Recent Presidential Libraries More Controversial, Carry Less Gravitas

The first time I stepped inside a presidential library was during college, when I was staying in New York City and a friend and I went up to Boston to see the Kennedy Library. It was impressive, reverential, and had a steady stream of visitors. Years later while on a business trip I stopped into the Nixon library in Yorba Linda. It had the same aura, but in a west coast sort of way. The Nixon library is even featured prominently in the film "Hanging Up", which includes a scene where a harried Meg Ryan picks up the wrong phone while planning an event at the library and instead of talking to her sister, Georgia, she hears a bit of the infamous missing minutes of tape. In the movie "My Fellow Americans", Jack Lemmon plays a tight-assed cross between Richard Nixon and a latter day Herbert Hoover and James Garner is clearly a parody of Bill Clinton. They are ex-presidents on the run, incognito as they can be, in a road picture that at one point finds them hiding out in Jack Lemmon's seldom visited presidential library. Even in the comedic setting the library has touches of the Nixon library, even if the bobble heads seems out of place.

But, our current president and the most recent former president, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have had nothing but controversy in trying to set up their libaries and their legacies. Clinton, whose library is in Little Rock, had some right wing Republican donors trying to set up an 'alternative presidential library across the street. Similarly, President Bush wanted to set his up at his wife's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, but the regents and students felt the President's stance on war and other issues was at odds with Methodist theology and teaching.

How did we get to this place where we won't even let a president establish his legacy through the time honored tradition of a presidential library? Herbert Hoover hardly left the Oval Office at the height of presidential popularity (whenever a president's numbers are down they always compare his rating with that of Hoover at the height of the Great Depression). But Hoover not only has a marvelous library in Iowa, he also has a think tank named after him at nothing less than Stanford University. Richard Nixon waved defiantly as he entered Air Force One for the last time after resigning from office in the wake of Watergate, but his library is a testament to the many facets of his presidency. It is also one of the most frequently visited presidential libraries, and not just for its seaside location. Lots of people also visit the library of the first President Bush, HW, in College Station, Texas, and also of LBJ in Austin, Texas, which was lovingly maintained in every detail his his widow, Lady Bird, especially the gardens. And the Ford Library in Ann Arbor on the campus of the University of Michigan also gets many, many visitors, Democrat, Republican, and Green Party member alike.

So, why all the fuss about Clinton, and now Bush? Granted, the Clinton library is a little bit of an acquired taste, what with it being headquartered inside a WalMart with an attached drive thru MacDonald's and all. And, sure, most presidential libraries do not have 'adult only' sections full of vintage 1990s issues of Hustler and Swank, but once you get past the deli aisle and move into the real stacks of the library there are volumes and volumes of fascinating books from the president's personal library as well as papers that tell a story of history in the making. The manual on breast augmentation dos and donts alone has changed many a patriotic American's life. And the music, seriously, you can never hear the classic "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Baby Got Back" too many times in an acedemic setting.

And, SMU, I get the religious issues, seriously. But, it was bad enough that the fire at the Crawford ranch last summer wiped out more than half the president's personal library (and most of his crayons) when it swept through the bathroom, but the remaining "Bugs and Friends" and "Marvel Heroes" have been thoughtfully preserved with many of the pages remaining pristine and uncolored, and even the pages that are already colored in show a unique artistic side of the president and an out of character penchant for not remaining within the set lines. If ever a personal library demonstrated an unseen flexibility and willingness to move in a completely different direction, page 17, where the president colors Captain America in green, yellow and orange, eschewing completely the earlier palette of red, white and blue - this is the library to debunk the Bush myths. And again, the music, is special. John Mellencamp, Pink, Dixie Chicks, Kanye West, and if you put on headphones you can listen to Whoopi Goldberg read from volumes 1-17 of "Bushisms". There's even an arcade with a Dick Cheney skeet shooting game...

Sadly, in America today we seem to want to hold onto the caricatures etched by the popular media of our heads of state to the point of resisting something as traditional as an unchallenged, undoctored presidential library in a geographically suitable setting. My point, and I do have one, is, the media really ripped through Richard Nixon, and "Saturday Night Live" opened many a show with Chevy Chase tumbling down this stairway or that tarmac in a parody of President Ford, but down the road their libaries reflect the men they really were, the presidential legacies they truly left behind. However history is to remember each of these heads of state, including our two most recent, this nation should really get back to the basics of respecting the office and separating it from the man (or woman - who knows?). A sure sign that we have ceased as a nation to demonize and belittle our very leaders, would be to let go of the political resistance to the actual legacy that a presidential library represents. No, the Clinton library isn't in a WalMart and no, to the best of my knowledge there are no plans to put any coloring books in the eventual Bush library, but, upon leaving office and entering the historical realm - we should be offering our former presidents a continued respect, at least with regard to this one, time honored tradition. When you walk into a presidential library there is a certain pomp and circumstance, a special reverence, yes, but there is also just the plain legacy, laid out in historical detail, no pundits, no critics, no cheerleaders. It is the place where the average American can openly revisit a small slice of history. And we should keep it that way.