The Weekly Standard, Volume 23, Number 20, January 29, 2018

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by  The Weekly Standard

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OIDSBURBWELL
OPIE SU R CALD
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IN TRISTOP
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JANUARY 29, 2018 • $5.99
ONE
DOWN
Trump’s first year
and the year ahead
DAVID BYLER
ETHAN EPSTEIN
YUVAL LEVIN
MICHAEL WARREN
ADAM J. WHITE
THE EDITORS
WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM
Contents
January 29, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 20
2 The Scrapbook Samantha Power’s party, high-cost rail, & more
6 Casual Grant Wishard hears voices
8 Editorial The Good and the Bad
12 Comment
Presidential Libraries: A Study in Bloat by philip terzian
A Nurturing Minstrel by barton sWaiM
Articles
20 16 His Own Worst Enemy by Michael Warren
Four lessons from Trump, Year One
18 Giving Respect Where It Is Due by caitrin Keiper
What the president doesn’t understand about Haiti
20 Opioids in the Suburbs by christopher caldWell
A mass overdose in Fairfax
22 He’s Everywhere, He’s Everywhere by ethan epstein
The cultural impact of Trump
24 A Cordial Good Night by Joseph epstein
Milton Rosenberg, 1925-2018
22 26 Intersectionality for Dummies by stephen Miller
Oppressed for success
Features
28 As Goes Trump, So Goes the GOP by david byler
Will voters unhappy with the president take it out on the GOP this fall?
32 Trumping the Administrative State by adaM J. White
For deregulators, it was a very good year
Books & Arts
36 Milton’s Morality by Micah Mattix
32 Fallen man and the fallen stature of ‘Paradise Lost’
39 War by Other Memes by JaMes KirchicK
Falsehoods and feedback loops as social media change armed conflict
40 How Democracies Panic by yuval levin
We aren’t verging on autocracy, we’ve just forgotten how to worry
43 A Needless Quarrel by MattheW J. FrancK
How an injustice from 1858 became unnecessarily divisive in 2018
45 The Informed Patriot by WilFred M. Mcclay
Bruce Cole’s case for the humanities in American life
47 Word-of-Mouth Movies by John podhoretz
Audiences talked ‘Jumanji’ and ‘The Greatest Showman’ into box-office hits
43
48 Parody
The presidential doctor is in
COVER BY GARY LOCKE
THE SCRAPBOOK
Samantha’s Soft Power Failure
The Scrapbook has deep reserva- Scrapbook is hoping for a director’s
tions about the Trump era, but cut focused just on this one evening,
we’re only human—sometimes we which might be the feel-good movie
indulge in a small chortle or two at of the year.
the discomfiture his victory caused Okay, that’s probably going over-
certain parties. For instance, we took board with the schadenfreude, but
way more pleasure than we probably really, anyone who would unironi-
should have in Politico’s interview cally describe their party theme with
last week with the Obama adminis- the phrase “milk the soft power divi-
tration’s U.N. ambassador, Saman- dend” is asking for it. And that’s not
tha Power, who recalled all the gory even the worst line of the interview.
details of an ill-fated party she hosted Here’s how Power describes the eve-
on election night 2016. ning: “Well, I’ve had a lot of bad ideas
Power invited the U.N.’s 37 female in my life, but none as immortalized
ambassadors—and special guest Glo- as this one.”
ria Steinem—to her penthouse to glory We beg to differ. Before becoming
in the election returns and Hillary U.N. ambassador, Power was famous
Clinton’s historic victory. “I thought for an impassioned, Pulitzer-win-
what an amazing night for them,” ning book, A Problem From Hell, that
she told Politico. “I mean, that’s what excoriated Western governments for
America represents to the world, when not doing more to prevent genocide.
