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Post Magazine
This Week:
Monumental Ambitions
With Paula Span
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2002; 1 p.m. EST

Presidential libraries are part history and part hagiography, part archival mother lode and part kitschy commerce. Mostly they are monuments to their namesakes, from FDR to JFK to Ronald Reagan. And taxpayers fund them to the tune of $55 million a year. So, are they worth it?

Paula Span, whose article "Edifice Complex" appeared in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, was online Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 1 p.m. EST, to field questions and comments about the article.

Span is a Washington Post Magazine staff writer.

A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Dallas, Tex.: The Johnson Library in Austin is beatuful and certainly a monument to power (it reflects who it is named after). However, with that genneration of Americans who lived while he was president getting older, and future gennerations of Americans not knowing who Lyndon Johnson was, what is the future of that building and will the goverernment always continue to subsidize presidential libraries like this one?

Paula Span: Greetings, everyone.

Yes, unless Congress changes its collective mind and repeals several laws, beginning with the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955, we are as a nation committed to maintaining and operating these libraries. We don't, as taxpayers, pay to build them, but we pay to keep them functioning and to upgrade them as they age. And there will be a new one every four to eight years.

You could argue that future generations' cluelessness about presidents they never knew is a good argument to keep doing so. That's one purpose of any sort of museum, after all, and these libraries are part archives, part museum. The question in my mind is, how balanced, reliable and engaging is the history these places are transmitting?

Alexandria, Va.: Isn't 55 million an insignificant expenditure? I have a feeling that government officials tip waiters more than that each year.

Paula Span: You're right, in terms of the federal budget it's a drop -- or maybe a droplet -- in the proverbial bucket. A lot of private money goes into building presidential libraries and a fair amount into their programming, exhibits, etc.

But small as that sum is, comparatively, Congress historically has been skeptical of increasing spending much more. That's why proposals, like Robert Dallek's, that the libraries be fully federally-funded are exceedingly unlikely to succeed. That would eliminate meddling by presidents and their pals, and curb fund-raising excesses, but even people who embrace the idea think nope, not gonna happen.

St. Louis, Mo.: What are typical items kept in presidential libraries, who has the largest library and are they open to the general public?

Paula Span: Yes, indeed. One of the cool things about presidential libraries is that not only are the museums open to everyone, but so are the archives. Anyone over 14 can go in, fill out the same card that Arthur Schlessinger or Doris Kearns Goodwin fills out, and have access to the presidents' papers, minutes of meetings, correspondence, photographs...tons of stuff. It's quite a democratic system in that sense.

Beyond the presidential papers, the museums collect all sorts of artifacts -- clothing, FDR's braces that never appeared in photographs because the public wasn't supposed to know the extent of his disability, gifts from heads of state. Family photos. Presidential limos. There's usually a replica of the Oval Office. The Reagan Library is building a huge hangar which will house the Air Force One used by several presidents. On and on.
Every library has a website you can check out to learn more.

Paula Span: Oops, I think I neglected to respond to your question about size. The LBJ Library is the largest, according to the National Archives which administers these libraries, narrowly edging out the JFK Library by about 400 square feet. And anyone I spoke to who knew Lyndon Johnson believed that somewhere, he was VERY happy about that.
But with that huge new hangar, I think Reagan is poised to become the largest.

Since a Congressional act in 1986, the feds have capped the number of square feet it will maintain in any presidential library, unless the foundation that's formed to build it pays a huge financial penalty to be larger. That's going to discourage behemoths in the future, as intended.

Washington, D.C.: NARA is working on an online archive. Is eveything in presidential libraries on their Web sites?

Paula Span: No, and it's going to take years before that happens. But every library is working on it, putting at least some of its most frequently-requested material online, in many cases putting catalogues and indexes online so that people will know what's in its holdings.

The directors I interviewed certainly recognized the importance of online archives in the future. Not everyone who wants to look at Ike's papers can travel to Abilene, Kansas.

Virginia: Hello. Are there 42 presidential libraries for the 42 presidents we had (not counting the current one)?

Paula Span: No, because Franklin Roosevelt pretty much invented the concept. Everyone president since then has opted to build a library, though, and so did Hoover, his predecessor. So Clinton's will be the 11th one administered by the National Archives. If you count the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California -- which unlike the others is purely privately-funded, since Nixon's papers arer not there -- we're up to 12.

