Remembering history the way they wished it had been
Spawning Ground of Jerry Voorhis’ Defeat?
His final place of exile 
in New Jersey is destroyed, the Key Biscayne 
“Florida White House” torn down, but a little piece of Richard Nixon still stands near Baltimore.
A building containing the apartment once rented by Lieutenant Richard Nixon in 1946 in being considered for landmark status.
My recollections of the Kennedy Library are that it’s about average for the category – Oval Office repo, press conference excerpts where he knocks ’em out of the park. But this ad campaign is pretty fabulous.
And half a century later, Nixon still can’t compete.
“Situated in southern California just 15 minutes from Disneyland, the Nixon Library is a dramatic roller coaster ride through half a century of California, U.S. and world history!”
Stern Warning
An architect has been named, funds secured, the likely location is known, and a backroom operator 
is, um, operational, but details about the George W. Bush Presidential Library to-be have been sparse. So The Chronicle of Higher Education has taken up the challenge, and announced their own contest to design the Bush Library.
The Bush still faces opposition on the Southern Methodist University campus and in the Methodist Church, and framing 
the legacy
has grown ever more complex.
The contest winner will be announced in March, and they get a $399 IPOD Touch. There are no 2nd prizes. In a charmingly retro detail, contest entries must be submitted by mail:
The Back-of-the-Envelope Bush Library Design Contest
c/o The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20037
Dream Girl
His campaign’s revival has clearly made John McCain giddy. Among the celebrities he’s dragged around Iowa is a real ghost of Christmas past, Tricia Nixon Cox. 
Yes, Richard Nixon’s eldest daughter. 
It’s hard to tell what constituency Cox is meant to appeal to. Nixon bitter-enders have got to be a shrinking number, and Tricia never had much profile beyond her father. Youthquake Ambassador? 
Nixon was so far down that even wholesome hacks like 
Jay & the Americans felt empowered to record an impossibly lame anti-war song called Tricia [Tell Your Daddy]. Tragically the only version on line is by the song’s Canadian writer. 
Cox kept a fairly low profile after her “storybook”Rose Garden wedding 
to Mr. Cox and her father’s exile.
She participated in a 25th wedding anniversary event at the Nixon Library in 1996, one of the Presidential Paper-less entity’s diverse efforts to fill the seats. 
Tricia surfaced in 2002 to make nice with sister Julie, ending a dispute over Nixon entourage member Bebe Rebozo’s $20 million gift to the Nixon Library. 
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off? 
Hey! It’s Lyndon Johnson’s 100th birthday!
Who can resist round, and somewhat large numbers? 
The Johnson Centennial folks hope you can’t.
To the extent there is a unified theme it appears to be a version of get ‘er done-ish hymns to his domestic labors. Recent events may have made competence in execution a hot selling point, but they are conspicuously silent on Vietnam. 
Johnson is but the beginning of what we can only hope becomes known as the Centennial Century.
First up is Lincoln, technically coming back for seconds at his bicentenary in 2009. Reagan looms in 2011, and by golly maybe they’ll get him slapped on Rushmore by then. 
The Nixon Library is already marking his 95th birthday, so look out in 2013. I’ve been unable to detect any Kennedy 2017 activity, but a boy can dream.