a glass ceiling is shattered in our coun- She was perhaps the world’s lead-
try, it creates a whole new sense of pos- ing advocate of humanitarian inter-
sibility for people everywhere.” vention. Then she became Barack
Heading into the evening, Power’s power dividend of this moment, and Obama’s U.N. ambassador and held
concern was not that Hillary Clinton instead, and HBO was there [filming], her tongue while her boss blandly
wouldn’t win the election, but that she I guess unfortunately or fortunately, allowed Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to
would win it, to borrow a phrase from to capture it all . . . it slowly dawn[ed] use chemical weapons on children
the president, early and bigly. “As the on us that not only was this going to and ultimately slaughter nearly half
host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be much closer than anybody antici- a million people.
be quite the blowout that it was antici- pated, but that it was not going to She has indeed had a lot of bad
pated to be, because I wanted to make end well.” ideas that will be remembered. But we
sure that people had a chance to inter- Footage from the party will be doubt that her failure to ensure party
act with Gloria Steinem,” she said, included in a larger HBO docu- guests got enough face time with Glo-
adding, “I wanted to milk the soft mentary, The Final Year, but The ria Steinem even makes the list. ♦
Invincible Ignorance headline: “Prison Population Grow- Journal dubbed this blinkered liberal-
ing Although Crime Rate Drops.” The ism “The Butterfield Effect.”
In 1997, The Scrapbook saw a funny lead: “The nation’s prison population A January 7, 2018, headline doesn’t
New York Times headline: “Crime grew by 5.2 percent in 1997, accord- rival the earlier ones for sheer delight,
Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep ing to the Justice Department, even but it’s in the same category: “Crime
on Filling.” Astonishingly, we noted, though crime has been declining for Is Falling, But Police Levels Remain
“the possibility that longer sentences six straight years, suggesting that the Robust.” Crime is down in the 30 larg-
and less parole might be playing a large imprisonment boom has developed a est cities in the United States, the
part in that falling crime rate” had built-in growth dynamic independent reporter, Jose Del Real, explains, “but
failed to penetrate the furrowed brows of the crime rate, experts say.” fewer crimes have not resulted in fewer
at the Times. It was the same reporter, Fox But- police officers on the streets.” To his
We mocked them and were appar- terfield, displaying the same blind credit, Del Real doesn’t pretend not
K
C
ently ignored, because a year later spot: a failure to entertain the possi- to notice the obvious counter-argu- O
ST
they were back with more of the same, bility that crime had fallen precisely ment—namely, that robust police num- BIG
a story that captured the essence of because criminals had been put in bers may have precipitated the drop RE:
U
modern liberal thought on crime. The jail. James Taranto of the Wall Street in crime. But he dismisses the idea, FIG
2 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
noting that “the relationship between
the number of officers and lawful
behavior is not clear-cut.”
We’re not sure how a question with
this many variables could ever be
“clear-cut” (different cities with dif-
ferent problems, different policies at
different police departments led by
different people with different skills).
But in one sense, at least, the rela-
tionship would seem as clear-cut as
it’s possible to be: Police levels rose,
crime fell.
Perhaps, though, we lack nuance.
Or perhaps, as conservatives, we’re too
ready to associate more cops with more
order. Anyhow, the Times explains the
problem with statistical conundrums
like this:

In Chicago, notorious for violence and
shootings in recent years, there are 44
officers for each 10,000 residents. That
is almost the same ratio as New York.
But though crime in Chicago declined
in 2017, according to a year-end analy-
sis by the Brennan Center for Justice,
the crime rate there was still far higher
than in New York, which recorded its
lowest crime rate since the 1950s. Phil-
adelphia also has about the same num-
ber of officers per capita; homicides
there surpassed 300 for the first time in
five years, but violent crime in general
went down in 2017.
The problem with this sort of analy-
sis, it seems to us, is that it’s too nar-
rowly focused on a single year, 2017. A
more thorough interpretation would
consider a much larger time span.
