WASHINGTON – President Obama, who ran on changing Washington and still expresses exasperation at how the town works, may become the first inside-the-beltway ex-president in nearly 100 years to live here.
Obama, who still waxes about his beloved Chicago and its sports teams, is keeping open the idea of staying in D.C. when his term ends in 2016, citing the needs of his family and his younger daughter, Sasha.
“Cause she’s, you know, obviously they – and Michelle – have made a lot of sacrifices on behalf of my cockamamie ideas, the running for office and things,” Obama told ABC’s Barbara Walters.
By the end of his term, Malia will be off in college, but Sasha will be in the middle of her sophomore year at DC’s prestigious Sidwell Friends school.
“So we’ve got to – you know we gotta make sure that she’s doing well … until she goes off to college,” Obama said. “Sasha will have a big say in where we are,” the president said.
If he lingers here, Obama would be the first ex-prez to stay in D.C. since Woodrow Wilson, who was born in Virginia and decamped to an elegant row house in D.C. when he left office in 1921.
Obama has maintained en elegant home in Chicago’s Hyde Park that he purchased for $1.65 million before his 2008 election, when he was flush with book royalties. Obama will have stratospheric earning potential as a former president, and can afford to live wherever he wants.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported last weekend that the University of Chicago has the edge to house Obama’s presidential library, although two other Chicago schools are in the running.