Melville House Books

It’s the mantra of the few people left who support George W. Bush: “I’m confident that people will come to change their mind about the president and some of the decisions he made. You need time to get past the current news cycle and the prejudices and emotions of the moment.” That’s what Mark Langdale says, anyway. Langdale is a longtime friend of Bush, and head of the foundation overseeing the creation of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and, as he tells The Guardian for this report, he firmly believes that a solid archive of Bush’s papers and documents will help people to change their mind about the president. And the Bush library — a $300 million dollar effort to be built on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and expected to open in 2013 — would indeed seem to be an integral part of any future reevaluation of Bush. However, The Guardian reports, there are some problems with the scheme. For one thing, fundraising isn’t going so well. For another, there’s a real question as to whether there will be any historic or academic validity to the library — or even anything to archive in it. It seems that way back in 2001, Bush himself signed an executive order that allows former presidents to withhold public documents, overriding Federal laws mandating their release.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.