Think Progress

Judge orders Bush to testify in SMU case.

Late last week, Texas district court judge Martin Hoffman ordered that President Bush be deposed in a lawsuit against Southern Methodist University (SMU). In the case, two condominium owners near SMU are claiming that “the university bullied owners into selling without disclosing plans to build a presidential library at the site.” They want the former president to “give a statement about whether SMU officials told him about plans to build on the site before the university bought the land.” The plaintiffs have already received statements from Dallas businessman Ray Hunt and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, but neither of them could remember full details of the conversations. Hoffman ruled that Bush can be deposed because he has “clearly relevant and material information about the central issues of the case.” Bush’s lawyers are now preparing an appeal “that would trigger an immediate stay.”

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Cheney planning to skip Bush administration reunion next week.

The New York Times reports that roughly 20 Bush administration all-stars — including Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, and Dan Bartlett — are getting together next week for their first Bush administration reunion. “On tap is a dinner with the former president” and a brainstorming session for the George W. Bush Policy Institute. The man who largely crafted Bush’s presidency, however, will not be at the party:

Not coming to next week’s session is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who in the final days of the administration argued with Mr. Bush about his failure to pardon Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury and other counts for his role in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cheney also broke with the President on a same-sex marriage ban, firing Donald Rumsfeld, overturning Washington DC’s gun ban, and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Cheney to keep vice presidential records, will not allow them to go to Bush library ‘for now.’

The Dallas Morning News reports that “for now,” former Vice President Dick Cheney’s records will not be going to the George W. Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University. Cheney’s team said the former VP needs them to write his memoirs. “It made more sense and was more convenient to keep them in D.C.,” said a Cheney spokesperson. The secrecy even appears to extend to Cheney’s artifacts and gifts:

During talks last year, the National Archives suggested that Cheney’s artifacts — like a set of gold Murano glass candlesticks and bowls from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — be sent to the Bush library. That way they could be displayed with Bush’s items, including the 9 mm pistol that Saddam Hussein held when captured by American soldiers in Iraq.

“The VP preferred to have the VP artifacts remain with the records,” said Sharon Fawcett, assistant archivist for presidential libraries.

As Vice President, Cheney ordered the Secret Service to destroy records of his visitor logs.

‘Small crowd’ on street corner greets Bush in Florida, while block-long line of people camp out for Obama in LA.

Today, President Bush is attending a private fundraiser in Jacksonville, FL, to gin up support for his $300 million presidential library. At the luncheon, Bush also planned to speak about the economy and “thank local Republicans for their support.” Local CBS affiliate WTEV-TV broadcast from outside the venue for the event today, showing a few people standing on a street corner to greet the former president. The reporter called it a “small crowd.” Watch it:

Compare Bush’s reception to that of Obama, who will be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening. People hoping for tickets camped out all night — more than 10 hours — with the line stretching all the way down the block:

Even though Duval County GOP spokesperson Donna Barrow said that “Jacksonville is Bush Country,” Jacksonville’s mayor — who is a Republican — turned down Bush’s invite for today’s lunch.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Bush policy institute ‘unlikely’ to ‘emphasize’ the Iraq war.

Politico reports that President Bush and his wife have been busy trying to raise $300 million for the controversial presidential library, museum, and policy institute at Southern Methodist University. For example, they have “already begun holding small private dinners to persuade wealthy friends to invest in a monument.” His advisers are now trying to figure out which topics to highlight, and have said that they will likely downplay the Iraq war:

The president’s advisers are still chewing over what topics to emphasize. Iraq is unlikely to be one of them. Advisers say they have made a specific decision to leave that verdict to history and not try to defend it at a time when Iraq could still wind up as either a democracy or a disaster.

One of the original ideas was to emphasize the president’s so-called “freedom agenda” of democracy for the Middle East, and there was even talk of calling it The Freedom Institute.

That name — never finalized –was scrapped, in part because many people immediately associated the name with the Middle East, and the institute will have a much broader focus. And lots of other organizations already use “freedom” in their titles; the Bush planners wanted to avoid being confused with them.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Being identified with Bush’s agenda ‘freezes the blood’ of some SMU professors.

Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell previews a New York Times Magazine piece set to come out this weekend that “explores the uproar over the soon-to-arrive ‘Freedom Institute’ established by former President George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.” The article says that some SMU professors are “half-convinced” that Bush will name Karl Rove as his foundation’s executive director yet “see Condi Rice as an acceptable alternative.” The article also provides further testimony that SMU faculty are extremely uncomfortable housing Bush’s library and “Freedom Institute” at their university:

Another historian there charges: “The Bush circle has done so much damage to every institution they’ve touched, it would be naive not to worry about the damage they could do to SMU.” [...]

[The article] points out, “the prospect” of being identified “in perpetuity” with Bush’s agenda “freezes the blood of some of the university’s leading academics. Everything about the planned institute reminds them of what they detested about the Bush administration. It will proselytize rather than explore: a letter sent to universities bidding for the Bush center stipulated that the institute would, among other things, ‘further the domestic and international goals of the Bush administration.’”

