They’ve been busy shaking down the plutocrats for one last roll in the hay:
George W. Bush often has said that historians will vindicate his presidency. And since he left office, he’s moving fast to give them the tools.
Longtime financial backers of the 43rd president have raised more than $100 million for a presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas that will house his official papers, sources close to Bush told TIME. Much of the money was collected in the 100 days or so since Bush left the White House, a pace much faster than that of his recent predecessors. At least so far, none of it has come from overseas, the sources said. (See pictures of George W. Bush as president.)
The Bush fundraising effort, compared to that of his predecessor, is off to a brisk start. Bill Clinton’s library planners had hoped to receive pledges of $100 million within a year of the end of his presidency, but a pardons scandal delayed that achievement for another year, said Skip Rutherford, who chaired the Clinton library committee.
All those Dick Cheney interviews and appearance by Bush lackeys makes sense now, doesn’t it? Had to keep a high profile so the boss could get his loot.
David
It’s called “throwing money at the problem.”
schrodinger's cat
What is the purpose of these Presidential libraries any way? When did this start? Do all Presidents get to have a library. Is there a Lincoln library? or a Garfield library?
jwb
The link to the quote is broken.
Don SinFalta
John, your link’s broken.
scav
takes money to build a safe large enough to keep everything out of the reach of those pesky historians so foolish to require, like, actual evidence rather than confident repetitions of talking points.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I think the library should be built by the same private contractors who built those police barracks in Iraq with the feces falling through the ceiling.
$100 million well-spent.
Dr. Loveless
I wonder how many copies of My Pet Goat it will have.
Dennis-SGMM
This will be a money maker all right: “You, too, can own a box of crayons just like the president’s.”
I also predict brisk sales of edible paste and teabags.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Weren’t most of the official papers of the Bush Administration classified, anyway? You don’t need a library for them, so much as you need a lock-box. Bush can get one of those by stealing it from that Al Gore Presidential library we’ll never have.
Zifnab
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s become a tradition for Presidents to catalog the history of their Presidencies in a library for future generations to use as a research point. We’ve had one for every President since Herbert Hoover. :-p
But yeah, officially it’s about creating and maintaining one’s Presidential files after you leave office. Unofficially, it’s about preserving your legacy. Like the Pyramids, but modernized up a bit.
And, as all of Bush’s achievements before it, this one is gearing up to be a whooper of bullshit, graft, and fail.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/19/content_11212175.htm
Matt
…that will house his official papers…
This?
Ash Can
A hundred mil in contributions? Well, you know what they say about fools and their money.
Seriously, though, I’m all for getting W’s “official papers” together in one place. Once enough of the right people spine up enough to get a proper investigation rolling, it’ll make an FBI raid to collect evidence all the easier.
Thankovsky
It’s interesting to reflect upon how history will remember George W. Bush. So much of a president’s historical legacy seems to be dependent upon the nation’s “mood” (to channel Gerald Ford) during his last few months in office. I firmly believe that Dubya is the worst president this country has ever seen, but I also believe that a lot of his wrongdoings and bouts of outright incompetence are in the same ballpark as those that occurred under Reagan. Yet most conservatives and a good chunk of moderates remember Reagan fondly. I think that’s largely due to the fact that Reagan was at least able to raise the nation’s spirits. His “morning in America” message really got under our country’s skin, it would seem. Dubya, on the other hand, was fairly unsuccessful in that regard.
Reagan also seems to have been able to maintain a certain degree of plausible deniability to a lot of Americans. I’ve studied Russian history and politics throughout my academic career, and I have to say, Reagan’s relationship to the American people was disturbingly similar to the Russian people’s relationship with their tsars/emperors. If the economy was weak, or the local government was corrupt, or the secret police was unfairly cracking down on a segment of society, they would blame it on the “elites” in the government in St. Petersburg. It was always the fault of the prime minister, or the cabinet, or the State Duma – never the tsar. The tsar was one of them, after all. If the tsar knew of the injustices to which the peasantry was being subjected by the elitist bureaucrats, they believed, he would set things right.
