Whether Barack Obama returns to the craft of short stories or makes with the memoirs, chances are he will be doing much of his writing not in Chicago, but in Washington, where he and his family have chosen to reside.
The ostensible reason for the Obamas’ decision is that their younger daughter is halfway through high school, and her parents are reluctant to yank her away from friends and classmates. This reason may even be genuine. But cynics tend to think, and Obama’s admirers hope, that the ex-president wants to maintain a partisan presence, in what is now Donald Trump’s Washington.
Whatever the reason, count The Scrapbook among the minority of local residents who are not so pleased with the former president’s choice. As things stand, the purview of the Secret Service in the life of the nation’s capital continues to grow: Security is tighter than ever; more avenues and exits and entrances are permanently blocked; and several times daily, downtown traffic comes to a high-alert standstill when, say, Joe Biden grabs lunch. (Please, Mike Pence, just order a pizza.) To extend this supreme annoyance to a residential neighborhood—even a ritzy one like Kalorama—will make daily life in Washington, D.C., a little less convenient.
Obama’s decision is unusual, too. Former presidents are a little like retired ministers or ex-college presidents: As a courtesy to their successors, they tend to clear out of town when they lay down their burdens. Thomas Jefferson went back home to Monticello; Harry Truman moved into his late mother-in-law’s house near Kansas City; Jimmy Carter returned to Plains, while Gerald Ford relocated to Palm Springs. Only Woodrow Wilson—who had been felled by a stroke and owned no permanent residence—hung around in the capital. Yes, the Clintons did take a place in D.C., but that was in addition to the house in Chappaqua—the way you know the New York address was their primary residence is that’s where they put the email server.
Of course, Barack Obama is welcome to live wherever he wants. But Washington, as they say, is not a very big town, and Obama’s choice to stick around and play the local hero strikes The Scrapbook as all-too-typically ungracious.
