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Greatness Comes Early On Long Island 

The Economist features a roundup of current presidential naming activity, and not surprisingly there appears to be no last minute rush to name things for the outgoing fella.

Instead, waves of hope crash over towns and municipalities, school boards and city councils, as a net-aroused citizenry demands Barack Obama’s name be slapped onto any and all available public real estate.

Only small advances so far.

Hempstead Long Island [or in an eccentric English spelling, “Hamstead”] is proud home to Barack Obama Elementary School,    claimed as the nation’s first.

There have been setbacks.

His Name was rejected in Tacoma Washington, Marin County California,  and Valley Stream Long Island.

The record  on road naming is mixed as well. St.Louis may finalize naming a boulevard for Obama this month,  but an effort in Hollywood Florida will have to go through the Republican state legislature. Opa-locka Florida has gone ahead with slapping his name on an existing street, furthering the irritating South Florida tradition where every other street seems named for Ponce De Leon and Commissioner Andrea Rubin, along with some original 1920’s developer.

Barack busting out all over has provoked an unusually moronic backlash.

Mark Impomeni isn’t afraid to salute brave Valley Streamers for standing up to the name change artists…

“The parents who balked at the name change were wise to do so, for “tradition” or any other reason.“

…before moving on to the real fun: pissing once more on Bill Clinton.

The shocking facts

“Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency twice. Yet Wikipedia lists no naming of a school for him in its list of accolades that the former president has received since he left the White House”

No higher authority than Wikepedia’s citizen encyclopedists exists, but sadly they missed a few here, and led Mark astray.

The Ghost Who Walks  

There’s the William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School in Compton California, Sherwood Arkansas William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School [he spoke at its dedication] and the William J Clinton Elementary School of La Joya, Texas. [Google: embrace it!]

The current fellow isn’t faring so well.

  His visit to the apparent sole Bush-named school in Stockton California is elaborately documented on the White House site.

No one seems to care, and while carrying water for Israel earned Bush the notion of a “Bush Center” in Israel, the Knesset killed the idea in 2007.

Laying It On With A Trowel 

Our glorious tradition of Presidential Libraries was of course launched by Franklin Roosevelt, who famously parked the first  one in his yard, and had himself buried there to complete the pharaoh-fication.

 

The special localness of these little bits o’ greatness scattered over the landscape are celebrated by America’s leading purveyor of thoughtful presidential historian mush, David  McCullough:

” it is valuable for anyone trying to understand the life of a particular president should come to the place that produced that human being, where his memory is part of the story of that place.“

Stirring words, except Reagan’s location is an accident of real estate after Stanford, where he had no ties, turned him down. Nixon crawled back to Yorba Linda after numerous rejections elsewhere, and Bush Sr is in College Station for ideological congruity, not any local ties.

The great tradition is coming to its logical end at the FDR Library, where the seventy-five year old structure’s roof leaks, the wiring is shot, and damp threatens the Roosevelt papers. A $17 million fix is requested.

Just why this collection of randomly sited mini-archives must be maintained and expanded into perpetuity even as they are pilfered from within is unclear.

The Hard Shell 

The New Yorker reports the latest on the effort to flog Laura “The Nice One” Bush’s tell-some memoirs, which has involved a series of publishing greats trekking to the White House to meet the Fightin’ Librarian before they sign up.

One publisher says it isn’t going well.

 

“I considered it the worst, or the most frustrating, meeting of its sort that I’ve ever had…But she really couldn’t have been nicer.”

And the hoped for softer side of Team Bush?

 “You got the sense she’s just like him.”

Others share the gloom:

“everyone was totally underwhelmed by her”

And as in so many Laura updates,  novelist and biographer-in-all-but-name Curtis Sittenfeld [American Wife]

goes for the kill:

“Sometimes when people share their thoughts it’s sort of disappointing.”

Tell Me A Story

Pearls Without Price  

While the Bush Legacy Project floats fanciful interpretations of the Administrations history as the days draw nigh,  in Dallas they are dropping some of the masks.

Recall all that Dallas economic development the George W. Bush Library was to “spark” [when it wasn’t erasing the immortal stain of the Kennedy assassination] in its gritty, big city Dallas locale?

Well, you ain’t gonna see it.

Just in time for the legacy edifice, Dallas has launched a Tax Increment Financing [TIF] district to suck up any money development around the Bush Library might generate for local taxing bodies.

Mr. President has bored you before with this, but pay attention.

TIFs are magic governments. They take a stretch of land, and proclaim that the value of all future development doesn’t get taxed for schools, sewers or police. The money flows instead to the TIF, which spend it on local amenities, which increases the value of the development, but that’s not going to pay taxes either.

The Bush Library will anchor the North end of a “string of urban pearls” along mass transit.

Feel The Future 

The Dallas Business Journal thoughtfully explains how You will benefit, somehow, someday:

“Cities use TIFs to stimulate development by allowing developers in specific areas to reinvest new property tax dollars spurred by the TIF to fund infrastructure improvements in the zone, instead of having the additional dollars go into the city’s general fund. When the TIF lapses, the city benefits from a more valuable tax base.“

As Sage of Prescott Hollow George W. President Bush frequently reminds  us, by then we’ll be dead.

All this urban glamour will unfold in an area blighted as “an older, industrial area, circa 1950s,” and in thirty years they can do it all over again.

Exit Laughing    

The hour approaches, when George W. Bush turns into a pumpkin and all his presidential papers are supposed to be whisked to the National Archives.

The New York Times reports much whistling past the graveyard by Archives.

Despite a Bush record of non-cooperation with the Archives, fifty times the Clinton Administration’s electronic document volume,  and a breezy Bush slovenliness about preserving email, the Archives told the Times it has “a high level of confidence” it can swallow the beast and cough up the results for future inquiries.

Veteran document troller and national treasure Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive says the National Archives is delusional.

“Their confidence is inexplicable”

The Washington Post reported earlier that whatever is to unfold has already started:

“The ingestion of Bush data has just begun,” said Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper, adding that she is unsure how smoothly it has gone.