Alexandria, Va.: I visited the Gerald Ford Library at the University of Michigan. And while visiting it I was mostly thinking, big deal, he was only an unelected president for two and a half years.

Do you think that the budget for a presidential library should be proportional to how long the president was in office?

That way Ford would only get about a quarter as much for his library as Clinton or Reagan.

Paula Span: Not only that, but Ford has two federally-maintained institutions. Most presidential libraries are a museum and an archive combined, but Ford has his library in Ann Arbor, the one you visited, AND a museum in Grand Rapids. I doubt this arrangement will be repeated.

There is some squawking among library fundraisers that the size limits and budgets should not be the same for every president, that two-term presidents should be entitled to more money and bigger libraries because they have twice as much stuff to put in them.

I'm not hearing a lot of sympathy for this perspective from Congress, though.

Lakewood, Ohio: Ms. Span:
I was unable to view your entire appearance on C-Span this morning. I enjoyed very much what I saw, however, you made reference to something George W. Bush has done and I'd appreciate it if you would elaborate. Apparently Bush has issued an executive order that in some way affects presidential libraries. Please explain.
Thanks.

Paula Span: In November, President Bush issued an executive order that historians and public-access advocates are up in arms about. In effect, it would allow either a former president or a current president to prevent the opening of records in presidential libraries. The argument is that this undermines the entire purpose of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which sets forth timetables for the release of documents and was intended to make presidents keep their mitts off. These papers belong to the public.

So a coalition of historians, access advocates, and the lawyers at Public Citizen (who've been through this before) have brought suit in federal court to block the Executive Order.

One thing that's changed since my story went to press: at the time, the Bush White House was delaying release of most of 68,000 pages of material from the Reagan library. That's what prompted the lawsuit. Since then, the White House has authorized the release of nearly all that material (it's not actually available yet, but it's "authorized" for release). But the lawsuit continues, because the plaintiffs are worried less about these particular documents than about future access to all presidential papers.

Chicago, Ill.: Greetings,

What is your take on the bill in Congress currently seeking co-sponsors to change the Executive Order GWB issued to limit access?

Paula Span: This is another attempt to accomplish the same thing: several Congressmen, from both sides of the aisle, are planning to introduce legislation to override President Bush's executive order.

Groups like the American Historial Association and the Organization of American Historians are asking their members -- and anyone else interested -- to contact their congressional representatives to support such legislation.

Whether this ultimately gets resolved in court or in Congress...hard to say. Or if it does.

Arlington, Va.: Records in the Presidential Libraries are adminstered by the National Archives, whose archivists are responsible for preserving and providing public access to "the essential evidence of governmental action." As a former National Archives employee who worked for many years preparing the Nixon tapes for public access, I know that NARA's archivists are objective professionals who understand their mission because they are trained in history. They strive to properly balance the public's right to know against the need to restrict certain categories of information. But when the National Archives is sued by researchers, it is represented in court by Justice Department lawyers, who work for an Attorney General appointed by the President. DOJ often appears to craft positions that serve the interests of sitting Presidents, without always appearing to balance the public's right to know against a President's desire to limit access to information. How can the National Archives dispassionately make available "essential evidence of governmental action" when it is forced to rely solely on DOJ's lawyers, who may have a conflict of interest?

Paula Span: Ah, here's some testimony from someone in a position to know.

It's true, I heard almost universal respect and acclaim for the archivists who work in presidential libraries, as knowledgable and fair and helpful. They don't set the policies that determine how open a library is or aims to be.

But I think a great deal of this tension about what's opened, what's closed, what's secret, what should be accessible -- and even the questions of who pays for what -- are built into this public/private system of libraries. Built into America itself. We have a lot of ambivalence about presidents and their power, and the hodgepodge that is the presidential library system reflects that.

Dallas, Tex.: On Sesame Street they used to play a game called one of these things is not like the other:

George W. Bush

Presidential

Library

While interesting places to visit, these presidential libraries should be funded by the people that funded their campaigns not the taxpayers. Especially if the president is secretive with documents to begin with. Why pay for a struggle to get limited access to information?

Paula Span: Leaving aside your Sesame Street reference, remember that these libraries ARE built by the presidents' friends, former campaign contributors, friendly corporations, foreign governments, etc. They contribute to the foundations that raise the money to erect these monuments.

