Posted on 03/20/2005 7:12:01 PM PST by Taft in '52
The Nixon Library Can't Be Trusted
David Greenberg, in the LAT (3-15-05):
[Mr. Greenberg is a professor at Rutgers University. His book, Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, was recently published in paperback by W.W. Norton.]It's rare for a scholarly conference to make the newspapers. It's rarer for a conference to make the papers when it never takes place. But that's what happened recently when the Richard M. Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda canceled a symposium on Nixon and the Vietnam War that it had planned to sponsor with Whittier College.
The cancellation provoked an uproar. The library claims that tickets weren't selling well enough, but most observers see political motives at work — more of Nixon's old concern with shaping his reputation.
For years the Nixon Library has seemed more intent on waging a campaign to improve the late president's image than on portraying him accurately. When the library opened in 1990, its then-director, Hugh Hewitt, announced it would bar researchers deemed not "responsible." "I don't think we'd ever open the doors to Bob Woodward," he said by way of example. (The policy was retracted.) Worse, the library was caught editing the "smoking gun" tape — the White House recording of June 23, 1972, that implicated Nixon in the Watergate cover-up — to distort its meaning in an exhibit.
Today, the museum's events typically include book-promoting speeches from the likes of Newt Gingrich and Ari Fleischer. The rare invitation to a serious historian will pair him or her with a far-out Nixon defender, like conspiracy theorist Len Colodny, one of the authors of "Silent Coup," which denies the basic facts of Watergate, maintaining it was a crisis imposed on Nixon, not a crisis Nixon imposed on the country.
Thus, for the library to host a conference on Nixon and the Vietnam War that featured an array of esteemed scholars, including critics of Nixon's presidency, seemed to signal a willingness to start dealing honestly with Nixon's record, to "let the chips fall where they may," in the words of the current library director and longtime Nixon aide, John H. Taylor.
It was a hopeful sign in light of another development: Last year, under pressure from the Nixon family, Congress and President Bush cleared the way for the Nixon Library to become part of the official presidential library system.
Some history is in order. In 1955, Congress formalized an arrangement that Franklin D. Roosevelt made for his library in 1939 — presidential libraries would be built with private funds, but the National Archives would administer their holdings of presidential documents.
Since then, only Nixon has been denied an official library. In 1974, Congress and President Ford gave the government "complete possession and control" of Nixon's presidential papers and tapes because Nixon destroyed some official documents and tried to abscond with others.
The former president sued but ultimately lost in a 1977 Supreme Court ruling, with Justice John Paul Stevens calling Nixon an "unreliable custodian." So the Nixon Library has remained an anomaly. Run entirely by the Nixon family foundation, it contains none of his presidential papers, which are housed at a National Archives facility in College Park, Md.
In 2004, however, Congress voted to let the library join the government system and to transfer Nixon's papers to Yorba Linda.
Skeptics were assured that with Nixon dead and the National Archives participating, the papers would be handled responsibly. But the Vietnam War conference's cancellation has renewed fears that the Nixon Library is still too devoted to public relations to merit the imprimatur of the presidential library system.
For even government oversight doesn't guarantee unbiased treatment of Nixon's legacy. His family, friends and former aides would still have a hand in important decisions, including staffing the archives and granting access to private papers. Sixteen conference participants, including me, have signed a letter asking Congress to reconsider its 2004 decision.
As it is, a commission recently judged all the presidential libraries' museums and programs to be falling short in their educational mission .. Led by the Princeton University historian Stanley N. Katz, the commission recommended that external experts periodically evaluate the libraries' public programs. It warned that "too little is known about the priorities, resources and influence" of the foundations whose financial backing guides the libraries. Such problems would be all the more egregious in Yorba Linda because of the distinctive nature of the quest to rewrite the history of his presidency.
Historical inquiry requires revising old orthodoxies. Historians should — and do — debate all aspects of Nixon's presidency, such as the wisdom of detente, the merits of his Vietnam War strategies, and whether Watergate is best understood as a chapter in the growth of the national security state or as an expression of Nixon's troubled psyche. But historians must not be forced by propagandizing loyalists and conspiracy theorists to fight a rear-guard action of constantly explaining anew the accepted facts of a constitutional crisis.
Other presidents have their boosters who lobby for favorable interpretations of their records. Lyndon B. Johnson's library teaches that the Vietnam War unfairly overshadowed his achievements in passing domestic legislation. Bill Clinton's sets the Monica Lewinsky affair in the context of the Whitewater investigations. But in no case besides Nixon's do these labors amount to a bid to deny history.
