After dancing with his wife, Michelle, the former president waved good-bye to his hometown crowd, even played a little air guitar and then strolled away. Nearly 10 years after leaving office, Obama's presidential center had finally been dedicated on a sunny, early-summer day here.

But there was still a former president lingering, the last VIP yet to go backstage. And for a moment, when Joe Biden stood behind the podium, it seemed as though he may try to speak over the music to the departing crowd. It soon became clear he was only joking, but not before his wife, Jill, came back from backstage to retrieve her husband. Biden's playful lunge for the lectern on the way out was an almost too-perfect metaphor for how Obama will be remembered, as much for what came after as his own presidency.

That tension was visible in the second row of the stage, where Obama rivals-turned-misbegotten-heirs, Biden and Hillary Clinton, sat on opposite ends from one another. They were separated by their spouses, George W. and Laura Bush, and Clinton's eyebrow-blazing comments this week that Biden "made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country" by seeking re-election. The only living president not present, Donald Trump, was absent but pulsated through withering indictments that neither Obama named because their target was self-evident.

This was Obama's day and he was the only former elected official to address his former aides, old friends and legion of admirers. Yet the prospect of an Obama redemption, or perhaps continuation, was also just as easy to glimpse. It was down front in the audience, where two sons of Illinois, JB Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel, sat not far from Pete Buttigieg, Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom. And it was on display further from the stage, where a diverse array of young people and their families came to see a now-grey and well-into-AARP-eligibility man tell them about hope, change and their capacity to make America greater than it has ever been.

A New Generation Waiting

"There is a new generation out there ready to write the next chapter of our story," Obama said at the end of his remarks, alluding to the country. The unveiling of presidential libraries has always been one of those political rituals that blends past, present, and future. When Jimmy Carter spoke at the opening of John F. Kennedy's library in 1979, the slain brother's legacy was still being shaped by the political movements that followed.

For Obama, the question is whether his own story will be defined by the promise of his 2008 campaign, the policy achievements of his two terms, or the tumultuous succession that followed. The center itself stands as a monument to his presidency, but the political landscape surrounding it suggests the final chapter has yet to be written. The young people in the audience, the ambitious governors and senators in the front row, and the absent former president facing federal indictments all point to a legacy still very much in play.