Meet Your New Overlords! 
Hopes for a dynasty-free nation soared with the sputtering end of George W. Bush’s administration and the announced retirement of the Kennedy’s last office holder.
Over The Shoulder, Out Of Reach 
But new threats emerge.
Jimmy Carter’s Grandson has been elected to the Georgia State Senate, and Richard Nixon’s Grandson aspires to do in a Long Island Democratic Congressman if the Republican nomination can be secured.
The drums have grown silent on George P. “little brown one” Bush’s inevitable rise to greatness, but all this can’t but help build the tired stench.
What’s Under The Tree For You & For Me? …
Freedom Sold Separately! 
National Treasure [& long time PresidentsRUs favorite] Al Kamen fills a Friday Washington Post column with updates on the George W. Bush Presidential Library’s exciting “Freedom Registry.”
As faithful readers are aware, the Registry lists donors to the Bush Library project, starting at the low low price of just $50.
Now Kamen reports it will not merly list of names on a wall, or inscribe them on a brick, but will entail the hallmark of late 20th century technology: interactivity!
“Using the latest technologies, this innovative registry will be housed in a specially designed kiosk and will feature an interactive listing of those chosen for this special recognition”
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 Never has self selection been more meaningful.
Fries With That? 
Bush donors are getting off easy. The bandit princes of the Young America’s Foundation are soaking the rubes for a thousand dollars, in return for which their name is inscribed on the “Freedom Wall” tucked away out of sight on the Reagan ranch property. Why these believers in Reagan’s Berlin Wall shattering Mighty Voice would build a wall is unclear.
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Decidedly Unappealing 
The Nation awaits George W. Bush’s after-report on his troubled presidency, but even in his upcoming tome’s press release we see the hallmark of the Bush Era: don’t sweat the details.
High on their own gas over Bush ”Shattering the conventions of political autobiography,” his flacks rush through the Bush Decade without regard to actual facts, “In gripping, never-before-heard detail.”
“President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century.“
Perhaps not the greatest of crimes, or the tallest tale we can look forward to, but didn’t his Katrina problem start from not being behind the Oval Office desk?
Point Of Reference 
Architects of Victory 
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Presidential grade inflation reaches a tragic apotheosis with the unveiling of an exciting new Frank Gehry design for DC’s long awaited Eisenhower Memorial.
The scheme accomplishes so many goals:
– obliteration from sight of DC’s only recognition of Lyndon Johnson.
– dimming if not completely blocking Education Department views of the Capitol, giving Department employees the experience of life behind a billboard.
– further destruction of L’Enfant’s Washington street grid.
– bringing to DC more of the Stalinist bombast we’ve all so enjoyed at the World War Two Memorial.
The thing is huge. Tiny people will cavort amidst giant topless pillars to nowhere strewn about the plaza, with vast metal mesh screens blocking the Department of Education’s Lyndon Johnson Building from sight. These jumbo-trons in steel will portray scenes from Ike’s career, “amplifying the setting and creating an ideal background for the memorial experience.”
Or, as greatergreaterwashington said, ” It’s like we’ve taken the tarps that are supposed to hide the parking garages at Nationals Ballpark and turned them into a monument.” 
But not to worry. “we’re very concerned about that issue,” Gehry said of the tapestry’s impact on the LBJ building.”
Beneath the masses of metal a collection of stones will be arrayed in a semi-circle. This half-assed Stonehenge may host the memorable quotes we all associate with the Hero of Anacostia Flats. 
The Memorial Commission presents as almost a done deal its land grab of Maryland Avenue, with the street and the triangle northwest of it already absorbed into Ike’s lebensraum.
We can look forward to further retrospective attempts to position Eisenhower as a quiet force for Civil Rights, stepping briskly past Ike’s view that “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.â€
Also perhaps best avoided is his only gotten son, Richard Nixon. 
Reagan Inflation 
The echos of Tim [who?] Pawlenty’s heartfelt tribute to Ulysses S. Grant had barely faded when eager young Republican cubs sprang forth to re-seal Grant’s Tomb.
Small but perfectly formed North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry has introduced legislation to banish Grant from his perch on the $50 bill, replacing him with a fellow all the kids love, Ronald Reagan.
The circle jerk of history is proven in McHenry’s press release. Why must Grant go? He’s much less popular than Reagan, Historians Say.
Plausible, but which historians? Here we fall down an especially twisted conservative rat hole.
McHenry cites a 2005 survey of historians done for the honest brokers of the Wall Street Journal opinion operation, performed by the law prof author of “Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 7th edition” on behalf of the focus of evil in the modern judiciary, the Federalist Society.   The Journal guy involved devotes much of his accompanying article to reassuring the faithful that while George W. Bush rated only average, his big bets might still pay off!
Given the sponsors you won’t be surprised to learn that the undisclosed historians panel was corrected for the “far left tilt” of the academy, stacking equal numbers of liberal and conservative historians.
Who knows. We don’t get to see the list, but the stage dressing screams that the fix is in.
