What Role Should a Presidential Library Play?
In 2007, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) opened the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. From 1990 to 2007, the Nixon Foundation operated a private library in Yorba Linda that housed some of Nixon’s pre- and post-presidential materials. NARA held Nixon’s presidential materials in the Washington, D.C. area. Historian Timothy Naftali is the federal director of the new library and museum. The Orange County Register recentlyreported on the imminent arrival in Yorba Linda, California of 40 million pages of Nixon’s White House files that previously had been housed at NARA in College Park, Maryland.
The Nixon Foundation works with NARA in some areas related to the new library and museum. How has the Nixon Foundation prepared for the move of White House records? By sending out mixed signals. During 2010, the foundation has sponsored largely non-partisan legacy forums at which former Nixon staff members gather to share memories of their work in the White House. On the other hand, essays posted on The New Nixon (TNN) blog, an off-shoot of the foundation’s former Nixon Forum, show different approaches to messaging. TNN offers links to news stories and observations about Nixon, announcements of events at the Nixon Presidential Library, and opinion pieces. Writers include Frank Gannon, John Pitney, Bob Bostock, who worked with Nixon on the original Watergate exhibit at the private library, and David R. Stokes, a Townhall blogger and pastor of a church in Virginia.
“Naftali’s anti-Nixon bias is apparently so deeply ingrained in his psyche that he cannot distinguish the truth from the dark fantasy he has created in his own mind about the Nixon Library. Isn’t there an Alger Hiss Library somewhere he would like to be director of?” Bostock said of Naftali at TNN in February. His words surprised me as a former archivist. The posting, however, provided an opportunity for a robust defense of Naftali and some dialogue over NARA’s mission.
Not everyone who blogs at TNN writes about Nixon. Stokes often gives his take on current events, writing recently on TNN, “I would appeal to President Barack Hussein Obama today, to reach back beyond his Muslim, Marxist, and Liberation Theology (which is to real Christianity as anthrax is to sugar) roots and try to connect with his ‘inner-Lincoln.’”
Last year, Stokes wrote on TNN of President Obama’s speech to school children in September:
Fascism is about the expansion, glorification, and predominance of the state – that’s liberalism, not conservatism.
But dull facts are no match for frenzied media. And young minds are no match for a massive campaign to foster the image of a president as more than what our constitution requires him – or her – to be.
Do I believe that we are on the verge of some kind of massive move toward ‘friendly totalitarianism’ in America? No. But I do think that if it ever really happened here, it would travel along the same national nerve pathways that are being used by this White House right now.
Nixon’s presidential foundation is unusual in having a related blog. What are we historians to make of TNN? It’s hard to say because the site has changed over time. TNN was the brainchild of John H. Taylor, former executive director of the Nixon Foundation. Taylor once called my generation of federal archivists “junior prosectors” but revealed a more thoughtful side of himself at TNN, where he engaged in lively give and take. He came to understand over time that he had been perceiving attacks on Nixon “as one would attacks on their dad in the school yard.” Taylor explained that “it wasn’t helping Nixon’s image, changing any minds or healthy for himself.”
Taylor, an Episcopal priest since 2004, left his position as director of the Nixon Foundation in January 2009, stopped blogging at TNN, and became full time vicar at St. John’s Church in Santa Margarita, California. Where Taylor’s once was a strong opinion voice on TNN, Stokes and others now fill that role.
Most presidential foundations operate largely out of sight. They raise money for library-related construction and work on museum and outreach activities as private sector partners with the governmental administrators of the federal libraries. Larry Hackman, former director of NARA’s Truman Presidential Library, observed in 2006 of relations between the government and the foundations that “Though relations between the partners are positive and productive in most instances; in some others they are not.” Hackman explained, “Over time, almost every presidential library partnership will change considerably -- and this can be the case even for those organizations which presently find it difficult to envision a different way of doing business together.”
In 2009, when Naftali invited John Dean to speak at the library, the Foundation said it would withdraw $150,000 in funding for a planned NARA exhibit. Bostock blogged that “Tim Naftali is hiding behind the mantle of scholarship and balance to mask what appears to be his true intention: to use the Nixon Library to diminish Richard Nixon and thus raise his own standing in the academic community.” But Newsweek reported that “Naftali said foundation officials have essentially compiled ‘an enemies list,’ noting that they also complained about his decision to invite ex-Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste to speak this summer.”
NARA interacts with the Nixon Foundation primarily on the museum and outreach side, but the Nixon family also has the right to file objections against release of records. Should NARA be in the museum business at all? Having no displays would reduce the need to interact with former presidents’ foundations. On the other hand, if the NARA libraries continue to have museum displays, it might mitigate the shock to former officials of having their archival records thrown open for public examination. The agency examined four library alternatives in a 2009 report to the Congress on Alternative Models for Presidential Libraries. One was for a “centralized presidential archival depository funded and managed by NARA, with no museum. Presidential foundations may build and manage their own museums in a location of their choice.”
Does some of the current rhetoric on TNN mean historians such as Stanley Kutler were right to worry about how Nixon’s advocates might view the new Nixon library and museum? Time will tell. Benjamin Hufbauer observed in Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory that “A presidential library goes through at least three phases in its life: first, its founding and initial development (largely controlled by a president and his supporters); second, the organization and opening of its archives for use by scholars (largely controlled by the National Archives); and third, a period of maturity, when a presidential library must reinvent itself to remain relevant.”
Much remains to be released from undisclosed Nixon files and tapes. NARA will strive to carry out its mission in a non-partisan manner, as always. How things work out with the Nixon Foundation with displays, outreach, and other matters will depend on whether the decades-long battles over disclosure resulted in delays in the development Hufbauer describes, or whether, thirty-six years after Richard Nixon left office and sixteen years after he died, the library finally can enter a period of maturity.