Washington, Dec. 2 (ANI): Even though President Barack Obama's second-term inauguration is still weeks away, the work of his presidential library is set to start 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, Politico reports.
It, however, requires the kind of personal fundraising that Obama clearly dislikes, full of potential pitfalls that led his predecessors into trouble, the report said.
According to the report, 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 dollars.
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, the report said.
"It's like a third-term contribution," Skip Rutherford, a longtime friend of Bill Clinton who was involved in the planning for the library in Little Rock, said.
"These are the friends and associates and supporters of a particular president, and they all want attention from him," Rutherford added.
According to the report, Clinton's library cost 165 million dollars and George W. Bush has brought in more than 300 million dollars for his library, which is 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, the report said.
Presidential libraries are constructed and endowed with private funds, before being handed over to the National Archives, it added.
According to the report, 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, the report said.
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, the report added. (ANI)
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