LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Obama Presidential Center opens to the public today, a day after dignitaries, celebrities and three former presidents attended its dedication. While not a presidential library, the Obama Center is trying to do what most actual presidential libraries do - shape a former president's legacy. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Former President Obama has been out of office nearly 10 years. He remains a very popular figure. A new CNN poll out this week shows him with a 57% approval rating among all Americans. For comparison, President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden both score in the 30s in the same survey. Ask a Democratic politician about Obama's legacy, and answers like this one from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are common.
GRETCHEN WHITMER: I think that President Obama has inspired so many people to go into public service.
GONYEA: And she says this about the Obama Presidential Center.
WHITMER: The museum, I think, will be a place - a kind of a ground zero for training, inspiring and encouraging people to go into the service of the public. And it's a wonderful part of his legacy too.
GONYEA: Tina Tchen is a veteran of the Obama White House and is now vice president of the Obama Foundation. She says the center's museum tells the story of the work that's been done by the president and his team over many years.
TINA TCHEN: And now what we're trying to do is empower people to realize that the ability to - whatever it is they want to achieve, that ability to achieve that is something that's within them. And they can do that, no matter who they are.
GONYEA: The museum will be the epicenter of how Obama is remembered. His legacy as a candidate and office holder who sought to bridge racial divides and promote inclusiveness is viewed in the context of his successor, Donald Trump. Voters turned to Trump in two of the three presidential elections that followed Obama's time in office. And Trump's attacks on Obama, beginning during Obama's first campaign for president, continue to this day. Trump was neither invited nor did his name come up at yesterday's dedication. Nonetheless, there were rebuttals like this from former first lady Michelle Obama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHELLE OBAMA: The lies about your birthright, your faith, your patriotism, the outrage when you stated the biological fact that if you'd had a son, that he too would be Black. Yet you were unflappable at every turn - always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view.
GONYEA: For his part, Obama addressed the audience at the ceremony by dismissing the notion that the work he has done is now history.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: We can learn from the past, but America's story isn't frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written. Not by one person or a few people, not by Barack and Michelle or anybody with a fancy title or a high office, but by all of us.
GONYEA: Instead, he said, he wants the center with his name on it to inspire hope and change, like his first campaign, well into the future.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF FELBM'S "SOMNAMBULANT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
