Presidential Libraries: Controversies
The way a presidential library museum deals with controversies tells you a lot about the way it will deal with everything else in that president’s life and career. You’re taking it on faith that what you see, hear and read is an accounting of what happened — fair, accurate and complete. Otherwise, what’s the point — particularly after having traveled thousands of miles to visit the museum?
If the controversial exhibits (that is, if any exist) do not handle difficult subjects fairly, then the celebratory ones are likely to be…enhanced.
One of the benchmarks I use in evaluating a presidential library museum is to examine a well-known controversy associated with the president. Is there an exhibit about it? If so, how does the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) describe it, and how completely? From whose point of view does NARA tell the story? What artifacts, records and audiovisuals does NARA use to present the issue? Does NARA present more than one perspective? What conclusions would a reasonable person — knowing nothing more about the subject than this exhibit — draw after viewing it?
An important part of this analysis is whether or not NARA even includes the issue in a presidential library museum; depending upon the importance and level of public awareness of the subject, you might be able to draw only one conclusion by its absence: that NARA would prefer we not know about it at all.
As my research — both at the museums, viewing the exhibits, and in the archives, reading the records — developed, three distinct approaches to controversies appeared:
- Deal with it fairly and fearlessly (the least common)
A. The Ford Museum, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has a Vietnam exhibit containing a powerful artifact: the staircase from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
The images of choppers lifting fleeing Foreign Service personnel from the about-to-be-overrun embassy are iconic, and not at all positive for the United States, nor for the Ford Administration. Overruling others, including Henry Kissinger — who explicitly told Ford not to include evidence of defeat in his museum — President Ford insisted it be part of the exhibit, saying, “But it’s what happened.”
Granted, one may argue, in relation to Vietnam, President Ford had the least responsibility of all the presidents — and therefore, it would be easier for his museum to deal with the subject. This point of view is sharpened if one notes the library for the president most responsible for Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, presents many aspects of the war falsely.
In fact — contrary to what NARA has weakly claimed in the past about the changing nature of exhibits over time — the recent Johnson Library Foundation-funded update to the exhibit is even “softer” on Johnson than was the previous version (see below).
However, Ford deserves credit for dealing with a controversial issue in a straightforward manner.*
B. This exhibit at the Truman Library museum, in Independence, Missouri, displays a letter and Purple Heart President Truman kept in his desk for two decades, perhaps as a reminder of the grave responsibilities of his office and the consequences of his decisions.
It’s difficult to imagine a modern president, or a modern presidential library director wanting to include this in a “celebration” of a presidency (though they are federal employees, more and more the respective library’s private political foundation recruits and vets them, and charges with the task of “rescuing” the president’s reputation or “enhancing” his standing or “reinterpreting” his place in history**).
2. “Appear to “deal” with it, but actually spin it in the best possible way (the most common)
A. The Hoover Library museum, in West Branch, Iowa, handles the Great Depression with this… imaginative panel explaining all of the great things the president did to end the Great Depression — including summoning “industrialists to the White House” and winning commitments from the nation’s utilities for new construction and repairs — and that “[p]raise for the president’s intervention was widespread.”
B. Contrary to critics who years ago predicted otherwise, the Clinton Library museum, in Little Rock, Arkansas, does include Monica Lewinsky, and says the president was wrong. Sadly, though, the exhibit is titled “The Fight for Power” and casts the affair and ensuing impeachment as simply a Republican ploy to do through other means what they could not do at the ballot box. The alcove text includes such subtle subtitles as “A New Culture of Confrontation” and “The Politics of Persecution.”
C. The George W. Bush Library museum, in Dallas, Texas, “deals with” the fact President Bush approved the torture of detainees by explaining how important it was for him to have made this important decision — and then by letting him off of the hook for his important decision.
In the video, Condoleezza Rice explains how Bush asked the CIA if torture was necessary and the Justice Department if it was legal; those two “yes” answers were all he needed, she says, and he gave the order.
As the video progresses, Bush makes the astonishing (and soundly disproven) assertion “there can be no debate” the torture of detainees resulted in “keeping America safe.”
