NYT (Yesterday's News Four Days After Tomorrow): Political Self-Celebration in a Library Guise

New York Times ^ | November 25, 2004 | EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

[OESY]

INDEPENDENCE, Mo., Nov. 23 - That legendary sign "The Buck Stops Here" gets prominent display at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, along with a cautionary disclaimer that it is "unclear how long it sat" on Truman's Oval Office desk. But the sign, and its appearance here, provide a bracing contrast to the sensations inspired by the new William J. Clinton Presidential Center, 400 miles away in Little Rock, Ark.

Some similarities might be expected. Both William Jefferson Clinton and Harry S. Truman were Democratic presidents sometimes facing hostile Republican-dominated Congresses; both were born without inheritance or distinguished lineage; both spent their early years in small towns with metaphorically powerful names (respectively, Hope and Independence); and both proclaimed allegiance to liberal principles of government.

Truman was also the first president to create a library under the provisions of the 1955 Presidential Libraries Act, and Mr. Clinton the latest, and so both raised private money for their institutions before turning the buildings, with their papers, over to the government.

But between 1957, when Truman's library cost $1.75 million ($11.8 million today), and last week, when the $165 million Clinton Center made its debut with festivities drawing 30,000 visitors to Little Rock, lies an immense cultural and political divide. At the very least, it is difficult to imagine Truman's desk sign asserting accountability and responsibility (let alone something like the careful disclaimer that accompanies it) on display in Little Rock.

The institutional goals may even be different. Truman said that he hoped his library would provide "a better understanding of the history and the nature of the presidency and of the government of the United States." And, at least on the surface, the widely cited statistics about the Clinton Center would seem to suggest its own documentary and educational ambitions. It is the largest of the 11 presidential libraries now administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. It houses more than 35,000 cubic feet of archival material, including 80 million documents, 2 million photographs, videos and electronic files. The main-floor exhibition space is designed by Polshek Partnership Architects of New York to look like the library in Trinity College, Dublin. As the center's publicity material stresses, it is also meant to be experienced "the same way you would browse a library."

But the archival materials are in inaccessible boxes behind bars, held in bookshelves that divide the space into alcoves. And browsing, in this case, means hearing Mr. Clinton's voice every few feet, speaking from multiple monitors, delivering State of the Union addresses or making stump speeches, his voice punctuated by historical films and comments from admirers and staff members. After a few minutes, you yearn to see a stereotypical librarian, finger to the lips, sternly make her way through the room. Except that the exhibits, designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates in New York, make it seem as if a political campaign had taken over and would allow no interference.

Every object, every piece of text, every sound is harnessed in service to an almost relentless message about Mr. Clinton's achievements. According to Mr. Appelbaum, Mr. Clinton was "the editor in chief, the curator in chief and sometimes the art director, all of which is quite appropriate."

The library's center hall is lined with gray slabs, each presenting the timeline for a year in Mr. Clinton's administration. Each timeline also has three sections, emphasizing what Mr. Clinton sees as the main themes for his accomplishments: "One America," "One World" and "The Economy." And each alcove highlights a specific Clintonian credit, including: "Putting People First," "Building a Global Community," "Preparing for New Threats," "Protecting the Earth," "Making Communities Safe" and "Restoring the Economy."

Historical background is presented only to show accomplishment. Crime graphs drop. Economic graphs rise. Terrorism is fought. Evidence numbingly repeats itself (as do exculpations). There seems nothing - from community policing to tax cuts to fighting terrorism - for which credit is not claimed. Even a stock ticker heralds the climactic prices of stocks in 2000, taking no notice of the imminent collapse. As for the administration's scars, if all else is a record of social improvement, moral vision and consummate governance, then doesn't any attempt to challenge that record or its claims have to represent extraordinary villainy? Perspectives of serious critics are nonexistent. And the discussion of challenges to Mr. Clinton's positions is restricted to an alcove, "The Fight for Power." These challenges become part of a series of "Ideological Battles" in which Republican Congressional leaders engaged in "Politics of Personal Destruction" and endorsed dangerous beliefs in "Isolationism and Unilateralism."

