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cool  

Cool Place?               

The George W. Bush Presidential Library home-to-be at Southern Methodist University sees the facility as a boon to fund raising and prestige boosting, and of course removing the stain of JFK’s assassination.].

But it may not help on another front: SMU has always had a reputation as a comfortable place for the comfortable, and now the SMU Daily Campus reports the university has gotten steadily whiter over the last decade.

“Enrollment of black students declined by more than 40 percent. Hispanic enrollment fell by 20 percent.”

Slacker!  

The always in the know Mike Allen reports former President George W. Bush has settled on a format for his upcoming memoirs.  Allen reports that:

“…his book will revolve around 12 tough decisions he made as president. Planners for his presidential library in Dallas are considering a similar format.”

Making Richard Nixon’s Six Crises look like nothin!

Bush spoke in Canada, giving us a little taste of the torture apologetics to come:

“I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say, ‘We have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’ — this mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl [who died] because he was simply Jewish — ‘and we think he has information on further attacks on the United States.’ I want to draw people in to that environment and let them determine what they would have done if their most important job was to protect the country.”

In the same appearance Bush claimed he’d be quiet about the Obama administration, but apparently “drawing comparisons” does not count as criticism.

Silent Service 

The mischievous youngsters at thinkprogress.org point out that War Time President George W. Bush hasn’t a single mention of Iraq in his Library biography, this in the wake of mysterious Library gnomes letting it be known that Iraq was off the table.

“The president’s advisers are still chewing over what topics to emphasize. Iraq is unlikely to be one of them.”

This fits in with Bush’s conduct throughout the war – blowing off the 9/11 warning,  cracking wise about his own invented Iraq nuke claims, and the famous pledge to not golf till the boys come home.

The usefulness or accuracy of any Bush Iraq presentation might be questionable.  On one domestic crisis that comes to mind, Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale is already taking what might be called the Jindal-ian line, blaming some “government” of unknown nature for a famous Bush disaster.

“There’s an interesting lesson about Katrina and the limitations of government assistance to respond to big natural disasters…They are acts of God, and they are tough. It’s definitely a story line I would not shy away from addressing somehow in the museum.”

But it won’t all be stern lessons.  Bush is already assuring SMU coeds that the Library “should be a really cool place.”

Nothing Says Policy Like Something From Our Oven 

The George W. Bush Presidential Library shock and awe media tour continues, with Politico the latest recipient of  access to the former President’s minions.  There we learn that the Definitely-Not-To-Be-Named-Freedom Institute attached to the Library will be so much more than the usual presidential scholar holding tank.

In the Bush Institute’s search for something to do, the latest scheme floated is for it to become the George W. Bush Test Kitchen, “to run demonstration tests or pilot projects based on ideas generated from there. ”

George W. Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale explains its thrust into the future:

“That’s a little bit different than what other presidential libraries have done, and it’s a little bit different than defending the record…By the time the Institute is focusing on a problem, there’ll be new information and new perspectives shaping the policy debate, beyond what happened in the Bush administration.”

Why-ever we should turn for fresh ideas to these has-bins is unclear.

Freedom’s Ferment 

James Traub’s New York Times Magazine piece this Sunday on the Bush Library & Freedom Institute is Nostradamus-like in scope, explaining the past even as it for-tells our dark Bushie future.

Traub reviews the failed efforts by Southern Methodist University faculty and others to stop Bush from planting his autonomous institute on the SMU campus and giving the University no say in its direction or governance. The Institute will be a stand alone entity vaguely associated with the Bush Library, but controlled by the Bush Foundation. Other presidential branding opportunities have at least made gestures towards academic sensibilities, but SMU’s President Gerald Turner makes the Bush people sound rather desperate that they could get a hearing in a real academic setting;

“They wanted to make sure that all points of view, including their own point of view, have a chance to be expressed.”

Bush crony Donald Evans says its all about donor relations:

“If I’m going to ask someone to be supportive of this with their generous contribution…I need to able to tell them that I will be fully responsible to them.”

At one point the University community was told that the Bush Institute would be housed in a separate building, but the latest plans show essentially one building. But Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale  describes them invitingly as “jammed together like town houses.”

How will the Bush Institute fill its days?  Traub quotes Bush Administration fixture Elliot “Mr. Kennelworth” Abrams, apparently seasoned by his “controversial tenure in the Reagan administration” enthusing over the “embattled” and “dissident” figures Bush claims to identify with.

  Natan Sharansky is one such em-battler,  but he appears comfortably ensconced in his own institute in Israel.  Another em-battler endlessly mentioned here and elsewhere is Vaclav Havel, who Bush longs to com over and write something, anything.  Why-ever he would leave his comfortable Prague retirement or his own Presidential Library for Dallas is unclear.