D. The George W. Bush Library museum also “deals with” the fact Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction nor had active methods or means of producing weapons of mass destruction by ignoring that fact and pretending instead he really did have them, or was just about to get them.
ThinkProgress has done a good analysis of this:
E. The Lyndon Johnson Library museum, in Austin, Texas, renovated its permanent exhibit a few years ago, and the portion discussing Vietnam attempts to… revise public opinion about Johnson’s role in the conflict. A more thorough examination of this particular exhibit will help to illustrate the problems not only of having private political foundations write the history in museums NARA, a federal agency, runs — and, therefore, approves — but of having federally run presidential museums at all.
First, the Johnson Foundation, author and sponsor of the exhibit, blames Johnson’s predecessors, the South Vietnamese government, his advisors, and the threat of global war.
Then the exhibit provides only partial information about crucial events, leaving out what has come to light since, including how Johnson used false information about the Gulf of Tonkin “incidents” as a pretext for escalation of the war, despite his assurances to the American people to the contrary.
Next, this is how the United States government officially explains the largest aerial bombardment campaign, and the largest failed aerial bombardment campaign, in U.S. history:
In a not-so-subtle manner, it suggests Johnson’s bombing halts were good-faith efforts to “encourage negotiations” (leaving out any real examination of the bombings themselves) only to be thwarted by the North Vietnamese, who took advantage of the lulls to increase attacks.
Message: Johnson=Good; Enemy=Bad.
The sly use of the headline “Quagmire” — an apt description, actually, for what Lyndon Johnson created in Vietnam — belies the following text’s actual message.
Any serious exhibit located in the United States that purports to examine the Vietnam War — particularly one the government houses and the taxpayers maintain — must include the effect of the war in and on the United States. It tore apart the country, led to unprecedented demonstrations and protests, toppled one presidency and ushered in another (which later ushered itself out), and fundamentally changed our society and our politics. Sadly, along with very few scattered images, this panel is the total of such an examination in the exhibit:
3. Deal with it by not really dealing with it (rare, and therefore notable)
A. One of the most difficult challenges/controversies/scandals President Reaganfaced during his two terms was Iran-Contra (arguably, it was the most important scandal). Even though others have tried for years to spin, explain, or even excuse what occurred, for decades — through multiple revisions of its permanent exhibit — NARA handled the issue for twenty years by ignoring it completely.
As a result of its most recent (of many) exhibit renovations, however, the Reagan museum does (for now, at least) include a small display about the scandal, ostensibly portraying the “facts” while actually downplaying the most serious issues uncovered by the Tower Commission, the long-term consequences of the scandal, and, in particular, what we have learned, from records, about the president’s involvement.
The exhibit is literally the least the Reagan Foundation*** could do in order to claim the Reagan Library museum no longer ignores the scandal that threatened to bring down his presidency; it is no more than that, and it all but acquits the president — in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
B. Of all the elections Lyndon Johnson is known to have bought and/or stolen outright (including the presidency of the Little Congress, the informal organization of Congressional staffers), none was so important to his political career and its ultimate conclusion as was his second run for the United States Senate, in 1948.
It is a pivotal chapter in Johnson’s life. Without winning (rather, buying/stealing) this election, his political career likely would have ended. Yet these two panels make up the entirety of the discussion of this important campaign in NARA’s museum:
There are many other controversies presidential library museums handle forthrightly, spin, or do not deal with: mistresses, indictments, policy decisions, personal failings and peccadilloes, and poltical campaigns. The preceding are simply some of the more prominent, and illustrative, examples in NARA’s system.
The system that we pay for, and explicitly endorse, through our tax dollars.
* As does the Ford museum with its Watergate exhibit.
** None more so than Mark Updegrove, the “presidential historian” who ostensibly serves as the federal director of the LBJ Library, but who appears to work more for the LBJ Foundation than for the people of the United States.
2018 UPDATE: the LBJ Foundation has now made Updegrove its director, making official what was clearly obvious.
*** Fred Ryan, the Publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, is the founder and board chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
All exhibit photographs © Anthony Clark.
