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.
/
The Berlin Wall has been down 18 years today, but America never tires of the old concrete chunks left over. Pieces grace all your finer Presidential Libraries, no matter how strained their relationship is to the Wall.
And we usually display them West side out with all the pretty graffiti.
Roosevelt: 
only link is this hideous sculpture made by a Churchill Granddaughter from Wall.
Truman: 
see where she got the semi-human shapes above? Still more Churchill relative art at Westminster College where Truman invited Churchill to let rip.
Eisenhower: none – Wall but a gleam in Walter Ulbrecht’s eye then. 
Kennedy: 
because it was built on his watch?
Johnson: sadly, no.
Nixon: 
because it existed simultaneously with his Presidency?
Ford: 
same as above, and US established diplomatic relations with DDR.
Carter: none.
Reagan: 
leapt into the future and tore down his own-self.
Plus one inside: 
Plus at the Ronald Reagan Building in DC: 
Plus one at the “Reagan Ranch” [downhill from it in Santa Barbara]: 
Bush: 
fell while in office.
Another, indoors: 
Other Americans have different ways of displaying the Wall: 
Backwards in Britain
I got mine!
The Churchill family cashing in threatens to set the United Kingdom on the path to more presidentialism: cults of personality, motorcades, and our gift to the world, the presidential library.
History News Network reports they aren’t there yet, but are plugging away.
Britain has a functioning National Archives, but that can’t stop the empire builders. The Churchill papers were bought back from the family with public money, and rest at the Cambridge college named for him. Margaret Thatcher is tagging along there, but appears to be thin on actual material.
Her archive head says “What we have here …are the private letters to Baroness Thatcher from members of Parliament, copies of official letters that she was allowed to take with her and much more.â€
The Thatcher web site illustrates the redundant nature of the enterprise:
“MT’s own collection includes copies of most of the White House material relating to her meetings with successive Presidents. Gaps in her collection have been filled, in some cases, from the Carter and Reagan Library photographic collections. Bush material will be placed on line with documentary material in early 2006.”
A search in multimedia for “Reagan” gets you nothing but White House photos. There are some bugs to work out on the site itself. Even the link to the Churchill archives is a bust.
The Churchill site is more fun, including Churchill’s memorandum calling for poison gassing Bolshevik troops during the British intervention in Russia’s Civil War.
“When Gerald Ford keeled over, his funeral on cable TV would have made Winston Churchill blanch with embarrassment.”
BBC America’s Matt Frei, newly crowned “BBC World News America” anchor in TVNewser. 
Up next: pithing up that show title.
