Obama’s shadow government grows roots in Washington

The Obamas have said they plan to remain in D.C. while their younger daughter, Sasha, finishes high school at Sidwell Friends. After leaving the executive mansion in January, the family settled into a rental home owned by Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart and his wife, Giovanna Gray Lockhart, an 8,200-square-foot home that was built in 1921 and renovated in 2011. The Obamas still own a Georgian-style home in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, the city that will house the Obama presidential library.

No ex-president has ever stuck around the nation’s capital to vex and undermine his successor. Of course, Obama is unlike any president the United States has ever had. Even failed, self-righteous presidents like Jimmy Carter, who has occasionally taken shots at his successors, didn’t stay behind in Washington to obstruct and disrupt the new administration. From his Washington home, Obama directs Organizing for Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors and that is at the head of Obama’s network of left-wing nonprofit groups. OfA has upwards of 250 offices across America. His other nonprofit, the Barack Obama Foundation, is building Obama’s presidential library.