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."


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0701/S00340.htm

Saturday, 27 January 2007

Dubya's Half-Billion Tower Of Babel

President's 'truest believers' plan mother of all presidential
libraries and conservative think tanks

Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange


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&M 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 *****
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&M, 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."

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.

______