Presidential Libraries

I’ve just been watching President Clinton (rightly, that should be ex-President Clinton, but it’s one of those things that you seem to get to keep the title until you die), opening his Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas (via C-Span). It’s always seemed a strange thing to me that when you finish your presidency, you head off somewhere and build a monument to your time in office. This facility, cost $165m and it contains millions of documents from Clinton’s presidency. It’s only with the opening of this library that I learnt this – I’d always wondered what exactly the point of them was.
I guess of course that the whole thing could exist solely on the internet. But another part of me likes the fact that lasting monuments can and do get built. Whenever I walk past the British Museum, I remember that it was built with publicly raised funds. And then you can look at newer facilities like the new British Library. Not enough of these buildings are built in Britain today, even with lottery funding. I’m talking about really major and lasting achievements. The millennium saw some, but not enough.
Mind you, I’m not sure we’re ready for a Thatcher, Major or Blair Library. And given the wranglings something as simple as Diana fountain has caused, I don’t like to think of hurdles such buildings would have to overcome.


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