It's only after they're built that the taxpayers, in the form of the National Archives, steps in and take them over and pays a comparative pittance to maintain them.

It can be very frustrating to see the kinds of battles waged to get access to what are OUR papers, the public's records of the public's business. It's often absurd. But what would happen to these papers if they weren't ours, if they weren't required to be preserved? We'd know far less than we do now about what goes on in the White House, any White House.

The legislation requiring their preservation was a Watergate-era reform, prompted by Congressional fears that Richard Nixon would have destroyed scads of tapes and documents if Congress hadn't seized them. And y'know, he might not have been the only one.

Rockville, Md.: We visited the Bush Presidential Library in College Station a few years ago. It was tastefully done and actually expanded by knowledge of this president. One of the interesting items in there was a letter signed by Sen. John McCain's father to Bush, I believe after he was shot down in the Pacific. Although I wasn't the biggest fan of this president, I learned alot from the museum. It will be interesting to see how the Clinton library comes out.

Paula Span: They are intriguing places, true. I visited several in the course of my research and it was a hoot to wander through them.

Herndon, Va.: To limit costs, how about putting all the records in a vault, then, 50 years after a president has left office, having a vote of all members of the American Assoc of Historians (or whatever the name is) as to whether the president is important enough to have a library. (This is submitted only partially tongue-in-cheek)

Paula Span: Fifty years is wayyy too long.

But aside from that, I definitely can see the appeal of your plan, and I'm only partly kidding too.

The problems: socking everything into some huge central vault makes this information even less accessible to the public. The slightly screwy, decentralized system we have now at least means that people can exploit its idiosyncracies. Certain papers were open at the LBJ library while the very same documents remained classified at the Kennedy library. Some information about the Nixon White House was available at the Ford library while the Nixon archivists in College Park were still entangled in litigation and couldn't release much. Pluralism encourages openness.

Then, too, these library/museums are local cultural institutions that bring exhibits and speakers and Fourth of July celebrations and concerts and World War II bivouacs to places in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Texas. You lose that if you build some vast mausoleum somewhere near the Beltway.

Washington, D.C.: Paula --
Could you explain something about the actual governance of the presidential libraries? Does the National Archives have anything to do with the actual running of the libraries or are they, in fact, run by private foundations (e.g. "The William Clinton Presidential Foundation") with the federal government merely picking up the tab for salaries and/or maintenance? It's sort of confusing.
Thanks.

Paula Span: You're right to be confused.

Once the foundations build the libraries then yes, the National Archives does actually run them. That is, the director is selected by the Archivist of the United States (though the president has input, probably too much) and the archivists and curators are federal employees.

Sounds straightforward, yes? But those foundations don't fade away. They continue to fund much of the programming and exhibits -- the museum shows, the speakers that come, special staffers with expertise in oh, fabric preservation and such. As such, they can wield considerable pursestring power even though the foundations are not nominally in charge. The professional staff is sometimes grateful for their help and sometimes resentful of their interference, and the balance between the two varies from library to library.

In fact, nearly *everything* varies from library to library, even when they're operating under the same legislation, because the personalities and values involved are different.

I trust I've been sufficiently obscure. But you see why I say that "system" is too organized a word for the presidential library system.

Rockville, Md.: As a kid, I spent summers in upstate New York and visited the Roosevelt Library often. I must say, the people who worked there were more than devoted to their work; they were devoted to the memory of that president. I wonder if that can be said of some of the others. His library was fascinating, made even more so by the fact that you could visit his home in Hyde Park at the same time.

Paula Span: I think FDR's library was my personal favorite, too.

And you're right, one of the consequences of having these libraries spread out around the country, rather than in Washington, is that archivists tend to stay and work at a library year after year. They develop enormous knowledge of "their " president and get nearly universal praise for their helpfulness.

Stephen Ambrose told me: Always take the archivist to lunch.

North Bethesda, Md.: Are presidents obliged to turn over ALL documents they create, including e-mail messages? Are they prohibited from deleting e-mail messages?

Paula Span: Yes, White House email must be preserved, not only in printed out but in electronic form. It took a lawsuit by Public Citizen and the National Security Archive to establish this, however. Perhaps you detect a theme here.

Keep in mind, though, that certain categories of presidential records are not made public, notably those that are deemed private (what Bill bought Hill for their anniversary, say) or that could compromise national security. The latter definition changes with time, of course, but there are still a few documents in the FDR Library holdings that, sixty years later, are classified for national security reasons. We presume they deal with nuclear weapons.

