RE: BUSH LIBRARY

The best part was, Wick started his history lesson by asking Paul, “How old are you?” Then he wrapped it up by saying, in reference to the unemployment rate then and, presumably, also in reference to Paul’s current personal situation, “How would you like to be unemployed?” Then Wick started laughing, and his flaming bow tie spun around.

RE: BUSH LIBRARY

Wick is telling me to inform the masses that, under Jimmy Carter, our nation had a 22 percent interest rate. He says he’s the worst president. I bring up what’s happened under Bush and Wick says something to the effect of, “You try running a company with 22 percent interest rate. Or having a job.”

I don’t know if that’s a threat. I’m assuming it is. So, again, Wick says Jimmy Carter was the worst president.

RE: BUSH LIBRARY

Lots of people have emailed me since my post last night. A sampling of opinion after the jump.

First, the educational case for the library.

Look at the numbers for the Clinton library and let’s say, double it for the Bush library. That’s going to attract people to SMU like never before and with a think-tank on campus, attract those thinky-tank-y like people who appear on the Sunday news shows which in turn attracts a higher quality of professors and educators which in turn attracts higher quality students… You get the point?

The counter argument.

The library will bring to town the same mediocre, muddle-brained, half-thinkers who guided him down his incredibly mediocre path. (Maybe they’ll advise the next president to invade France or Iran or California.)
Can’t you see the various areas in the library:
Midland — The Failed Oil Bidness

Dallas — Figureheading a Losing Baseball Team

Austin —- Mediocre Government Years

Washington DC — The Iraq War Disaster

But as we all know, if there’s a buck in it, Dallas will crawl over broken glass just to sniff it, much less get a piece of it.

This, from an FBvian who says the historic moments alone will draw people to the site:

You are correct that people may pass by the Abu Ghraib exhibit, they might skip the Rumsfeld memos, and they probably won’t be interested in Big Oil. But people will never stop coming to visit the wing dedicated to the single most defining day in the history of America since, in a sad twist of irony, the Kennedy assassination. And yes, I believe that people 75 years from now will be visiting his library to point to 9/11 as the day that sits right along side Pearl Harbor and D-Day as individual days in our nation’s history that eventually determined our nation’s future and the future of the world.

Finally, this from a legal-minded FBvian who works with international clients and says, whatever the history, Bush was not up to the job:

I can’t imagine ever wanting to actually go to a W presidential library. In fact, I suspect I’ll try to figure out a way to avoid driving by it. I think you did a good job of listing the ways that his presidency has been a disaster. I would add to that the squandering of the world’s respect and empathy. Oh, the presidential supporters will deflect that, but it’s a real loss. We have lost some of our moral capital in confronting injustice and human rights abuses, by engaging in them ourselves. For the first time in many years I’m ashamed of our country’s policies. I’d rather have a half way house for ex offenders, than that library. I’m an SMU grad.

Happy Holidays to all, especially the FBvian who called me a degenerate pinko who should, if he’s so smart, run for office himself.

Ha! I’m a journalist. I don’t fix problems. I just point them out.

RE: BUSH LIBRARY

Like I said yesterday, nice knowing you, Tall Paul. Timmy, perhaps you should add his name to the DMN critic poll. I hope the Bush library becomes a reality because I want to run the restaurant concessions. Think of the possibilities for the menu writing. Developing.

RE: BUSH LIBRARY

I reckon history may or may not be as unkind to Bush as Tall Paul is, but a line in Gromer Jeffers’ column today sure stood out.

Some worry that the library could turn into a conservative institution that alienates moderates and those opposed to Mr. Bush’s controversial administration.

Let’s see. Spending that would make FDR blush. Check. Anti-free trade. Check. Neo-Wilsonian foreign adventurism. Check. Even his pandering to the religious right expanded the leviathan’s reach. Not seeing much “conservative” there.