This reflection led us back to a ter- of groundbreaking work on crime average of 24 percent. In the lower-
rific cover story in The Weekly STan- policy. In that essay he contended that policing, higher-punishment group,
dard from February 23, 2009, by the just as a large surge of ground forces the average crime drop was only 9 per-
cent. Higher-policing, lower-punish-
late William Stuntz: “Law and Dis- had quelled the insurgency in Iraq, so
ment states outperformed their more
order: The case for a police surge.” increases in police numbers tend over
punitive, less well-policed neighbors
Stuntz was a professor at Harvard time to decrease violent crime. in all parts of the country. The city
Law School and the author that saw the nation’s largest crime
Between 1989 and 1999, the number
drop—New York—increased the size
Book of urban police officers per unit of
of its police force the most. The state
‘EM, population rose 17 percent. Arrests that includes that city increased its
fell by a little more than 20 percent;
Danno! prison population the least.
arrests of black suspects fell by one-
third. Crime fell too, and it fell most in We’re told by a former colleague of
the jurisdictions that hired the most Stuntz (he died in 2011) that his 2009
cops. In 41 pairs of neighboring states,
essay “was extraordinarily contro-
one jurisdiction increased its policing
versial in law school circles. Defend-
rate more and its punishment rate less
ing anything about Iraq was almost
than its neighbor during the 1990s.
In the higher-policing, lower-punish- unheard of. Bill took a lot of heat, and
ment states, violent crime fell by an he turned out to be right.” ♦
January 29, 2018 The Weekly STandard / 3
low-wage employees’ earnings by an
average of $125 per month in 2016”
because employers had to slash work-
ers’ hours to afford the new ordi-
nance. It led to a loss of an estimated www.weeklystandard.com
10,000 jobs.
Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief
Next time you hear a politician
Richard Starr, Editor
prattle on about helping the poor by Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors
Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell,
raising the minimum wage, consider
Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash,
the effects on sandwiches and other National Correspondents
Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor
cheap food. If we can’t get govern- Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor
ment off our backs, let’s at least keep Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor
Minimum Wage Hits them out of our fast-food joints. ♦ Kelly EJarince F Teoltrerann, cMe,a rDke pHuetym Minagnawgainyg, Editor
John McCormack, Tony Mecia,
Maximum Sandwich Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers
Least Surprising
David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd,
As far as lunch deals go, Subway’s Staff Writers
Headline of the Year Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor
$5 footlong sandwich has been Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor
Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor
a hit with consumers. The company Readers may remember Charlotte Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors
sees the promotion as a way to revive Allen’s September 12, 2016, cover Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor
Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters
interest in its restaurants, which story on high-speed rail in the Golden Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker
Adam Rubenstein, Grant Wishard,
have struggled to attract diners in State: “Bullet Train to Nowhere: The Editorial Assistants
the last few years. In January, Sub- Ultimate California Boondoggle.” Philip Chalk, Design Director
Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant
way brought the deal back for a lim- Allen memorably visited “a 1,600-foot Contributing Editors
Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum,
ited time and now charges $4.99 for viaduct spanning the Fresno River Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost,
12 inches of five sandwiches: black on the rural outskirts of Madera,” Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein,
David Frum, David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht,
forest ham, meatball marinara, spicy which was just about the only con- Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper,
Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, Thomas Joscelyn,
Italian, cold cut combo, and some- struction then taking place on a sys- Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer,
thing called “Veggie Delite.” tem projected to one day stretch over Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix,
Victorino Matus, P. J. O’Rourke,
Now, though, the Subway $5 foot- 500 miles. “The bullet-train project John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer
long is under siege in cities that have has moved more slowly—far more William Kristol, Editor at Large
imposed high minimum wages. It is slowly—than its boosters antici- MediaDC
becoming a valuable lesson in eco- pated,” she reported. Ryan McKibben, Chairman
Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer
nomics that some cities are refusing So we were, shall we say, unsur- Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer
to learn. prised at the January 16 headline in Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer
David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer
Seattle’s minimum wage rose to the Los Angeles Times: “California bul- Alex Rosenwald, Director, Public Relations & Branding
Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer
$15 an hour on January 1, the same let train cost surges by $2.8 billion: Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising
day the city launched a punitive new ‘Worst-case scenario has happened.’ ” T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising
Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising
tax on soda. Yet somehow city leaders Reporter Ralph Vartabedian, who Paul Plawin, National Account Director
Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager
believe that none of these mandates is has done yeoman work on this beat Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services
causing any harm to businesses and for years, provided the details: Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900
Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293
their deal-seeking customers.
