It was recently announced that President Obama plans to raise $1 billion to build his presidential library in Chicago. By any standard, that's an eye-popping figure. It's nearly as much as Obama spent on his 2012 campaign for president.

In the Chicago Tribune, Dan McGinn has a column that's well worth your time. It puts the $1 billion figure in historical perspective:

In the last 60 years, the cost of building and maintaining presidential libraries has accelerated and expanded in ways that Roosevelt and Truman never imagined. Lyndon Johnson's library cost 10 times as much as Truman's. Ronald Reagan's was triple the cost of Johnson's. George H.W. Bush doubled the Reagan budget. Bill Clinton then doubled Bush. George W. Bush raised $500 million to build and endow his shrine. And now Obama is set to double that mark. So, in a span of about 60 years, the price of a presidential library has gone from less than $2 million to $1 billion and counting. Where does this end? Would a President Hillary Clinton seek to top both her predecessor and her husband with a $2 billion extravaganza in New York? Or would a President Donald Trump ... OK, we know the kind of facility he would build.

While the academic study of presidents is important, it's not this important. And spending this much on a facility to house the records of a man who was more or less the least transparent president in modern history, combined with the fact that the ambitious and controversial plans for the library involve destroying a good deal of rare and precious greenspace in a black working class neighborhood in Chicago ... well, the irony abounds.

Obama is undoubtedly good at raising money. It would be nice if he put that skill to better use than building and endowing such a needlessly expensive library.