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.
Bush Alumni Gather               
George W. Bush has shown his sensitive side to gathering of the faithful, while interested observers puzzled over an exciting new Bush mystery:
Where did they hide the papers this time?
The former President repeated claims he’ll stay above the political fray, while saying former President Carter had “made my life miserable.”
The Bush administration alumni gathered in Washington just as yet another old rock turned over. One piece of information gained from the Justice Department investigation of John Yoo’s torture memos was the exciting news that many of Yoo’s emails from the period were unavailable.
Apparently because they were deleted.
My Successor Deserves My Documents 
Washington veterans exchanged quiet smiles, minds drifting back to the Bush administration’s sprint to the exits, little heeding such niceties as complying with federal record keeping laws. Years of litigation later we learned that some 22 millions emails had gone missing, recoverable only at vast expense.
Choire Sicha spoke for the Nation, asking plaintively “How Many Years Will It Take Us To Get John Yoo’s Emails?”
Watch This Space!
Beck Banishes  
Awakened from their slumbers by patriot/seer Glen Beck, conservatives across America rush to join the antic showman in tossing Teddy Roosevelt over the side.
Until now, who knew that TR’s hysterically masculine crackpot vision of a white man’s world had some problems? Evidently not Jonah Goldberg.
Wonkette peers under the hood of Teddy’s utopia:
“One day soon, Jonah’s going to hear about this “Nationalized Parks†thing, and he is NOT going to be happy about it.“