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4 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
CASUAL
The Voice over the Intercom an hour and a half after we were sup-
posed to leave. We finally got on the
road, but the bus broke down almost
immediately. A burning smell wafted
through the cabin as the driver
T
here are many serious and a good night. Take care. Be safe get- turned back toward the bus station.
well-justified complaints ting home,” the driver said with all The passengers groaned and cursed
against the decrepit Wash- the sympathy in the world. “See you climbing off the bus and grumbled
ington Metro system, but tomorrow morning and we’ll do it all getting back on after another round of
sometimes there’s a happy surprise. over again.” A few passengers smiled duct tape was applied to whatever time
There I was one typical morn- and turned to one another with a “yeah, bomb was ticking under the hood.
ing last fall in full grim-commuter that’s life” kind of look. I put my book Our first driver was replaced by
mode: arms crossed, legs spread to under my fleece and made a run for it another, clearly more veteran captain.
claim maximum personal territory. through the rain, feeling unusually fra- Sensing insurrection, he climbed
And then I heard this voice, sunny ternal toward my fellow passengers. aboard, put a foot up on the nearest seat,
and bright, over the intercom: crossed his arms, leaned on his
“Goooood morning, ladies and knee, and looked expectantly at
gentlemen,” the driver said. the passengers. The bus quieted.
“Pick up your newspapers and The griping lowered to a murmur.
hold onto your morning coffee. We were all in middle school
We’re going [dramatic pause] again, hushed by a tough-looking
downtown!” The doors closed, substitute teacher from the south
and we were off. It was exciting. side. “ladieS and genTlemen,” he
The effect was visible. People sat barked. “i underSTand you’ve
up a little straighter. I smiled been delayed. i juST WanT y’all
and took my knee out of my To knoW—i ain’T goT noThing To
seatmate’s ribcage. do WiTh ThaT. if you Would like
Over the past several years To comPlain i can find you Some-
Metro has been slowly replacing one elSe in charge.” I pulled out
their most unreliable trains with my notepad, knowing this Gettys-
new 7000-series rail cars. They burg Address wouldn’t last long.
are spacious, generally clean, and “BuT,” he continued with a shrug,
don’t leave you with the impres- “ThiS iS greyhound: It Is what It
sion that you’ve traveled stuffed Is.” Nobody said a word. We
in the sweaty armpit of a three- arrived in New Orleans without
piece mustard-colored nylon suit, No doubt recognizable to millions incident. Law and order ruled the day.
unwashed since the ’70s. The new cars of Americans from their trips to the Miller is right, consistency is
are nice, but I do have one reservation. nation’s capital, the original voice important. That’s why the robots
Instead of the driver telling you what of the Metro (“step back to allow the will soon put all of us out of work.
the next stop is, most of the voice work doors to close”), local resident Randi But machines cannot and never will
is done by computer, a new Siri-like Miller, has always said she would be able to empathize or feel excite-
character, professional and consistent love to make more recordings for the ment. As I write this, a robot vacuum
to a fault. subway system. “Consistency’s very cleaner is feeling its way around my
In the new cars you rarely hear important,” she told the Washing- feet. Even if it were programmed to
from the driver. Hidden behind tinted ton Post. “You want to have one voice pause at random intervals and say
glass at the front of the train, he or she for everything.” I’m inclined to agree. “Boy, am I tired” or “Wow, more dog
might as well not be there at all. One Metro could be improved in a million hair!” it couldn’t make me care. And
late night, we pulled into the last sta- ways. But there’s a lot to be said for a a robot voice will never relieve the
tion on the line in the pouring rain. calm, clear, commanding voice over drudgery of commuting or lighten
The car was cold and empty except for the intercom. the burdens of the passengers. So
a few passengers huddled under their This past summer I took a bus ride please, Metro, keep the intercoms
coats, some of them waking up from from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. open, for the sake of my own amuse-
ON naps snatched leaning against the Greyhound was doing its absolute ment and less rioting.
