Will history be the final judge of President George W. Bush's career? Depends on how -- and who -- defines history. And just as standard "journalistic" coverage of the Administration be manipulated, so can "historical analysis." Like his predecessors, President Bush will be getting a presidential library: not the most expensive one ever, but also one with a special mission, though rarely discussed in standard news stories.
In covering the ongoing competition for the site of the new library and museum last summer, USA Today buried the tidbit that the institution would include "an institute that focuses on Bush's efforts to spread democracy and 'compassionate conservatism' and offices for both George W. and Laura Bush."
Shortly after Thanksgiving, the New York Daily News reported: "Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas."
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.
The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said. [Emphasis added.]
This does not apparently jibe with academic notions of what academia should be about among some academicians at Southern Methodist University. "[C]reating 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," reported Inside Higher Ed last month. SMU's theology department has drafted a letter -- supported by dozens of faculty members -- expressing concern about "two distinct, irreconcilable visions" for the Bush presidential center: a "neutral space" library and a "partisan place" conservative think tank.
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. The Bush administration's record, the letter says, has seen "erosion of habeas corpus, denial of global warming, disrespect of international treaties, alienation of long-time U.S. allies, environmental predation, disregard for rights of gay persons, a pre-emptive war based on false premises, and other perceived disrespect for the created order and global community." Such issues, the letter says, "beg for the kind of space" where "historians and scholars can fairly assess the years of George Bush's presidency and its forms of impact on our nation and the entire globe."
A fair assessment? Professional historians haven't been impressed with President Bush's legacy since the subject was first broached in 2004 by the History News Network at George Mason University, whose admittedly unscientific poll "found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure."
Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush's administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush's presidency is only the best since Clinton's and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.
The historical point was further hammered last spring by Sean Wilentz in Rolling Stone. The Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and director of the Program for American Studies at Princeton University wrote:
George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, 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 all of American history.
Not if the president's "truest believers" can help it.
Hat tip to Media Transparency, which has more details and more links.