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Web pages mocking Bush rank higher than his library site in online search results.

Last December, the Bush Library foundation paid a cybersquatter $35,000 for the rights to the web domain name www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com. A web development company originally paid less than $10 for the rights to the site. However, since the purchase, the library’s website is having trouble getting noticed on internet search engines:

The Web site for George W. Bush’s presidential library foundation – GeorgeWBushLibrary .com – is falling behind in online search results for “Bush library.”

The guy who’s beating him: his own dad. Even pages mocking the former president rank higher.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, an industry blog said the site is “below average” for building web traffic and “probably failing” in efforts to raise money because of its low ranking.

Bush library and ‘Freedom Institute’ to be housed in same building.

President Bush has repeatedly insisted that his think tank, or “Freedom Institute,” “won’t be used to promote a whitewashed perspective on his presidency.” Original plan, in fact, had his library and Freedom Institute as two separate buildings at Southern Methodist University. However, today the Dallas Morning News reports that they will actually be housed in the same building:

But in a White House interview this week, Laura Bush said the library design committee she chairs has moved away from its original plan.

She said the lone building will probably have separate wings and design elements to make the functions “distinct from each other.” [...]

“It will be cool-looking,” President Bush said.

This announcement reinforces concerns that the Freedom Institute will “celebrate” Bush, rather than promote “dispassionate inquiry.”

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Bush library may become a ‘white elephant.’

The London Sunday Times suggests today that the cost of President Bush’s library may exceed its usefulness, writing that the library is “in danger of becoming a white elephant.” The Times notes that while the National Archive uses taxpayer dollars to pay presidential library staffers to maintain presidential papers, an executive order Bush signed in 2001 will allow him to withhold any documents he chooses from the library’s collection. The order threatens the traditional usefulness of presidential libraries that generally “show the president ‘warts and all.’”

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Bush library foundation president already spinning Katrina response.

In an article today on the George W. Bush presidential library, McClatchy notes that “[t]he present hasn’t worked out so well” for Bush. “So now he’s banking on a kinder and gentler future.” Bush library foundation president Mark Langdale says he is “confident that people will come to change their mind about the president and some of the decisions he made.” How will the Bush library accomplish this task? Spin. And Langdale has already begun, calling the debacle surrounding Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina “the limitations of government assistance”:

Langdale says the Bush museum will not avoid the most divisive episodes of the president’s eight years in office, such as the administration’s much-criticised humanitarian response to Hurricane Katrina. [...]

“There’s an interesting lesson about Katrina and the limitations of government assistance to respond to big natural disasters,” Langdale said. “They are acts of God, and they are tough. It’s definitely a story line I would not shy away from addressing somehow in the museum.”

Indeed, this doesn’t seem to be Langdale’s first act of Bush celebration. Pictured behind him in a photo accompanying a separate article on the library last week was a photo of Bush superimposed over Martin Luther King Jr.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Bush Legacy Watch: Is he the next MLK?

The Dallas Morning News reports that George W. Bush Library foundation president Mark Langdale downplayed suggestions that Bush political guru Karl Rove is heading up Bush’s “legacy project.” However, Langdale noted that Rove will continue to provide advice for the library’s attached “policy institute” — which has received criticism from Methodist ministers and SMU faculty because its research projects will reportedly “celebrate” Bush’s presidency rather than maintain academic integrity. And it seems that Langdale may have already begun the celebration. Pictured behind him in the photo provided along with the Morning News article is a photo of Bush superimposed over Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Dallas Morning News: Bush must reveal names of library donors.

Earlier this month, Stephen Payne, one President Bush’s Homeland Security aides, was caught offering high-level access to Bush administration officials for donations to the Bush presidential library which is set to be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. This morning, the Dallas Morning News, citing Payne’s story, called on Bush to reveal the names of those who donate to his library:

Even so, [Payne's] willingness to peddle influence is another example of why transparency needs to be an integral ingredient of the library, particularly in regard to who supports it so questions of quid pro quo don’t surround the work.

For reasons we still don’t understand, the president hasn’t taken this approach and remains opposed to legislation that would require presidential libraries to reveal their donors.

In February, Bush said of his donors, “There’s some people who like to give and don’t particularly want their names disclosed.”

United Methodist Church delegate pushing for appeal of Bush library decision.

On Thursday, the United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdiction voted to dismiss petitions that would have blocked Southern Methodist University from housing the George W. Bush presidential library and an attached partisan institute. In response, opponents of the planned library “made a long-shot appeal” to “the church’s highest lawmaking body“:

Jeannie Trevino-Teddlie asked the judicial council to examine SMU’s leasing of the land below market value for the public policy institute, which is part of the presidential library complex.

She questioned whether the action met SMU and church rules, which require campus buildings to be used for educational or religious purposes. She said the lease “would subsidize a specific political and ideological point of view.”