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:

Gambling Great Harry Truman

Poker News calls the roll of Presidential poker players: Grant, Harding, both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon. They are summoning up the ghosts of gaming past to defend….online gambling!

“It’s hard to imagine that a pastime that these men, arguably considered pillars of American history, could be condemned by so many just because there is an element of luck and gamble mixed in with the skill needed to be successful in the game.Perhaps America’s legislators should take a look at these presidents and the game of poker in America’s history before condemning the online gambling industry. If the game is good enough for presidents to play, it’s good enough for people to be playing online from the comfort of their own homes.”

Better press than usual for Warren Harding – moving on up!

Man and mementos

The Associated Press presents Barry Landau as international man of mystery, dancing with queens and first ladies when he isn’t precociously worming his way into an Eisenhower White House invitation. Since then they claim he has been operating at the nexus, working the fulcrum, and in and of himself representative of the convergence of all we hold dear in politics and entertainment.

And snagging a lot of tchotskis over the years. Some of his collection will be reflected in “The President’s Table: 200 Years of Dining and Diplomacy,” first of a threatened three volumes of Presidentish stuff.

“He’s the kind of guy you may not notice in the pictures with celebrities. He is 59 and has been in the company of presidents for nearly 50 years. He is tall and bearded, with a home full of history and a head crammed with names, like boxes in an overstuffed closet ready to tumble out.”

One name that doesn’t tumble out in AP’s account is Hamilton Jordan.

Landau was supporting witness to allegations that Jimmy Carter Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan used cocaine during a visit to Studio 54, the New York nightclub which from almost any perspective symbolized everything wrong with America in the 70s.

Drugs were the least of their problems

Club owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager faced prison for tax evasion, and offered up Jordan’s name as plea bargain bait. Their attorney was sinister New York fixer Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s former counsel.

Cohn, clubbing.

The Special Counsel* appointed to investigate the allegations rejected them, and found Landau to be, shall we say, a questionable witness:

“There were only three people who claimed to have direct information concerning Mr. Jordan’s alleged use of cocaine in Studio 54: Rubell, Johnny C., and one Barry Landau. As witnesses, the most charitable thing that could be said about them was that they were utterly unbelievable….Landau claimed that on the evening of June 27, 1978, while at Studio 54, Mr. Jordan asked him for cocaine. Despite what he had said on the 20/20 program, however, when we pressed him, he did not claim to have any knowledge that Mr. Jordan in fact took cocaine that night. Landau said he did not hear Mr. Jordan ask Rubell or anyone else for cocaine, did not hear any other discussions about cocaine, and did not see Mr. Jordan or any other member of the Jordan group take cocaine. He also said that prior to August 24, 1979, he was never told by Rubell or anyone else that Mr. Jordan had taken cocaine in his visit. Landau declined to be interviewed by the FBI about June 27, 1978.20…Although Landau said that other persons were with Mr. Jordan that evening when Mr. Jordan asked Landau for cocaine, each of those persons explicitly denied that Mr. Jordan asked anyone for cocaine in his presence. I had very serious doubts about Landau’s credibility under any circumstances.”

None of this stops Landau on the book tour. He’s planning to hit the Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush Presidential Libraries, and for some reason doing both the Ford Archive and Ford Museum on separate days.

Somehow he is skipping the Carter Library.

*Youngsters may not recall, but one part of the hell that was the 70s was the appointment of Special Counsels at the hint of White House impropriety.

The Washington Post has a look at presidential history making in the making in Russia, where Vladimar Putin’s camp followers have taken to analogising the post-Soviet strongman with Franklin Roosevelt.

“FDR, according to a consistent story line here, tamed power-hungry tycoons to save his country from the Great Depression. He restored his people’s spirits while leading the United States for 12 years and spearheaded the struggle against “outside enemies,” as the mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda put it.

Translation: Putin rescued an enfeebled Russia from the chaos of the 1990s, banished or imprisoned dangerous billionaires [unclear if he “welcomes their hatred.”]and regained respect for his newly enriched country on the world stage.

And Roosevelt ran for a third and fourth term because his country needed him. Translation: Putin, too, should stay. ”

If Putin is Roosevelt does that make Bush Stalin?

Let’s look at the stats:

Underestimated by colleagues?

Penchant for secrecy?

Likes to dress up in uniform?

The wannabee Wilson “Presidential Library” in Staunton Virginia is keeping Woodrow’s spirit alive with some help from the History Channel, making a film about a local segregated park. The library is presenting it as sort of making amends for the Professor’s errors and omissions. The local paper has a Wilson official referring to him as not “enlightened,” which is one way you could describe introducing segregation to Washington DC and promoting it in federal offices. Doing his part, a young Navy Secretary named Franklin Roosevelt.

The Wilsonians seem of several minds about his actions. Their web site provides a roundup of his crimes, and their defense? Nobody cared about black people!

*Wilson to a black delegation in 1914.