The good news about Bush’s planned presidential library is that it’s going to be polluting Dallas and not Austin. For awhile there, I was positively obsessed with the idea that Bush was going to going to set up here as a form of counter-programming to the Most Awesome Presidential Library* in the world, the LBJ Library at UT Austin. Luckily, he didn’t, and we can still hold our heads high. No, he’s setting his library down at SMU, where it will be nestled in a wealthy, Republican neighborhood and safe from eggs and people flinging burned-out joints at it. There’s also going to be a think tank, because if you’re going to name a library after Bush, why not pile on with the equally comical idea of thinking?
But what’s so great is that Bush is having a hard time raising the money.
Yet, given the president’s current unpopularity, some Bush critics wonder whether the facility will turn out to be a historical white elephant. Fundraising for the project so far has been “very modest”, according to Dan Bartlett, a former Bush counsellor who is acting as a library spokesman.
Langdale said the president is intentionally waiting until he leaves office to start actively seeking out donors.
“The sceptics could be right: It might be a white elephant,” said Benjamin Hufbauer, an art history professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and an expert on presidential libraries. “But presidents don’t see it that way. ... Presidents see these as a foundation from which to build a new reputation. It’s just the right kind of elephant.”