The same trend seems to have taken hold of the American people as well during the 80’s. Iran-Contra? It’s the fault of Poindexter, not Reagan. Reaganomics fails? Blame the government’s implementation, not Reagan himself. Reagan was beyond reproach, in their minds, because he made them feel good about being Americans, and because he was “one of them.” I don’t think George W. Bush will enjoy the same leniency from the American people, because his last couple years in office weren’t characterized by lifting the nation’s spirits in the same manner as Reagan. But you never know.
asiangrrlMN
Mumble grumble can’t even read grumble mumble stupidest president ever mumble grumble library my ass….
Cat Lady
Here’s a link to “Back of the Envelope” Bush Library design contest. Awesome sauce.
“Hole in the Ground” won. It’s my favorite too…
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i26/26b01401.htm#7
CT
Every president since Hoover has a library. I’ve been to the Eisenhower museum in Abeline, KS a couple of times and its pretty cool. His childhood home is there (amazingly tiny, considering how many people lived there), there’s a lot of WWII memorabilia, and a fair amount of “this is what life was like back in the 50’s” stuff. They sell a wall hanging with excerpts from his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953, which would get him denounced as a smelly Chomskyite, Phish-loving, VW microbus driving hippie these days.
The most famous passage:
Michael
I think that reposting the synopsis of “Liberality for All” will do a fine job of illustrating the mindset of what the Bush Administration was all about.
http://accstudios.com/f/synopsis1.htm
America’s future has become an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism. Beginning with the Gore Presidency, the government has become increasingly dominated by liberal extremists.
In 2004, Muslim terrorists stopped viewing the weakened American government as a threat; instead they set their sights on their true enemies, vocal American conservatives. On one dark day, in 2006, many conservative voices were forever silenced by terrorist assassins. Those which survived joined forces and formed a powerful covert conservative organization called “The Freedom of Information League”, aka F.O.I.L.
The efforts of F.O.I.L. threaten both the liberal extremist power structure and the U.N.’s grip on America, the U.N. calls F.O.I.L. the most dangerous group in the world. It seems the once theorized Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has now become a reality.
The F.O.I.L. Organization is forced underground by the “Coulter Laws” of 2007; these hate speech legislations have made right-wing talk shows, and conservative-slanted media, illegal. Our weakened government has willingly handed the reins of our once great country to the corrupt United Nations. The Department of Political-Correctness is required to assist U.N. monitors to properly edit all print and broadcast media. Live broadcasts are a thing of the past; all transmissions are monitored by the U.N. and any ‘offensive’ material is dumped.
Rupert Murdoch’s decision to defy the “Coulter Laws” hate speech legislations, has bankrupted News Corporation. George Soros has bought all of News Corps assets and changed its name to Liberty International Broadcasting. LIB’s networks have flourished and circle the globe with a series of satellites beaming liberal & U.N. propaganda worldwide.
The New York City faction of F.O.I.L. is lead by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, each uniquely endowed with special abilities devised by a bio mechanical engineer affectionately nicknamed “Oscar”. F.O.I.L. is soon to be joined by a young man named Reagan McGee.
Reagan was born on September 11th, 2001. He is the son of a NYC firefighter whose life was spared by attending his son’s birth. Reagan has grown to manhood in an ultra-liberal educational system: being told, not asked, what to think. With personal determination, which alienates him from his contemporaries, he has chosen the path less traveled…the path to the Right.
Two decades of negotiation with the U.N., and America’s administration of 2021 (President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore), has culminated in a truce with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, or so America is told. The honorable ambassador from Afghanistan has come to NYC to address the U.N., his name is Usama Bin Laden. Ambassador Bin Laden has announced that he plans a public apology for the “misunderstanding” of the events of 9/11. This apology will occur exactly 20 years to the minute the first plane hit the WTC; this will be on the observation deck at the newly renamed “Unity Tower” built on the hallowed grounds where the WTC once stood.