BOLT smudged windows. And then we heard best impression of a port-a-John on
ORI this voice, quiet and concerned.“Have wheels. Our driver didn’t show up for Grant Wishard
J
6 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
EDITORIAL
The Good and the Bad
Now that we have one full year of the Trump But for those conservatives who couldn’t back Trump or
presidency in the history books, isn’t it time for Clinton, questions about Trump’s ideology were secondary.
Trump’s conservative critics to acknowledge his For them—for us—it was Trump’s character and tempera-
election was worth it? ment that made him unfit for office. And the harm done in
This is a question posed with increasing frequency by the a single year by President Trump—to the country, the cul-
president’s supporters. And they have a point: The accom- ture, the Republican party, and American conservatism—
plishments of the last year have been reasonably impressive. must also be acknowledged.
Trump placed a stalwart conservative on the The president of the United States endorsed a credibly
Supreme Court. accused child molester to serve in the U.S. Senate.
Trump authorized the U.S. military The president fired the FBI direc-
to prosecute a serious war on ISIS and, Looking back on tor because he was unhappy with an
along with our coalition partners, has suc- investigation into his campaign and
these follies, no
ceeded in dramatically reducing the land transition team.
controlled by the genocidal Islamist ter- conservative can in The president sent antagonistic
rorist organization. good faith maintain tweets about nuclear-armed North
The Trump administration has over- Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, at one
that Trump hasn’t
turned many Obama-era regulations. point boasting that his nuclear button
Getting the federal government out of the done damage to the is “bigger” than Kim’s.
way has enhanced the freedom of Ameri- The president revealed highly
presidency and our
cans and contributed to economic growth classified information to top Rus-
and a stock market boom. politics. Was it worth sian diplomats during an Oval
Trump signed a tax-reform pack- it? Does the good Office meeting.
age that cut taxes for some 80 percent of The president insulted American
outweigh the bad?
American households. Final judgment allies as “s—hole countries”—with
about the tax bill, which also repealed the clear implication that the U.S. cit-
Obamacare’s individual mandate and opened up drilling izens who have immigrated from those countries have made
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is best reserved our country worse.
for when we have a sense of how much it spurs growth The president, shortly after a neo-Nazi drove his car
and increases the federal deficit. On balance, though, it into and killed a peaceful protester in Charlottesville, issued
brought welcome changes to the corporate and individual a statement condemning the “hatred, bigotry and violence
tax rates. on many sides.” The violence of “antifa” is indeed condem-
Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo, released 470,000 nable, but antifa had not committed an act of terrorism that
documents captured in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s com- day, and the president could never bring himself to force-
pound, giving the public access to information the Obama fully single out the white supremacists who marched on
administration went to great lengths to keep buried. Charlottesville. The president followed up that performance
Trump has reversed Barack Obama’s naïve and danger- with a press conference in which he insisted there had been
ous policy of helping the terror-sponsoring regime in Iran. some “very fine people” participating in a torchlit neo-Nazi
Yet similar ends would have come from almost any rally where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
Republican president given a Republican Congress. The fact The president is a serial liar—making false claims about
that almost all of Trump’s accomplishments could have been matters large and small, consequential and trivial. Even by
expected from a generic Republican should disappoint true- the low standards with which we’ve come to judge honesty
believing populists and belie Trump’s boast, “I alone can in politicians, Trump is a singularly dishonest figure.