Arlington, Va.: Is there any talk of creating libraries for presidents before Hoover (such as Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln)?

Paula Span: There's actually a Lincoln Library under construction in Springfield, Illinois, I just recently learned. But it's a private, nonprofit institution, not a National Archives installation.

The problem, though, is that it may be too late to preserve a really comprehensive set of documents from those early presidents. When they left office, some of their papers or correspondence eventually made its way to the Library of Congress. But much of that stuff was discarded, burned on purpose or by accident, left in attics and chewed by mice, sold to autograph collectors. It would be very hard to reassemble, if it still existed.

FDR, who had a strong sense of his place in history, decided to change that practice by raising money privately for a library, donating all his presidential papers (and a lot else besides) to it, and asking Congress to maintain it. If you are a fan of presidential libraries (and I see we have friends and skeptics here), he's the prez to thank.

Dumb Question: If taxpayers fund the libraries (and the presidents do work for us), then don't we have a say in whether the information is available to us?

For what it is worth, my share of the Reagan documents (the ones my tax dollars funded and he produced while working for me) can be released fully. I give full permission to look into anything.

Paula Span: I will pass your very generous offer along to the folks at the Reagan Library.

Meanwhile, the way we have a say in what information is available is through our elected representatives. If we want presidential records to be open (which even under the best of circumstances takes a long time to accomplish), we gotta write our Congresspersons and tell 'em so.

Chicago, Ill.: Greetings,

A quick archives story:
When I was choosing between being and archivist and a librarian, I changed my route from Chicago to Portland, Ore. to swing by the Truman and Eisenhower libraries.

I loved Truman's library. The head of the archives graciously led me on a tour. A few scholars "deep in the bowels" came up to him to ask about classified documents. He would usually direct the people to the cc: of the document that was declassified. There was nothing like looking at the pro/con sheet that Harry Truman wrote about the use of the atomic bombs for placing a face on history.

Ike's administrator, however, wouldn't let me past the reception chairs.

After Truman, I was ready to be an archivist. After Ike, I turned to being a librarian.

Paula Span: This may have been due to the particular person filling that role at the Eisenhower Library at the time.

In general, researchers hold both the Truman and Ike libraries in high esteem in terms of their openness and helpfulness. Being older helps, when it comes to presidential libraries. Less partisanship, less paranoia.

Arlington, Va.: Very interesting article. Do you know the status or the publication date of Robert Dallek's book on JFK to which you referred? Thanks.

Paula Span: Thanks.

When we spoke this summer, Dallek was still researching his JFK biography, which involved negotations with the folks at the Kennedy Library to gain access to particular papers. (The Kennedy Library, being pre-1978 and therefore not subject to the Presidential Records Act, will make certain materials available to some researchers and not others.)

Which is to say -- my impression was that publication is not imminent.

New York, N.Y.: Why are the Bush fils gubernatorial papers more inaccessible at his father's library? How is it legal that they were moved there? Aren't they the property of the people of Texas? And aren't Reagan's paper's the property of the people of the U.S.? So why can't we see them?

Paula Span: This is a whole new wrinkle, and I've read pretty much the same newspaper accounts that you have. The current President Bush apparently arranged to donate his gubernatorial papers to the George Herbert Walker Bush Library in College Station, Texas. And the laws governing materials in presidential libraries are different than the Texas state laws that would have applied if he'd given them to the state archives. Which probably no one would have thought much about until the Enron investigations began.

Who knows what happens now? The Texas legislature may have to get involved, or one court or another, or maybe a Congressional committee will issue subpoenas...

As for Reagan's papers, more than five million pages had already been released before President Bush's executive order. Now things are on hold until this court case gets resolved, or until Congresss acts, whichever comes first.

It never ends, this tug of war. It's intrinsic in democracy, intrinsic in presidential libraries...we might as well get used to it.

Paula Span: Thanks, all, for coming online to yak about this subject.

It may be worth noting that testy as scholars and citizens sometimes get about presidential libraries and their foibles, no other democracy is as aggressive about preserving and opening records from the top levels of government. This system, despite the ways in which it sometimes falls short of its own ideals, is to my mind one of our better experiments.

washingtonpost.com: Belquis, thank you for joining us today.

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