Tomorrow is September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the horror of 9/11, or as it has become more politically correct to say “the unfortunate events resulting from the uprising of middle-eastern fundamentalist Islam”. Just days before his arrival in NYC, Bin Laden made a brief visit to Iraq, now a nuclear power that is run by the vicious Uday Hussein. In Iraq, Bin Laden received a tactical nuke that is now contained in his private diplomatic briefcase. Bin Laden plans far more than an apology at the Unity Tower.
F.O.I.L. has become aware of Bin Laden’s plot to destroy NYC and has devised a plan to stop him while simultaneously gaining permanent control of LIB’s satellite network. Unfortunately, U.N. Forces have discovered the secret location of the F.O.I.L. Lair. It is a race against the clock to save NYC from a nuclear holocaust and the world from liberal domination. Only with F.O.I.L.’s help, can “Liberality For All” once again become “Liberty For All!”
MattF
My name is Ozymandias,…
schrodinger's cat
Thanks, Zifnab and CT for the info.
gnomedad
Will there be an Enhanced Interrogation diorama?
Betsy
He needn’t wait – we’ve already evaluated his presidency.
PaminBB
I don’t think this is about W. This is about Poppy and Bar trying to salvage the family reputation and fortune. They are hitting up their contacts right and left. Although I don’t believe the line about none of the money coming from overseas, I don’t doubt that the Saudis and others in that region have contributed big time, they are just doing it through various entities.
MobiusKlein
The only question is why they didn’t build it in New Orleans? I hear land is cheap there now.
Walker
Thank God my previous employer dropped their bid for this library. They actually had a decent chance at it; they owned a big chunk of the recently vacated Texas Stadium, which would have been used for the library. But I just cannot imagine being at a university associated with that library.
Thankovsky
@asiangrrlMN:
I expect it will have a lot of children’s books that have lots of pictures and don’t involve a lot of actual reading.
That and anthologies of the “BC” comic strip, of course.
Comrade Darkness
Bush’s cronies made billions off the government either directly or through subsidies/tax breaks. A million here or there back at him is chump change.
Jon H
It’ll be interesting to see how they organize several million pounds of paper in quarter-inch strips.
D-Chance.
All those Dick Cheney interviews and appearance by Bush lackeys makes sense now, doesn’t it? Had to keep a high profile so the boss could get his loot.
Uh-huh. Cheney and company did those television interviews for the sole purpose of… building a presidential library. God, Cole, that was a brain fart and a half.
tc125231
Mnemosyne
@Thankovsky:
Until, of course, the people realized that the czar didn’t actually care, overthrew him, and bayoneted him and the rest of the royal family.
Though, should the Secret Service be reading, I would like to emphasize that I am not hoping to see the entire Bush family on the wrong end of a bayonet.
hal
So the questions is: Who donated and how much was the average donation? Clinton’s library donations were supposed to be a potential conflict of interest, I wonder about Bush.
Brachiator
I don’t get it. A hundred million for a building that will hold six piles of shredded papers, a couple of erased hard drives, a broken thumb drive, 18 demagnitized audio tapes, thirteen empty folders with their titles blacked out, and a copy of a coloring book?
asiangrrlMN
@Thankovsky: Yes, ’tis true, but even comic books and children books have themes and such–much too complex for W. to grasp. Maybe Laura can read out loud to him. She’s big on literacy.
@tc125231: Thanks. I’ll be here all week. Tip your server on the way out.
El Cid
When Reagan left office, his rich buddies who were made immensely wealthier from his Presidency and his outright attack on the U.S. middle class gifted him a mansion.
Anastasius
OMG! Super amazing record breaking never seen before fund raising success!!!
But we won’t give you numbers!
Anyone getting flashbacks to last years campaign statements where Clinton and McCain were raising mad cash and could easily keep up with Obama but when they actually had to publish the numbers their estimates were suddenly off by about, say, 100%?
A fund raising record of this proportion in the middle of the 2nd largest financial crises we ever faced? Please.
asiangrrlMN
@Anastasius: Tis possible. I bet the people W. rolls with aren’t exactly hurtin’ for cash.
@El Cid: I hate him. Reagan, I mean. Fucker.