fix it.” But the policy achievements of the last year ought to The president failed to fulfill his promises to repeal and
be acknowledged and applauded by his conservative critics. replace Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. He
Most of the conservatives who couldn’t bring themselves to shares that blame with congressional Republicans, to be
vote for Trump would have gladly crawled over broken glass sure. But in his public comments and private discussions
to vote for any other Republican in a race against Clinton. with lawmakers, Trump revealed both policy ignorance and
8 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
lack of discipline, at one point complaining about a “mean” policy achievements of the first year against the presi-
bill from House Republicans, though he himself had previ- dent’s erratic and immoral behavior. The latter will very
ously expressed support for it. likely diminish the former in the long run. With a boom-
The president is often unfamiliar with his own policy ing stock market, the president’s job approval rating hov-
positions—as when he embraced a “clean” DACA renewal ers in the high 30s, young people are fleeing the party,
at a bipartisan White House meeting in early January or and a Democratic wave in the midterm elections becomes
when he tweeted skepticism about a crucial intelligence likelier every week.
program that his White House had formally endorsed less Whether or not the GOP gets demolished in 2018,
than 12 hours earlier. (Trump had apparently been watch- however, conservatives must not abandon their belief
ing Fox & Friends when Judge Andrew Napolitano criti- that this nation’s political leaders should conduct them-
cized the program.) selves with moral probity and public decency. It was
Any list compiling the worst moments of the cha- right to defend that belief in the 1990s, and it’s right to
otic first year of the Trump presidency will necessarily do so now.
be incomplete; the sheer volume of the crazy statements One of the worst things about the Trump personality
and actions means that scandals that would have over- cult is that its adherents do not merely demand that he be
whelmed previous presidencies barely registered. Reports credited for his achievements—they demand that his defects
last week that the president had committed adultery with of character and temperament be denied or defended. This is
a pornographic actress months after his youngest son was not a propensity conservatives should adopt, for any reason.
born—reports strengthened by the release of an inter- There are patriotic Americans serving in the admin-
view with the actress and the revelation of alleged “hush istration out of a sense of moral duty and civic obligation.
money” paid to her on the eve of the 2016 election—were There are conservatives in Congress who hold their tongues
relegated to the fourth or fifth story of the day on the rather than risk a public fight with the president, and work
news programs that cover politics. quietly to advance conservative policies and principles. But
Looking back on these follies and outrages, no conser- if American conservatism is to survive and thrive it won’t
vative can in good faith maintain that Trump hasn’t done be because its proponents keep quiet. It will be because the
damage to the presidency, our politics, and conservatism. American people do not learn to equate conservatism with
Was it worth it? Does the good outweigh the bad? the worst excesses of Donald Trump.
The question isn’t answered by simply measuring the —The Editors
10 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
COMMENT
PHILIP TERZIAN
Presidential Libraries:
A Study in Bloat
I was surprised last week to learn martyred John F. Kennedy ran into and since passage of the 1955 Presi-
that plans for the Barack Obama NIMBY complaints in Cambridge, dential Libraries Act, the National
Presidential Center in Chicago Mass., and had to be exiled from its Archives has administered the library
have run into local opposition. planned location on the Harvard cam- and all its successors. (In the 1950s Her-
The proposed library/museum/ pus to a distant peninsula on Boston bert Hoover, Roosevelt’s only living
think-tank design, a sprawling cam- Harbor. One-term presidents now predecessor, commissioned a similarly
pus in Jackson Park featuring a giant generate more papers and objects than low-key establishment at his birthplace
monolith and mammoth in rural Iowa.)
parking garage, has been crit- From the standpoint of history, of
One-term presidents
icized by South Side activ- course, this is as it should be. Offi-
ists for intruding on the park now generate more cial government documents should
space and overwhelming the never have been regarded as private
papers and objects
neighborhood. The center is property; library staffs and resources
a joint project of the Obama than a century are a blessing to scholars and stu-
Foundation and the nearby dents; the exhibits, and occasional
University of Chicago, where of their historic homes and birthplaces, are magnets
Obama once taught. Now, to visitors. In a nation routinely
predecessors, and
more than a hundred faculty accused of ignoring its past, presi-
members there have signed many presidential dential libraries have much to teach
a petition complaining that us, good and bad.
