Higher ProfilingÂ
Former President Bush is showing a little ankle, dropping by a political science class at the future home of his Presidential Library – Southern Methodist University                                                     
Country First?   
Bush’s first hired speech will be to foreigners, albeit in semi-American Canada.
The ex-president travels to exotic Calgary, Alberta March 17th in what is threatened to be the first of ten speeches this year. Bush crony, Bush Library director and ex-Commerce Secretary Don Evans warns Bush “has to earn a living,” despite his pension, Bush his ‘n her book deals and the remains of his dubious baseball fortune, so we can look forward to more of this.
We must brace ourselves for the inevitable Moonie-funded-through-exotic-passthroughs events which are sure to come.
Book Him 
The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning arts critic Mark Feeney has solved the Presidential Library/Pharaoh-ization problem: Make Obama go first!
It’s a position our first African-American President has been in many times before, and why not round out Black History Month by renouncing the building of his all but inevitable Presidential Library?
I agree with almost everything Feeney says about these places – the terrible history, bad architecture, and overall waste of these monuments to would-be greatness.
But why start with the new guy? George W. Bush has yet to announce a design, much less break ground – that one could be strangled in its birth. The Carter Library will be is closed most of this year in order to sink another $10 million into the place. And despite Feeney’s claim that the Nixon Library finally got his papers in 2007, they are still building,  
      and the papers are not expected on site until Fall 2009.
The established Presidential Libraries are rotting from within, and could be left to wither. But why does Barack Obama have to be first?
The Forgotten Man 
The Dallas Morning News reports that former President Bush is on a slow road to nowhere in the mysteries of the Internet. In Google searches for “bush library”  The George W. Bush Presidential Center ranks below Dad and below a blog on the Library-to-be that hasn’t been updated since May 2007.
The News goes to the gnomes of Search Engine Land, who advise the former Chief Executive to make friends online.
Twitter?
Cost Sent Here 
“A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
In the spirit of government thrift and efficiency so needed in the present crisis, Mark Ambinder points to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate costing out the “Reagan Centennial Commission.”
This hoped for distinguished body would convene to mark the great man’s 100th, and is sponsored by California Tax Payer’s friend Elton Gallegly. The Simi Valley Republican represents Reagan’s relics at the Reagan Library, and is of course a scourge of government waste, fraud and abuse. The Reagan salute would come in at a million dollars.
Gallegly’s proposed commission would be dominated by the Reagan Library, who after recently staging elaborate displays celebrating Nancy Reagan’s gowns,  
 Reagan’s letters to Nancy, and a kids exhibit 
 inviting tykes to re-invade Grenada would appear to have the cash to do it themselves.
Size MattersÂ
The George W. Bush Presidential Library has yet to announce a design or break ground, but it has already grown by 20,000 square feet over the last 18 months. The Dallas Morning News reports the behemoth is now planned for 207,000 square feet “akin to an average Wal-Mart Super Center.” That is twice the size of Bush Senior’s library, and only 60,000 square feet short of the Reagan Library, which holds Air Force One.
It’s an ever shape-shifting object. Â Â Fundraising for the complex is going poorly, and the library/museum parts are shrinking by 5,000 square feet even as the Fantastic Freedom Institute continues to swell. The hoped for legacy enhancer will now fill 66,000 square feet, up from the 40,000 planned in 2007.Â