Thankovsky
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, well, the difference between Reagan and Nikolai II/Nicholas II is that Reagan constitutionally had to step down after eight years. It took the Russian people at least eleven years to even begin catching onto the fact that their Emperor was no longer “one of them,” if he ever had been, and was the linchpin of the problem. (I’m counting that date as the 1905 “Bloody Sunday” demonstrates, for those of you who know Russian history) So in that sense, Reagan’s legacy really was “saved by the bell,” so to speak. Who knows…maybe if Dubya’s terms in office were longer, there would have been a more violent backlash before he stepped down.
Lesley
In Bush’s case, it’s Legassy (ass and gassy.)
Stooleo
I wonder how much that Blackwater asshole gave him?
Sam
Presidential Papers or Presidential Coloring Books?
PurpleGirl
Back when Southern Methodist University won the presidential library bid there was a movement by a number of faculty and alumni to drop the project as incompatible with the mission of SMU and its integrity. Oh well…
Reagan got financial gifts throughout his political career from friends… he hung out with Jack Welch of GE and other CEOs when he was a corporate speaker. He spoke at a lot of GE sponsored rubber chicken luncheons. When he became governor, Nancy claimed that the old Governors Mansion in Sacramento wasn’t suitable for them (claimed it was a fire trap and unsuitable for children). Friends built a fancy place for them on land which turned out to be near Native American burial grounds. There then proceeded a several years fight and the Reagans never lived in the house. Jerry Brown ultimately sold the house when he become governor. (Jerry Brown was raised in the old governors mansion when his father was governor, btw.) The Reagans rented a house in Sacramento while the suburban place was being built.
binzinerator
@Thankovsky:
Yup. You just channeled Matt Taibbi’s “The Peasant Mentality Lives on in America“. And what you noted also fits with the behavior of right-wing authoritarianism, in particular authoritarian followers.
Reaganites. Bunch of fucking morans. Conservatives. Bunch of fucking morans. They say to me ‘you liberal elite you look down your nose at us.’ And I say Fuck Yeah I do. I got the same kind of contempt as I would have for a farmer who eats his seed corn in time of plenty. Same contempt as for a man who shits in his own hat, except these people were different in that they were grinning all the while thinking they really did a number on all the liberals they hate. They still think they did. Fucking morans.
binzinerator
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll settle for Junior at the end of a rope at the Hague. Which is where he would be if we took him at his own words regarding war crimes.
That’s not vengeance. That’s only justice.
Jim
Cat Lady –
That website. Omigod. The best. The problem is that every plan is magnificent – and none (including the plan actually being used) should ever come into existence.
Jim
And when the little porussky dick gave them representative government in the form of the Duma – and they bought it. It’s way too much like Little Lord Pissypants and his Sacred Signing Statements.
Thankovsky
@binzinerator:
I’m less of a fan of Taibbi than most liberals, but I think he’s spot-on with that article. The “peasant mentality” he describes seems to be a pretty common trend throughout human cultures; I can’t help but wonder if it’s something that a large portion of humans are simply “wired” to take on that sort of mindset. If that’s the case, then I think the best lesson we, as liberals, can take from that is the importance of a confidence-imbuing, judicious, well-spoken frontman. Thus, the difference in electoral success between Barack Obama and John Kerry.
poopsybythebay
@Anastasius:
I’m with you. No one else finds it odd that just a few weeks ago they couldn’t get anyone to give him money and they were having problems fund raising and now all of a sudden they have 100 million dollars in less than a month??? If you believe that I’ve got some land to sell you. How would anyone really know how much they have raised? Someone claims that they have raised that much, they say they will not give out actual amounts, the donors want anonymity, and no money from overseas(bullshit). I’m sorry I do not believe a word of it and the only reason this was leaked was so that some of their pet corporations and phony rich friends will begin to think their buddies are giving money. The Bushies think that this leak will make the numbskulls race to give them money so they won’t feel left out. You know how rich people are–they never want to feel left out of what everyone else is doing. They are all egodumbtards. (new word) Remember their mantra “we create our own reality”?
craigie
$100 million? That’s a lot of money for a book.
jeff
100 million dollars to hold a copy of My Pet Goat?