libraries resemble
the complex “will soon They are significant for other rea-
become an object-lesson in Egyptian pyramids. sons as well. We’re a secular society,
the mistakes of the past,” and and in the absence of saints’ relics and
that among other things, the places of religious pilgrimage, the
parking garage is “socially regressive” a century of their historic predeces- presidential libraries, with their per-
since it “privileges cars and those who sors, and in size and volume, many sonal artifacts, historic documents,
can afford them.” of the structures themselves resemble and approved mythology, combine
On the one hand, I was surprised by the Egyptian pyramids. good citizenship with cultural needs.
this because Barack Obama is a local Presidential libraries, by the way, They are also uniquely American.
hero in Chicago, and if any president are a modern invention. Until the With the possible exceptions of Win-
enjoys sacred status in the academy, middle of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli,
it is he. No fewer than four institu- tenure, papers (both official and unof- there are no comparable reposit ories
tions of higher learning had bid for ficial) tended to accompany their for the private papers and furnish-
the privilege of hosting the Obama presidents into retirement—and in ings of the British prime ministers.
center. By contrast, in the 1970s, when some cases oblivion—or, if the presi- For that matter, you can stare in won-
poor Richard Nixon sought a home dent thought of it, to make their way der at JFK’s rocking chair or FDR’s
for his archives, the faculty at his alma to the Library of Congress. Theodore cluttered desktop, but in Moscow, the
mater (Duke Law School) made it Roosevelt, class of 1880, left his papers main remnant of Lenin on public dis-
clear that the Nixon papers were not to Harvard. play is his corpse.
welcome there. In 1939-40, TR’s distant cousin FDR The libraries are also redolent
On the other hand, I should not designed and built a comparatively of their namesakes and times. The
have been surprised. Along with the modest, two-story library-archives on design of Roosevelt’s library has a
imperial presidency itself, the growth the grounds of his family’s estate in the kind of genteel amateurism about it;
and grandeur of presidential libraries/ Hudson Valley, all of which was deeded Dwight D. Eisenhower’s complex is
museums over the decades has been to the federal government upon his a testament to heroism and humil-
relentless, and not without contro- death. The National Park Service oper- ity. Nixon’s library was bogged down
versy. Even the archival shrine to the ates the Roosevelt house and grounds, for years in legal controversy over
12 / The Weekly STandard January 29, 2018
Presidential libraries, left to right, descending: Franklin Roosevelt,
Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
George W. Bush, and Barack Obama (as proposed)
the status of his White House tapes Johnson) are enshrined in forbidding containing exhibition and meeting
and so was initially built and admin- bunkers, looming ominously over bare spaces. Obama’s papers have all been
istered with private funds. Jimmy terrain; the Nixon library, by contrast, digitized for online access; the origi-
Carter, involuntarily retired from the is considerably more accessible. Recent nal documents will remain in a fed-
White House at 56, began a new tra- structures, including the Ford, Rea- eral warehouse.
dition by combining his presidential gan, Clinton, and Bush I and II librar- In that sense, Obama’s center (as
library with a separate institution ies have sought, with varying degrees currently constituted) is the culmina-
(the Carter Center) intended to pro- of success, to integrate themselves into tion of dubious trends in the concept:
long his public career. the landscape. a monument not to history or scholar-
And as Obama is discovering, By contrast, the planned Obama ship, but to Barack Obama, destined
design and architecture are part of the Presidential Center is a Brutalist to swamp its surroundings. Perhaps
legacy. The Eisenhower and Truman throwback: a 20-acre concrete theme that’s what the faculty petition meant
libraries have an austere neoclassical park (and athletic center!) in a low- by “an object-lesson in mistakes of the
appearance. Two of the three presidents rise neighborhood, anchored by a past.” Community organizers have
of the high Brutalist era (Kennedy, tall, misshapen, high-rise cube-tower their work cut out for them. ♦
January 29, 2018 The Weekly STandard / 13