For that reason, Nixon's papers should remain in College Park, where professional archivists have ensured open access, free of political taint. Let the Nixon Library promote its tendentious view of Nixon and Watergate — but without the blessing of historians or, indeed, the American people.
And Slick Willey's library isn't in the same business?
Apparently being a "conspiracy theorist" on matters related to Watergate makes Colodny a bad guy. Does that mean conspiracy theorists Woodward and Bernstein are bad guys too?
The former president sued but ultimately lost in a 1977 Supreme Court ruling, with Justice John Paul Stevens calling Nixon an "unreliable custodian."
Nixon was a mostly-evil, crooked president who struggled in vain to cover up his sleaze. He's right down at the bottom with Clinton, but ultimately did far more harm to the country with his wage-price controls, creation of the EPA and other oppressive agencies, his thieving, crooked VP and of course his Watergate crimes.
It's a shame to see his library perpetuate the lies; we need the light of day shone on this mess.
Want to bet if Professor Greenberg has ever sponsored a "Kennedy and the Vietnam War Symposium" or "Johnson and the Vietnam Symposium"? Heck, he could even invite Robert McNamara to both!
I think most people are already well aware of who and what Nixon was. At what point do these whiny little temper tantrums from these Marxist dweebs in academia, demanding that Nixon be dug up from his grave so they can flog his corpse again and again, become overkill?
I'd pay money to stand in line to pee on either grave; the Park Service really ought to look into that as a new revenue source - there's big money to be made.
Nixon is directly responsible for our problems with China today which may eventually lead to nuclear war. That is the most damning part of his legacy.
Right, as though presidential libraries are anything more than spin-centers for their particular subject, with special benefits for court historians who "get it right", and as many obstacles as possible for those who simply want to understand what happened, minus all of the spin.
Call this a "blinding glimpse of the obvious", and move on.
Historians got sand in their female organs?
Nixon was undone gy one of his few virtues..loyalty. He was however no conservative.
It still fascinates me that Agnew was forced from office BEFORE Nixon, for "being a corrupt Maryland politician".
"Maryland" and "corrupt" and "Democrat" is a great Google search(Results 1 - 10 of about 26,900 ), but we don't see a whole lot of Maryland Democrats being forced from office...
Clinton's just the latest in a long line of Our Rulers who escape justice because of their positions.
Nixon was flawed, as are all men. But he put defense of the country first, as any President should, but as Billy Jeff did not. Thus, your equation of the two fails the most fundamental test.
Nixon was an American. Elvis gave him a honkin' big gun.
Nixon had unconservative economic and regulatory policies with which I disagree.
But the bottom line is, for all of his shortcomings, Nixon loved and served our country to the best of his abilities.
May God bless Richard Milhous Nixon.
I am no Nixon fan but this unrelenting, irrational hate and mischaracterization of moral equivalency between Nixon and BJ is ridiculous.
Nixon had lots of faults - but his chief failing was being remarkably unlikeable and inept in mass communications. He tried to act in the best interests of the country (refusing to contest conspicuous, massive, casualm, public vote fraud in the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential vote) and was ill-served by syncophants that betrayed him. 'Watergate' was a ridiculous farce that the media and Dims blew into a national scandal when it was far less political espionage than what was routine in the Kennedy-Johnson White House years.
Along with what was said earlier, the liberals that continually dig up his corpse to poke at and abuse it need some serious therapy.
I assume that you have never visited the Nixon Library, because if you had, you most likely wouldn't have made such a comment. If you do pay it a visit, you will find, as most visitors do, that it provides a sympathetic, yet fair and balanced presentation of the life and times of Richard Nixon.
While the museum celebrates Nixon's triumphs--his exposure of the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, his travels around the globe as America's roving ambassador while serving as Eisenhower's vice president, and his presidential and post-presidential accomplishments--it does not duck the controversial aspects of Nixon's life. A copy of the notorious "pink sheet" from his 1950 Senate campaign is on display, a videotape of the "Checkers" speech is available for viewing, and an entire gallery devoted to the Watergate affair.
Besides the Nixon library, I have visited the Reagan, Kennedy, and Johnson presidential libraries, and Nixon's seems to provide the fairest, most balanced, and most comprehensive presentation.
I sould like to add that the Nixon Library receives no government funding whatsoever.
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