Remembering history the way they wished it had been
Closing Time
“With time running short on his presidency — and on the eve of a trip to the Middle East — President Bush seems to have overcome his aversion to talking about his legacy and is now speaking fervently about how he expects to be remembered.
As it turns out, the president sees himself as quite the heroic figure.”
Dan Froomkin provides a highlights reel of George W. Bush ruminations about destiny and himself.
Hail & Farewell 
“….how do you wish to be remembered in world history?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I’ll be dead before the true history of the Bush administration is written.”
[bonus question from Bush travel scene-setter interview with Israeli journalists.]
Loss Leader 
Shut out from the Simpsons Movie premier [remember that spirited contest?],Springfield Illinois faces another identity dilemma.
The fancy new Lincoln Presidential Library gets all the glory, plus federal, state and local tax money. But long before the new boy got built, Springfield had a Lincoln Library, the city’s municipal Library.
Now the Springfield State Journal-Register is asking if the city library should give up on the name. In a classic whoever shows up reader poll, “Click your Pick“[near bottom of page] asks:
“Should the name of Springfield’s public library, Lincoln Library, be changed to differentiate it from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library?”
The Presidential Library has killed before. The University of Illinois at Springfield’s Abraham Lincoln Presidential Center for Governmental Studies was forced to drop the name.
The city Lincoln seems to have been erasing itself for some time, demolishing it’s classic library building for something 
resembling a bad regional HMO office. 
Masks of Stateliness 
Matthew Yglesias sums up the current political search for Daddy’s old clothes:
“The Republican hagiography of Ronald Reagan is embarrassing but the JFK business is even more detached from reality.”
British Conservatives Look Back in Anger 
It ain’t just disgruntled Labour supporters in Britain who dislike the current US president.
British Conservative blogger Ian Dale has polled his largely Conservative readership on ranking US Presidents since World War II. It’s not a scientific poll, but even these hardened fans of the smack of firm government view Bush the Younger as a walking disaster.
The rankings:
Franklin D Roosevelt +67
Dwight Eisenhower +59
Harry Truman +53
Ronald Reagan +50
John F Kennedy +40
Bill Clinton + 20
George Bush Snr -4
Lyndon Johnson -19
Gerald Ford -20
Jimmy Carter -40
Richard Nixon -42
George W Bush -48
Proof that Conrad Black is not a crank? 
