Dubya's Half-Billion Tower Of Babel
President's 'truest believers' plan mother of all presidential libraries and conservative think tanks
WorkingForChange
06.17.05
After six years of incompetence and cronyism, a failed war against terrorism, the quagmire that is Iraq, wars against
science, the environment, corporate regulation and the public's right-to-know, a chummy working relationship with the
country's most reactionary conservative evangelical Christians, a politicized faith-based initiative, giveaways to the
energy industry, tax relief for the wealthy, a culture of corruption culminating in the forced resignations and
imprisonment of some of the administrations key soldiers, and an attack on fundamental democratic rights and values, the
Bush Administration is hatching plans to celebrate itself with a $500 million library (the costliest presidential
library ever) to be built after Bush's second term is over.
In what is being called "their final campaign," Bush's "truest believers" are aiming to raise a half-billion dollars for
the mother of all presidential libraries. The library and an attached think tank -- which will pay for conservative
research -- is being earmarked for the Dallas, Texas campus of Southern Methodist University, where First Lady Laura
Bush is an alumna and a trustee.
Inside Higher Ed recently pointed out that SMU, which had been competing for the library with Baylor University and the
University of Dallas, appears to have cleared the final hurdle to getting the project when the university "won a court
fight over its right to demolish a condo complex the university had purchased, in part to have land for the Bush
project."
That was before university faculty, administration, and staff questioned the ideological underpinnings of the project.
Bringing back the Pioneers
In late-November, the New York Daily News reported that "Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans" said that
"Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call 'megadonations' of $10 million to $20
million a pop." According to the Daily News, "Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and
captains of industry as potential 'mega' donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in
the new year ... . The rest of the cash will come from donors willing to pony up $25,000 to $5 million."
(While the donors to Bush 43's library will remain anonymous, in February 2006, the Associated Press reported that among
the donors to Papa Bush's presidential library located at Texas A University in College Station were a sheik from the United Arab Emirates, who contributed at least $1 million, the
state of Kuwait, the Bandar bin Sultan family, the Sultanate of Oman, King Hassan II of Morocco, the amir of Qatar, and
the former Korean prime minister. China also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the library. In addition, funds were
received from the late Kenneth Lay, the former head of Enron, and Dick Cheney, the current Vice President.)
"Presidential libraries," the Daily News pointed out, "are run by the National Archives and Records Administration, but
building costs must come from private donations. Bells and whistles, like an institute or an academic program like
Bush's father's public service school at Texas A, are also extras."
The really big extra embedded into this project appears to be what Bush insiders are calling the Institute for
Democracy. Modeled after the Hoover Institution, a long-time conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford
University in Palo Alto, California, Bush's institute operation would hire conservative scholars and "give them money to
write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider told the Daily News. This would be the
post-administration version of a policy they established during his reign; paying columnists to advocate for
administration policy.
According to the newspaper, "The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the
funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to
spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans."
While it may seem counterintuitive, it isn't all that surprising that while Bush's popularity continues to plummet, and
his administration's policies gain no traction with the American people, his handlers would already be hatching the
mother of all redemption plans. Perhaps Bush's close advisors are hoping that Bush won't have to spend his entire
post-presidency trying to rebuild his standing amongst the American people and history a la Richard Nixon.
However, as with many of the Bush Administration's grand ventures, this one too appears to be running into opposition;
the SMU faculty, administrators and staff -- a group that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might call "dead
enders."
According to Inside Higher Ed, "Faculty critics say that although many of them disagree with President Bush's policies,
they would not object to a library-oriented archive and museum ... and they say that in discussions with professors, the
university has discussed a vision for such a Bush center. But creating an academic center with a specific goal of
boosting the Bush image and agenda strikes many professors as antithetical to a university's academic values."
In a letter dated December 16 and addressed to R. Gerald Turner, president of the Board of Trustees, members of SMU's
Perkins School of Theology urged the board to "reconsider and to rescind SMU's pursuit of the presidential library."
We count ourselves among those who would regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically
egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international
treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their
rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global
human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.
Another matter that warrants our attention is that whether it aims to or not SMU will, in the long run, financially
profit on the backs of hard-working Americans who feel squashed by policies they've now rejected at the polls. Surely
it's not the case that SMU will allow itself to benefit financially from a name and legacy that globally is associated
with suffering, death, and political 'bad faith.' Taken together, all these issues set decision-making about the Library
in a framework of inescapable ethical questions, and remind us of a key imperative adopted by many leading universities
around the globe: 'to be critic and conscience of society.'"
"The letter doesn't call for the university to withdraw from the competition, but to have a full discussion of the
library's goals ... with the clear implication that the university must agree to be host only to a library without an
agenda," Inside Higher Ed reported.
At this point, "critics of the library plans are trying hard to frame the question as about academic standards for open
research and debate, not about Bush-bashing," Inside Higher Ed pointed out. Suzanne Johnson, an associate professor of
Christian education, said that she would understand the value of an archive of the Bush administration, and sees how
many SMU scholars would benefit from having such a collection on campus. But she said that the campus has been left
'uninformed and naive' about President Bush's plans to create a policy center to promote his view of the world." Johnson
was also concerned about the fact that SMU "historically has had a reputation for attracting wealthy students ... a
reputation that the university has tried to fight in recent years by offering generous scholarship to low-income
students. 'I think it might be a setback in terms of trying to attract a different constituency among students,' Johnson
said. 'Children of wealthy, leading Republicans in this state come to SMU, and then they are groomed here to become
Republican leaders in all sectors of society. We shouldn't be in the business of just replicating Republicans.'"
Ironically, the fundraising push for Bush's library comes at the same time many Americans have digested and are debating
the substance of Sean Wilentz's provocative May 4, 2006 Rolling Stone piece titled "The Worst President in History."
Wilentz wrote that Bush's presidency "appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on
the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11 ... there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being
ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering
whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in history."
Wilentz, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and director of the Program for American Studies at Princeton
University, is not alone in his assessment of Bush. According to an informal survey of 415 historians -- conducted in
2004 by the nonpartisan History News Network -- 81 percent considered the Bush Administration a "failure."
News of the Bush library has also begun to hit the late-night television talk circuit: Noting that the president's team
was aiming to raise $500 million for the project, Conan O'Brien pointed out that would "work out to $100 million a
book." Other talk show hosts, political commentators and comedians will no doubt find both the humor and outrage in this
chutzphatic project. However strange as it may seem now, you can be certain that the money will be raised and the
monument will be built. Where it will be situated still remains in question.
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For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch
documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.