George W. Bush Library & Museum, $250,000,000 "Atta-Boy" to Mediocrity~An Opportunity to Propagandize and Sanitize

Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the obligatory gold watch for former presidents has become the presidential library/museum back in the home state.  Thirteen of these have been approved by the NARA(National Archives and Records Administration) and several others pre-dating FDR have been built anyway.  Those who wish to bask in the glory of the Rutherford B. Hayes administration  only have to go to Fremont, Ohio, for example, and peruse the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.

The latest of these monuments to immortalize former commander-in-chiefs is the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, financed to the tune of $250,000,000 by private donations to the Bush Foundation.(Egads, it's mindboggling to think how much money can be raised from individuals and corporations who have the same ideological mindset for something like this.)  Hopefully, parents of children who visit these laudatory edifices of presidential memorabilia in the future will caution their young ones that the presentation is simply one version of history, a rewrite at best.

Speaking of historical rewrites, Theodore Junker, a retired Wisconsin farmer, but also a former German soldier, who came to the U.S. in 1955, has built the Adolf Hitler Museum on his 20 acre plot.  Junker speaks to his version of "truth" about the deceased fuhrer:

Adolf Hitler Museum, Wisconsin

"Outside, where I have a memorial, there are marbles where everything is inscribed. What all got lost during the war. Most people don't know that more people died after the war than during the war. In the camps. The other thing that they don't know is that 17 million people was driven away from their homeland. This all is inscribed."

"Downstairs, in the Hall of Honor, I have also some inscriptions. What Hitler did. What they tell, that he started the war, it's not true. Everything what they say, he was a dictator and so on, I prove this is not all true."

George W's monument on the S.M.U. campus is the largest so far at 226,500 square feet, slightly smaller than the country's largest Walmart Supercenter at 260,000 square feet.  Among the attractions are the bullhorn the president used to address the first responders at Ground Zero after 9/11 and the red dress Laura Bush wore to the first George W. inaugural ball.    Not included is a video of Bush telling former FEMA director Michael Brown:  "Heck of a job, Brownie!" during the aftermath of 2005 Hurricane Katrina when U.S. citizens were treated worse than cattle.

A display featuring interaction with the visitors gives them an opportunity to react to intelligence about Iraq and in a short time frame make a presidential decision.  "Not so easy is it?" the display seems to say to those who might criticize W for going to war with Iraq over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

The one former president some might have expected to opt out of the self-glorification of a presidential museum, Jimmy Carter, has his pyramid in Atlanta, The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.  I actually thought the former peanut farmer might just say:  "Ah shucks, give that money to Habitation for Humanity," but I guess this has become a so-called rite of passage.
  

Bill Clinton Museum

With The Bill Clinton Presidential Library and Museum on the banks of the Arkansas River at Little Rock, it will be interesting to see the eventual location of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.  Will she have hers built next to Bill's or opt instead for a structure along the banks of the White River near Flippin, Arkansas?