Communism Point & Click 
So little is left of the Berlin Wall that Reuters reports authorities have resorted to handing tourists a GPS powered device if they want to recreate that closed in feeling.
We know where the Wall went: vast chunks carried off to America for victory displays. Prime offenders are Presidential Libraries, which are cluttered with the stuff.
Let’s review:
George H.W. Bush has a cheesy salute to Berlin 
and all things Texan outside his museum, and indoors 
Wall as well. And Bush Secretary of State James Baker got a 
chunk for his Rice University Institute.
Ford has a piece, 
although the Wall rested undisturbed throughout his presidency.
Nixon too.
Kennedy saw it built on his watch. 
The Hoover Library has a Wall piece, 
although he barely lived long enough to see it built, three decades after his presidency.
Truman hosted Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech at Westminister College in Fulton Missouri, and the campus now hosts both a plain chunk 
and a Wall “sculpture” – a piece with holes punched in it by Churchill’s granddaughter. 
She also sold one of these horrors to the Roosevelt library.
The greater glory of Ronald Reagan requires the most concrete, with Wall samples at his Dixon Illinois 
birthplace, alma mater 
Eureka College, at the federal Reagan 
office building in Washington, aboard 
the USS Ronald Reagan, 
at the Reagan Ranch Center, and at the Reagan Library indoors 
& out. 
And they used to sell bags of chips.
Leaving So Soon? 
President Bush’s thanks for the memories European tour came to London Sunday, with exciting news he’s swinging for the fences, trying to kill Osama Ben Laden before his term ends.
History is clearly on Bush’s mind. He’s huffing about his own steadfastness:
“I want it to be said about George W Bush that, when he finished his presidency, he looked in the mirror and [saw] a man who did not compromise his core principles for the sake of politics or the Gallup poll“
…and having historians to dinner.
What wisdom they will impart is questionable. Simon “an absolute fucking catastrophe” Schama is balanced with at least two Churchillian Greatness Sniffers.
Martin Gilbert:
“they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.”
Andrew Roberts:
“a lone voice told the truth unashamedly again and again until events forced the rest of the nation to listen. This brave politician faced public obloquy and collapsing political popularity, until he was proved right, when he became the most popular prime minister in recent memory. For Churchill, this apotheosis came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it will come when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen.”
Whinnie Ways 
Public resource Michael Abramowitz reports in the Washington Post on a little noticed vignette in Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’s “Wiser in Battle” Iraq memoir.
Sanchez has President Bush rallying the troops via video conferencing, teeing off the illustrious Battle of Fallujah, with what we might call an uncertain trumpet:
“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal….There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”
Churchillian!
Churchillian? 
John McCain has launched a two minute mash note to Winston Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, and himself.
With the subtlety for which the man from Arizona is known, it’s entitled “Man in the Arena,” a straight lift from Roosevelt’s salute to rule-over-the-lesser-races-and-no-fussy-backtalk. With Winnie’s greatest hits. Apparently, we’ll fight on the beaches.
Along with Churchill and Roosevelt, there’s at least a sidelong glance at another former leader. 
The ad begins with the camera floating forward through the clouds, not unlike the opening of Triumph of the Will before his plane lands.
Second Time, Farce 
Such was Gerry Ford’s fate that even his bumbling would-be assassins were viewed as indicative of the Administration’s general air of haplessness.
Churchill wrote of the thrill of being fired upon without result. Ford was twice lucky. Two would be slay-gals went gunning for him, and only managed to get off one [bad] shot between them.
Errant shooter Sara Jane Moore had the requisite triple name, but lacked the accuracy America had come to expect from lone, crazed assassins.
Like the better class of killer, Moore had an FBI connection, informing the Bureau on the San Francisco Bay area radical milieu in the wake of the psychotic Symbionese Liberation Army actions of the mid 70s . 
No patsy claim though – she owned up to it all. And now she is out.
We’ll always have Carter comutee and Clinton pardonee Patty Hearst 
to kick around though.
/
although the Wall rested undisturbed throughout his presidency.
