the light, because of all that. So I really wanted people to be comfortable. I've got some stuff to do. That was what I called and kind of got from President Obama, was he just wanted people, he just wanted to get down to it, but he wanted people to come at their best and be disarmed in a way by him. Could you make the sofas too comfortable? You could have, and I didn't. Because the idea is that you don't spend a lot of time. Correct. It's a very special thing to be invited into this space. Let me tell you something really interesting about this. One, there are three sofas in the White House, the same, because they're constantly being touched up because people, A, wipe sweat because they're nervous, their palms, So they touch the sofa. So sometimes it has to be touched. So there's always one that is rotated out for cleaning. But that's not the thing that really is the most important. The most important thing is that men who come, women probably too, but definitely men, polish their shoes. So their shoes are newly polished. And in their sort of anxiety, they pull their feet up and rub the shoe polish on the back of the sofas. So the sofas have to leave all the time to take black shoe polish or brown shoe polish out. But think about it. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from to walk into this room, it's that feeling, that sort of sense of awe about being in this room. Many other presidents have flowers or artifacts on their desk. You chose apples. You had something to do with that. I had something to do with it. The florists of the White House called me and they said, what kind of flowers does President Obama want on his desk? Very simple but somewhat impactful question. So I said, I'm going to have to call you back. And I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought about Johnny Appleseed, America, all these things. And I said, listen, I called him and I said, he's not such a flower guy. But I said, I have a shaker bowl I'm sending it to. And what I want you to do is fill it with apples every day because apples are America. They're no nonsense. They're healthy. They're, you know, it's just it's such an American idea, more in a sense than the formality and lack of hospitality in a way of flowers. So what happened, which I had no idea, is they would lose 20, 30 apples a day. Someone would take them as a keepsake. He would start to eat them. He still eats a couple of apples a day, which started as a result of that. Staff members would come in and eat them. Children would take them and eat them. So it had a life about it, a vitality about it, which was kind of amazing. Unlike the actual global office, thousands of people will come to this space. Little kids can come. Little kids can sit on the desk. Anyone can come. I hope they don't try to, like Caroline Kennedy, go through underneath the desk. Have you ever sat on the desk? You know, I never have. This is your chance. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. You don't want to sit? No, it's Barack Obama's. It's President Obama's desk. I don't want to. I'd be sharing it with the public. Lots of people will have a chance to sit there. But I think they still know it's President Obama's desk. And that's the thing I want them to take from it. Got all the patents that we had in there. And I know the couches are the same because Michael Smith knew where to get the fabric. They did a good job. Looks like it's supposed to. The first thing you may notice about this piece of paper is how tidy and neat the handwriting is. Around 2015, President Obama reached for his yellow legal pad to sketch out his to-do list, his policy roadmap for the remaining two years of his presidency. The header up top underlined in ink says domestic agenda. He ticks through the obvious stuff, negotiate the budget, take care of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, known as the ACA, finish implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, the landmark Wall Street reform bill. And then there are the more ambitious goals criminal justice reform close the gun show loophole voting rights legislation Looking back at it now that list is stunning in its ambition For all he got done over eight years in office President Obama did not get as far as he wanted on criminal justice reform or gun safety. He did not get to sign new voting rights legislation. His list on its face might seem like a counterintuitive choice to be displayed in a presidential museum, a big yellow, neatly scrawled reminder to the country of all the ways his administration came up short. For all the very real progress America's made over the past seven years, we still have some unfinished business. But for President Obama, that reminder is intentional. The unfinished business of his administration is part of the story that he wanted to tell. Displaying the list of priorities is a deliberate way of reminding Americans that governing is difficult, that friction is the price we pay for pushing toward change, and that progress is now up to the American people. They have inherited what President Obama likes to call the work that remains at a time when this country is wrestling with deep questions about citizenship, democracy, and America's place in the world. When you and the First Lady started thinking about this, you had no idea what would be going on in America. You have to do a little bit of sort of crystal ball thinking. as you're putting this together, how did you make sure that as you were thinking about the design and the exhibits and the message, that you were able to meet the moment? You know, I don't know that we were trying to prognosticate and say, all right, well, here's where things are going to be, and so we want to make sure we do this or that. The words that are wrapped around the top of the tower. The speech from Silma. The anniversary is the anniversary of the Selma speech. I've often said that may not be my very best speech, but it is most representative of what I believe. It captures my politics as well as anything. And. It's been pretty consistent. This belief in an American story that begins with these amazing words, this declaration that we are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. And