The Full Nixon
Watergate witness and turncoat Nixon White House Counsel John Dean has a novel suggestion to try and shame George Bush into preserving and disclosing his presidential papers: the Nixon treatment
Dean surveys the damage done to date and proposes that if Bush won’t preserve his papers he’ll have to pay for his own library.
“Cheney has all but confirmed that he is already destroying his papers. Since there are no sanctions if Bush and Cheney do as they wish with their papers – except for an outstanding restraining order preventing them from destroying backup records of emails – no doubt they will do just that……the lawsuit that might have forced Bush and Cheney to comply with the 1978 law and might have overturned Executive Order 13233 is comatose …there is only one thing that yet might be done: Democrats could advise Bush that if he does not comply with the 1978 law, they will not fund his presidential library when it is turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)… NARA is essential for presidential libraries, as the Nixon Library discovered. Before it agreed to play by the rules, the Nixon Library was fast going into financial failure, barely supporting itself by renting out a mock East Room of the White House for weddings…Democratic Congressional leaders should warn Bush and Cheney that if they insist on ignoring the law, then there will be consequences: There will be no NARA funding for the administration of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.”
Too soon to tell if a man who plans to raise half a billion dollars towards his greater glory will be phased by this notion.
