Decision Points Theater: Katrina
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There is video below. Astounding video. You can experience a bit of the George W. Bush Library museum’s Decision Points Theater without having to travel to Dallas. But first, some context, if you don’t mind.
You enter the semi-circular theater and select a seat. Directly in front of you is a touchscreen. At the front of the room is a large, curved screen.
The presentation begins, and at once you’re astonished. At the look of it. At the slickness of it (and…that’s not a compliment). At the growing — unseemliness of it. At the commercialistic feeling of the whole thing (neither are those).
This isn’t history, and it’s not education. It’s a sales pitch. It’s a higher-tech version of the get-a-free-weekend-at-the-resort, just listen to the you-too-can-own-a-timeshare lecture first. Only instead of Mort and Heather, Condo Sales Associates, we get Andy and Josh, two former White House Chiefs of Staff. And later, the President himself. Which is sort of unprecedented.
The Truman Library museum Oval Office replica exhibit includes audio of President Truman talking about the famous room, recorded for that purpose.
President Carter videotaped answers to questions that visitors to his library could “ask” him in the Town Meeting exhibit in the Carter Library museum (as did President Nixon, in a similar, earlier exhibit at the Nixon Library museum).
President Clinton recorded the narration (extemporaneously, late one evening while walking through the exhibit) for the audio tour of the Clinton Library museum:
A few other presidential library museums feature snippets of audio and video that their respective Commanders in Chief produced for exhibits. However, by far, the majority of media that visitors can see and hear in a presidential library museum are contemporaneous clips from the president’s time in office — not recordings made specifically for an exhibit.
The George W. Bush Library museum is different; the former President appears in longer segments produced for the museum (there is also far more archival footage of him than in any other library). For someone who has spent a lot of time in these museums, it’s a noticeable difference. Earlier presidents have made grand attempts at explaining, spinning, and even rewriting history — but in subtler ways, and through third-person exhibit text or by using surrogates; they leave the selling to others.
In the Decision Points Theater, though, President Bush makes his own case — strongly, though not unabashedly, as the expensive, aggressive presentation would lead you to believe he might. In fact, throughout the library museum, there is, perhaps not surprisingly, a consistent undercurrent of proactive defensiveness — nowhere more so than when the President speaks. And he does this nowhere more clearly than in the Decision Points Theater.
The fact that he appears in order to defend himself — particularly after asking you what you would have done in his shoes — is out of the ordinary, to say the least. For several years now, these “You Decide” exhibits have been all the rage in presidential library museums. But the others use anonymous narrators, and are significantly more modest than the Bush Library museum theater.
At their core, they all share this notion: that a museum can present, within the span of a few minutes, information about some of the most important decisions a President has had to make, and that visitors will be able to make up their own minds about what they would have done — right there, right on the spot.
Or, with hindsight, what the President should have done…which, of course, is one of the flaws of such a premise: while we may not have the same information the President had when he made the decision — it will be a hundred years before all of the documents are released — we know how it all turned out, which must inform our own present-day decision-making process.
In any case, if you end up disagreeing with the President, many of these offer what are known as “counter-factuals” — what bad things would have happened had we gone with your idea. Most of these gently press the belief that the President was right; none, other than the Bush Library museum, have the President appear on screen to explain why you’re wrong and why he was right.
The Clinton Library museum -
and Ford Library museum -
place these exhibits inside replicas of the Cabinet Room, and visitors sit at the large table, using technology discreetly incorporated into the decor (the Reagan Library museum, in one of their many previous iterations, had a similar, somewhat lower-tech Cabinet Room exhibit).
The Johnson Library museum has a decision exhibit, but not in a theater or room replica; visitors use touchscreen tables within the Foreign Affairs exhibit room. In a slight twist from the norm, instead of asking you what you would have done, within the scenario you are an advisor, and are asked to make a recommendation to the President.
The Truman Library museum has a Decision Theater, too, but it is as far in concept and design from the Bush Library museum’s Decision Points Theater as Independence is from Dallas.
No, the Bush Library museum’s version stands alone. You can see for yourself, in the video below. Just a few more comments before you experience Decision Points Theater: Hurricane Katrina.
On top of the breathless pace of the presentation (which really is quite disconcerting in the room), and the constant interruptions of “breaking news”, and what I believe are unsuccessful attempts at verisimilitude (actors playing the roles of the advisors), there’s the focus-group aspect, which is the most odd.
During the briefings, each time you select a kind of advisor (Pentagon, White House, military, etc.), you get two, opposed to each other. While you are listening, you are supposed to move sliders up and down as you agree or disagree with the advice you are receiving. All within a few seconds — which is supposed to ramp-up both the urgency and the “gee, how does the President do it?” factor.
On the main theater screen, the aggregate scores are displayed in real time, showing which way the audience is leaning as the deadline to make the decision rapidly approaches.
Instant polling. Instant deciding. Because, when all is said and done (and the sooner, the better), it’s about your gut, isn’t it? The truthiness of what you feel?
Enough prelude, and enough of my opinions; it’s time for you to decide. Here now, Decision Points Theater: Hurricane Katrina.
