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Freedom’s Ferment 

James Traub’s New York Times Magazine piece this Sunday on the Bush Library & Freedom Institute is Nostradamus-like in scope, explaining the past even as it for-tells our dark Bushie future.

Traub reviews the failed efforts by Southern Methodist University faculty and others to stop Bush from planting his autonomous institute on the SMU campus and giving the University no say in its direction or governance. The Institute will be a stand alone entity vaguely associated with the Bush Library, but controlled by the Bush Foundation. Other presidential branding opportunities have at least made gestures towards academic sensibilities, but SMU’s President Gerald Turner makes the Bush people sound rather desperate that they could get a hearing in a real academic setting;

“They wanted to make sure that all points of view, including their own point of view, have a chance to be expressed.”

Bush crony Donald Evans says its all about donor relations:

“If I’m going to ask someone to be supportive of this with their generous contribution…I need to able to tell them that I will be fully responsible to them.”

At one point the University community was told that the Bush Institute would be housed in a separate building, but the latest plans show essentially one building. But Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale  describes them invitingly as “jammed together like town houses.”

How will the Bush Institute fill its days?  Traub quotes Bush Administration fixture Elliot “Mr. Kennelworth” Abrams, apparently seasoned by his “controversial tenure in the Reagan administration” enthusing over the “embattled” and “dissident” figures Bush claims to identify with.

  Natan Sharansky is one such em-battler,  but he appears comfortably ensconced in his own institute in Israel.  Another em-battler endlessly mentioned here and elsewhere is Vaclav Havel, who Bush longs to com over and write something, anything.  Why-ever he would leave his comfortable Prague retirement or his own Presidential Library for Dallas is unclear.

“The Bush circle has done so much damage to every institution they’ve touched, it would be naive not to worry about the damage they could do to SMU.”

You Think?    

James Traub is to explore George W. Bush’s Fantastic Freedom Institute to be at Southern Methodist University in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, and National Treasure Greg Mitchell has the disgruntled money quote in a Huffington Post teaser.

Code Of Silence  

An Obama nominee’s shocking mockery of Ronald Reagan may torpedo his nomination.  Dennis Hayes is up for deputy secretary of Interior, but soldier of the Reagan Revolution John McCain claims to take great offense at some five year old musings   somehow tying Reagan to cowboy mythology.

Hayes wrote of the legendary man of the west,

“a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land…Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.”

That’s it, end of mockery.

McCain pronounced himself unhappy, as well he should, being a product of the DC suburbs parachuted into the wilds of Arizona with only native guile and his wife’s money to support him.

For christ’s sake, Hayes is a chemical and utility lobbyist.

Give Me Land, Lots Of Land 

Southern Methodist University had a gleam in its eye over George W. Bush’s Presidential Library even before Bush was president, according to lawsuit depositions.  University officials and Bush hanger-on Harriet Miers in a dispute over land SMU bought for possible Bush  Library use.

Former condo owners bought out by the university claim they were underpaid, with the land’s value going up with the Library announcement.

The Triumphant Return Of Reaganomics!  

Beloved Broadcaster Paul Harvey always claimed to have invented the term “Reaganomics,”  and the sponsor of a proposed Reagan Centennial Commission is marking Harvey’s death with some classic Reagan-style accounting.

With 19 heroes opposing, the House of Representatives has just passed a power grab by Ronald Reagan’s heirs, allowing them to control all federal observation of Reagan’s Centenary.  Representative Elton Gallegly’s bill  creates a Reagan Centennial Commission controlled by the Reagan Library foundation, in contrast to the broad public boards directing all previous presidential centennial commissions .

The Congressional Budget Office says a Reagan Commission will cost a million dollars, but Gallegly claims  “No federal money can be spent on the commission or its activities,” a story he got his home town paper to buy into.  What voodoo economics does Gallegly perform to lose the costs?

The CBO says:

“All commission members would serve without pay but would be reimbursed for travel expenses. In addition, the commission could hire staff and use volunteers and personnel detailed from other federal agencies. Finally, the bill would authorize the appropriation of $1 million over the 2009-2011 period.“

The Representative may be drawing unexplained distinctions between this Bill’s authorization and a later appropriation, or the CBO says the Commission might be free if takes in donations to cover its costs.

Gallegly may want to get this done while he can.  He’s identified with the Reagan Library to the extent that it’s in the header for his web page, but he’s announced and rescinded his retirement before, and Barack Obama carried his district.