Remembering history the way they wished it had been
My recollections of the Kennedy Library are that it’s about average for the category – Oval Office repo, press conference excerpts where he knocks ’em out of the park. But this ad campaign is pretty fabulous.
And half a century later, Nixon still can’t compete.
“Situated in southern California just 15 minutes from Disneyland, the Nixon Library is a dramatic roller coaster ride through half a century of California, U.S. and world history!”
Stern Warning
An architect has been named, funds secured, the likely location is known, and a backroom operator 
is, um, operational, but details about the George W. Bush Presidential Library to-be have been sparse. So The Chronicle of Higher Education has taken up the challenge, and announced their own contest to design the Bush Library.
The Bush still faces opposition on the Southern Methodist University campus and in the Methodist Church, and framing 
the legacy
has grown ever more complex.
The contest winner will be announced in March, and they get a $399 IPOD Touch. There are no 2nd prizes. In a charmingly retro detail, contest entries must be submitted by mail:
The Back-of-the-Envelope Bush Library Design Contest
c/o The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20037
Dream Girl
His campaign’s revival has clearly made John McCain giddy. Among the celebrities he’s dragged around Iowa is a real ghost of Christmas past, Tricia Nixon Cox. 
Yes, Richard Nixon’s eldest daughter. 
It’s hard to tell what constituency Cox is meant to appeal to. Nixon bitter-enders have got to be a shrinking number, and Tricia never had much profile beyond her father. Youthquake Ambassador? 
Nixon was so far down that even wholesome hacks like 
Jay & the Americans felt empowered to record an impossibly lame anti-war song called Tricia [Tell Your Daddy]. Tragically the only version on line is by the song’s Canadian writer. 
Cox kept a fairly low profile after her “storybook”Rose Garden wedding 
to Mr. Cox and her father’s exile.
She participated in a 25th wedding anniversary event at the Nixon Library in 1996, one of the Presidential Paper-less entity’s diverse efforts to fill the seats. 
Tricia surfaced in 2002 to make nice with sister Julie, ending a dispute over Nixon entourage member Bebe Rebozo’s $20 million gift to the Nixon Library. 
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off? 
Hey! It’s Lyndon Johnson’s 100th birthday!
Who can resist round, and somewhat large numbers? 
The Johnson Centennial folks hope you can’t.
To the extent there is a unified theme it appears to be a version of get ‘er done-ish hymns to his domestic labors. Recent events may have made competence in execution a hot selling point, but they are conspicuously silent on Vietnam. 
Johnson is but the beginning of what we can only hope becomes known as the Centennial Century.
First up is Lincoln, technically coming back for seconds at his bicentenary in 2009. Reagan looms in 2011, and by golly maybe they’ll get him slapped on Rushmore by then. 
The Nixon Library is already marking his 95th birthday, so look out in 2013. I’ve been unable to detect any Kennedy 2017 activity, but a boy can dream.
Ghost Walker 
Only a year ago, America’s New Years Celebrations were sandwiched around a very different send-off, America’s Gerald Ford
.
California
Capitol Hill
National Cathedral
Michigan
If you slept through it all, were under a rock, or had better things to do, endless retrospectives are available via the internets. 
Or order CSPAN’s compilation tape for $24.95.
Lessons were offered and conclusions drawn.
Henry Kissinger offered a spectacularly rosie and utterly false portrait of Ford’s alignment with South Africa in the 70s. Dick Cheney watched too much television coverage and learned that Ford was a spirited amalgam of Truman, Roosevelt and Reagan on their good days.
And did you know, he was “our most athletic President“?
Ford memorializing rumbles along, albeit at a slower pace then the Reagan juggernaut. Michigan hopes to dump a long-time Capitol Hill statue to make room for Ford, and in real estate Gerry Ford brings the swank. The long time Alexandria Virginia resident and beloved deceased President will be honored by a “President Ford Lane” and a park in an exciting new “mega mansion” development. But there’s more. The park is to be marked by “appropriate signage, historical and informational plaque, and, hopefully, a three dimensional statue or bust of President Ford.”
