Scott Olson/Getty Images In The Arena Obama Makes It Harder to See the Arc of History Bend My old boss’ post-presidential center is a missed opportunity.

John Gans is director of communications and research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. He served as chief speechwriter at the Defense Department until January 2017.

In July 2012, I was walking with a fellow doctoral student out of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library into the muggy summer air of Little Rock, Arkansas, when we began talking about the challenges of historical research on modern presidents like Barack Obama, then running for reelection. With millions of emails sent in modern administrations and severe classification limits, it would not be easy to find the history in his presidential library. Still, we both agreed on one upside: Chicago, the presumed location Obama’s center, would be far less humid in the summer.

Unfortunately, though right about the weather, we were wrong on the research. The former president’s foundation and the National Archives have announced that Obama’s presidential center will not host a working research facility or even host his White House’s papers but instead host the papers only digitally. Made on the promise of online access’s efficiency and accessibility, this disappointing decision will instead make research into the 44th presidency much harder and, unfortunately, far less helpful for those trying to understand today’s chaotic politics.


None of that is easy to write. Since that summer day in Little Rock, I finished my dissertation and went on to work for President Obama as a political appointee and speechwriter at the Defense Department. Sitting at the Pentagon, I saw one piece of the historical puzzle of a foreign policy I was proud to put words to, but I also looked forward to searching for the other pieces in the archives including for a forthcoming book on the history of the National Security Council. As a result, I took every opportunity to prod White House colleagues to keep their files organized for historians.

After all, archival work is hard enough. Robert Caro, author of the definitive biography series of President Lyndon B. Johnson, recently explained the advice he received as a young reporter about researching. Caro recalled an editor told him, “Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddam page.” The author’s dedication to do just that looms large for would-be historians: As I worked a few years ago at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, there was a shelf at the back of the reading room with a strip of masking tape that read “Caro.” Whenever bored or bleary-eyed, and sometimes both, I would catch a glimpse of that name, I would be re-motivated and promptly turn the next (goddam) page.

The drudgery of archival work is just one of its challenges. Technology has made it easier to narrow searches and camera phones save time spent at the photocopier, but digital advances have also dramatically increased the number of pages to turn, especially with the 300 million emails sent by Blackberry-addicted aides in the Obama White House, not to mention those of the president himself. Caro’s advice notwithstanding, most researchers know it is impossible to turn every page—there are 44 million documents at the Johnson Library alone. But it’s less the sheer volume of papers than it is the expense: Few can afford hours, days, and weeks far from home except those with either the resources or perches at affluent institutions.

For that reason, there is something admirable about the Obama foundation’s decision to opt for putting documents online. Any move that makes it easier for everyone from Caro to a Chicago high school student to review the files is a good thing, but anyone who has done this research knows that online archival work is not nearly as illuminating. Even for the “first digital president,” as the Obama foundation has called him, there is no replacement for putting one’s digits on the pages themselves as can be done at the other presidential libraries.

A digital-only archive as is now planned by the Obama Foundation and the National Archives is bad for research. Online digging is driven and limited by clunky search terms. It is done without easy access to the expert advice of archivists who know which line is an errant pen mark and which is the president’s signature. And by putting papers only online, it limits the opportunities for happenstance, and the “pure luck” as Caro called it, when one uncovers history in a file next to the folder requested or even delivered by mistake.

Every researcher has a story like this. One long afternoon in the comfortable, sun-filled reading room at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, I was looking into Reagan’s decisions to deploy U.S. Marines into Lebanon. Amid dozens of folders and boxes, I found several versions of a September 1983 cable with an update on the latest news from the ground where more than 1,000 American servicemembers were under fire at the Beirut airport.

The yellowing and wrinkling pages all looked the same. But after spreading each of the documents out on one of the room’s long wood tables, I noticed a small notation at the top of one – “I consider this very important. R.R.” That little note, that stroke of pure luck confirmed with a knowledgeable librarian, helped me instantly understood why despite the danger, the Marines stayed in harm’s way and tragically why, several weeks after Reagan wrote those words, 241 would be killed in a bombing in October.

No one was ever going to be able to spread out or attempt to turn every one of the millions of pages of documents from the Obama White House, but now they will not even be able to try. For a president who liked to encourage people to “bend that arc of history towards justice,” this misguided decision will make it harder to see how Obama bent it himself. More consequentially, at a time when the country is still struggling to navigate the caustic politics the Obama presidency left behind, making his administration’s record harder to see will remove an important historical record to understand.