There is the brief confession of a "serious mistake" in Mr. Clinton's personal life - his encounters with Monica Lewinsky - about which he had "not been forthcoming." But his opponents, that exhibit argues, "fueled the media's hunger for constant scandal, real or imagined." With his impeachment proceedings, they were "attempting to deny the very legitimacy of the president's election."

Mr. Clinton's interpretation, of course, is not totally idiosyncratic; many hold similar views. But here as elsewhere, it is not really clear what the era's debates were about because the exhibits paint with such a broad brush and use such a limited palette. At any rate, the assertion of sweeping innocence and sweeping villainy does not quite bear historical scrutiny.

Any more subtle scrutiny might be irrelevant, despite the center's trappings of high learning. The main point seems to be self-celebration. The political is personal. This may be the temptation of every such institution. Every president will want to present himself in the best possible light. Even the Truman Presidential Museum and Library contains a room that serves as a memorial shrine. And if the Clinton Center has a full-scale replica of the Oval Office as he used it, the Truman library has one that is nearly full-size.

But at least the Truman library addresses the problem of self-promotion head-on in its exhibits, which were remade in 2001. Truman's years as president marked the end of World War II, the dropping of the atomic bomb, the beginning of the cold war, McCarthyism, the Korean War and immense social change. The museum notes that there are a "variety of perspectives" and "conflicting conclusions" about Truman's role, and that the exhibits offer "one interpretation." Those exhibits also include flip books that include comments by politicians of the period, along with contemporary scholars, disagreeing with Truman's decisions to drop the atomic bombs or contain Soviet Communism. Meanwhile, letters and documents expand one's understanding of the Marshall Plan or the Berlin airlift.

Truman's library, that is, makes the president an actor within history. Clinton's library makes him the focus of history. Arranged below each year's timeline, for example, are loose-leaf notebooks containing every one of the president's daily schedules for eight years. Most of these are uninformative, containing notices of meetings, jogs, down time and travels. And instead of showing important documents that might shed light, for example, on the failure of the Middle East peace talks, displays include flattering letters from celebrities like Oscar de la Renta, Chevy Chase, Tony Danza, Whoopi Goldberg ("You're the cat's pajamas") and Dom DeLuise ("When I grow up I want to be just like you").

The dominant impression is of a grand party that was disrupted in 2000 but that might one day be resumed under other auspices. In fact, extending out over the main floor, are two mannequins in dinner dress, standing next to a formally set White House table. They establish the tone for the exhibition's final displays of state gifts, White House kitsch and gifts from well-wishers.

Such items are the stuff of all such museums, but here the scale is daunting. This is true even when it comes to private fund-raising, which requires no accountability. As The Washington Post reminded readers last week, President Clinton's pardon of the financier Marc Rich was accompanied by a $450,000 donation by his former wife, Denise Rich, to the foundation raising money for the Clinton Center.

Given the ways in which presidential libraries are established, some of this is to be expected. But if these libraries are then to become public institutions, representing America's heritage, some other approach is required.

One of Mr. Clinton's best lines is in his 1993 inaugural address: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." One achievement of the Clinton Center might be to draw attention to what is wrong with the financing and design of presidential "libraries."

[OESY]

Reread the last paragraph.

[beyond the sea]

Reread the last paragraph.

I did.

[carlr]

I suspect that if Truman were alive today he would first:punch Clinton,second:leave the dem party.

[gusopol3]

if his '48 election rhetoric is any guide, he'd be flapping his jaws like Lawrence O'Donnell. Like FDR and JFK, his reputation has been burnished by decades of leftist academic/ cultural/ media hegemony.

[LibertarianInExile]

There is almost certainly a Clinton library board. The goal of every conservative should be to get appointed to that board to correct the exhibits--as the goal of every liberal has been to get appointed to foundation boards like Ford's and Carnegie's to steal conservative money for their nutjob causes.