Check This Out
Is there a shelf life for presidential libraries?
Breitbart, with ill-concealed glee, reports that the team trying to raise money for Joe Biden’s presidential library is having a tough time of it. It’s a “daunting task,” the Associated Press admits, considering how “fragmented” the Democratic Party is at a time when “many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.”
This is good news, or should be, for all Americans regardless of party affiliation. Spending on these temples to executive egotism—much of which taxpayers are stuck with—is totally out of control. Construction costs alone for the George H.W. Bush library came to $43 million when it opened its doors to a mob of screaming fans in 1997, some of whom had camped out in the parking lot for days. The cost of Bill Clinton’s came to $165 million. Reportedly the item museumgoers most want to gawk at is the copy of Leaves of Grass given to Monica Lewinsky, but this is probably just malicious gossip.
In all fairness, a lot of private money goes to fund presidential libraries. This is especially encouraging considering the fact that the Obama Foundation is trying to raise $1.6 billion for their project. Biden’s team says the costs of theirs will “end up somewhere in the middle” of what the Bush I and Obama libraries will require.
Once presidential libraries are up and running, they are managed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which of course gets its budget from the taxpayers. We’re now footing the bills for the operation of 14 of these libraries, with more to come.
President Trump has never been known as an avid reader himself, of course, but plans to donate the $400 million Air Force One replacement given by the government of Qatar. And why not? I’ve been to Graceland and got to climb inside the Lisa Marie, one of Elvis Presley’s private jets which, the Presley museum says, “features a living room, conference room, sitting room, and private bedroom, as well as gold-plated seat belts, suede chairs, leather covered tables, 24-karat gold-flecked sinks and more.” Even the toilet was gold-flecked too, as I recall. That’s a lot more fun, any objective observer would have to admit, than looking at Herbert Hoover’s old card catalogue.
Why the Obama library needs a building at all has yet to be explained. The whole point of these libraries was to house presidential papers, and the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) reports that the Obama Foundation has “decided its records would be fully digital.” Until this can be accomplished, NARA has spent $300,000 to ship the physical records to what is described as a private facility which, in 2018, was costing $223,000 per month in rent.
Why Biden needs a building is no mystery. His will house “an immersive museum,” highlighting his three-plus years in office, and serve as “a hub for leadership, service and civic engagement that will include educational and event space to host policy gatherings.” What, no snack bar? No gift shop? No yoga studio?
Maintaining these institutions costs more than $100 million a year, and NTU reports that, even with private money, the costs are still “borne largely by taxpayers.” The costs “cast doubt on the system’s fiscal sustainability. Over time, operational expenses, staff requirements, and the sheer volume of both physical and digital records have increased significantly, challenging [NARA] to balance its mission of transparency with fiscal responsibility.”
NARA’s budget for 2025 includes $2.3 million just to upgrade the Nixon library’s electrical system. (If anything goes wrong in the restrooms, there could be an entirely new meaning to the term “White House plumbers.”)
It’s too early to know what the Trump people plan to do with his library, beyond parking the jet there. The President’s own reading habits remain somewhat difficult to get a handle on. The author of The Art of the Deal calls that his “second favorite book.”
His favorite, he says, is the Bible, but when asked whether he is “an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy,” responded, “probably equal.” Maybe copies of both will be displayed in the Trump library. That sounds fair, though whether they will circulate, as librarians say, has yet to be decided. This much seems certain: Overdue fines will be steep.
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