Remembering history the way they wished it had been
ABC News reports that the Clinton Library has brokered parts of it’s donor list, folding this into the usual complaints about secrecy with the usual boiler plate paragraph saying disclosure isn’t legally required. Left out, as so many times before, is the history of presidential libraries and papers which brought us to this point.
The faux naivete of finding novelty in organizations cashing in on their donor base is kind of spectacular.
Your Name Here
The Clinton Foundation goes from strength to strength, raising $135 million last year, up 70% from 2005. The Foundation has paid off debts incurred building the Clinton Library, although it owes $1.9 million on a loan to renovate the Library gift shop. 
Like all not-for-profits, the foundation reports income, not donors. Plans were different once:
“Officials said when Clinton’s presidential library opened in 2004 that it would include a wall recognizing contributors. So far, that wall has not been installed.”
If you were a wall, what would you be?
What we know of Clinton’s Library donors comes largely from Josh Gerstein in the New York Sun. When the Library opened he found a computer terminal on an upper library floor with donor information. The terminal has since been yanked.
If the wall of names ever rises it would include Steven Spielberg, the Saudi royals, the King of Morocco, and the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, and Taiwan.
Papa Bush’s Library has some big donors’ names displayed, many of them the same governments and access seekers as Clinton’s. But there is no overall disclosure, and Bush’s foundation is squirrely with names and numbers too. According to the Dallas Morning News,”Only five major donors and four minor ones asked to remain anonymous, said Roman Popadiuk, executive director of the Bush library foundation in College Station… “We never hid who donates,” he said. “Some donors want to be anonymous. Others for privacy reasons just don’t want it advertised how much they give.”
Sometimes anonymity helps the recipient as well.
God, Prophet and Washington Times impresario the Reverend Sun Myung Moon wasn’t satisfied paying Bush senior for some appearances, so he disguised a million dollar donation to the Bush Library by funneling it through the Greater Houston Community Foundation.
The Washington Post today has an editorial today [“Records Under Wraps – Hillary Clinton’s White House papers would be tied up even if she released them“] which is a rarity in coverage and commentary on the story. It addresses the real issue and the real need: Bush finagling on access to Presidential papers and lack of staff to process what documents make it through the mill.
“….even if Mr. Clinton today asked the National Archives to release confidential communications between him and the former first lady, disclosure could still be years away. That’s because the six archivists at the Clinton library would have to sift through — by hand — more than 138 million pages in 36,000 boxes. And that’s after they respond on a first-come-first-served basis to 287 pending Freedom of Information Act requests”
Meanwhile, an Administration with a proven record of concealment and slipshod handling of it’s papers is now under federal court order not to destroy backup tapes for emails, millions of which may be missing. 
Bill says back off
The fine details escape me and most Americans, but Bill Clinton does have a point when he denounces press and rival campaign accusations that he and the Mrs. are withholding papers.
As he says, and is true, he has released more and faster than his predecessors . And the mechanics of this are convoluted even if all parties pulled as one.
For example, Judicial Watch has gotten endless press over it’s requests for Clinton papers and dark mutterings that the Clinton fix is in. Turns out the Associated Press discovered that the Archives hasn’t even processed Judicial Watch’s request yet. Clinton’s minions have yet to touch it.
The fine details of Clinton’s Archives letter matter, and I doubt he wants to help his enemies, but on the broader front he is correct and his critics ignore the history of the law and past Presidential Libraries.
Say he let it rip as the Washington Post recently proposed, releasing everything without review. And in this mythical world President Bush quickly signed off on everything, and the National Archives had staff to shovel it all through. Let’s write the headlines:
“Let’s Do Lani Guinier’s Taxes!”
“Publicly Close, Clinton wrote Infrequently to Mother”
“They Believed In Bill, Now Failed Clinton Nominees Privacy Exposed”
It’s an issue, and a headache for Candidate Clinton, but the pretense that there is a snappy solution to this is getting tiresome.
I
Howdy!
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” weighs in on the Clinton’s papers, and comes up with a simple pointless solution that will never see the light of day.
She says she’s for disclosure, he blamed the Bush White House, the Archives says President Clinton’s representatives have a blanket list of topics they don’t want out till they see the papers first. A Bush Executive Order gave this power to ex president’s and their children after them just as Reagan era papers were about to surface. With the sitting president getting yet another whack at preventing disclosure afterwards.
The Post says Clinton should let it all hang out:
‘There is, however, nothing in Executive Order 13233 that obliges a former president, or his representative, to go through the records one by one. If former President Clinton is so opposed to the Bush administration order, he could simply instruct Lindsey to approve the documents wholesale.”
Brilliant. Perhaps the Clinton’s have wandered into a trap Bush devised, perhaps their intentions are impure. But as is often said in political money arguments, why should they unilaterally disarm? We’ve decades to go before we’ll see the Reagan and Bush 1 documents in full.
Absent a real law not twisted into it’s reverse by crackpot Executive Orders our knowledge of past administrations will be based more on contemporary leaks and fatuous memoirs.