but it was imperfect. And then we struggle to make that ideal real. And that has always stood in opposition with a different idea of America that is based on caste and privilege and excluding people and dominating people. And those two contrasting stories about America, a lot of my speeches, a lot of my politics has been arguing this is the better story. And so I think it may seem as if right now the story told at the presidential center is a response to this particular moment. But actually, I think it's a response to what has always been there in America. You know, it's that part of America that says black people don't belong or that says that women need to be in their place and gay folks need to be in the closet. And poor people need to stop complaining because a handful of people are the ones who are creating the wealth and they deserve to keep it. And we don't need to take care of the vulnerable and we don't need to make public investments in our kids. That story's always been there. And I think sometimes we get confused in thinking that these two stories are completely separate. They're intertwined. Right. And which is why it's possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder. And that does not negate his greatness. It simply acknowledges that there is a profound, deep flaw in these founding fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools. And which is true of all of us. Right. It's true of every president. It's that we're this mixed bag. We've got contradictions and embody the country's contradictions. And so I do think that what's striking is right now we've got a president in the White House who seems to have embraced and embodied in a way we haven't seen in a very long time this other story. And maybe that make your story more important. I don't know if it makes it more important, but I am glad that we are planting a flag, that we are hopefully creating a repository, a vessel through which people can be reminded of this better story. Maybe a way to think about the presidential center and what at least we tried to create is some touchstones, some markers, some tools for people to just be reminded of, oh, yeah, this is what our democracy is. This is who we are. We don't have to distrust each other. We don't have to hate each other. We don't have to scapegoat each other. We could actually try to find common ground and work together to do some good. The idea of these two stories is interesting because America has been having an argument with itself. Right. We say one thing in our founding documents. We do something quite different in the way that we construct society. And the argument that you're talking about and the stories that you're talking about, you know, the exclusion of people of color, the exclusion of black people, the exclusion of women, the exclusion, the Chinese Exclusion Act. You know, these are things that we know are true to the American story, but they don't always appear in presidential libraries. You decided to travel a different path. You decided to tell a different story in a different way so that you lean into that sort of thorny terrain around the founding contradictions. What was the thought process that led you there? Because that is unusual. Well, yeah, for folks who come to visit, the first thing they'll actually see is in the museum is a copy of the Declaration of Independence and and a pretty long description and displays of the struggle to realize that that ideal that's embodied in the Declaration. but hopefully what they'll also see even when the exhibits are about my presidency that there were people who disagreed with what i did that uh there was a lot of unfinished business in my presidency and you talk about that yeah and that um and that there was something like the tea party that emerges during my presidency and it's useful for people to understand where does that come from? But I do think it's important to ground what happened during my presidency in this broader sweep of American history. And as I said before, you know, this idea that, you know, on the right, and you see this in the Trump administration, this idea that any suggestion or criticism that America was anything other than perfect is unpatriotic. Is a suggestion that you hate your country. Is a suggestion that you hate your country. Now, the flip side is among progressives, sometimes there is this sense of, well, So the only true narrative of America is this one of oppression and exclusion. And I reject both those views. I think it's complicated. As I said, I think it's possible to celebrate the founders and appreciate what they did, as well as look objectively and critically at how their values strayed very far from what they professed. professed. I think it's impossible to say that there were populists in rural America and the South and white America that really did believe in equality and justice for white folks and helped to make progress in giving more people opportunity and not ignore the fact that that was to the exclusion of others. And that's the kind of complexity that I hope people get a little bit of a sense of. You want people to actually marinate that when they visit your center. And the reason is this, because I think when you understand the complexities of America and the contradictions of America, I don't think it makes you love it less. I think it makes you love it more. And I think it also makes you more resilient because then during periods like we're in right now, where for a lot of folks, it's crazy and you feel despair and anger. That perspective allows you to then say, OK, we've gone through crazy periods like this before. We've gone through mean periods before. before. It fortifies you to say that, yes, this has been part of the journey that we've been here before. And then there's no reason to suggest that we can't get through this one either. We have another hour of hope comes home inside the Obama Presidential Center. Stay with us. So, you know, the uneasy, anxious feeling you get when you think about dealing with your insurance company? Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called insuranoia. 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