The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda has been in
the local news lately on two counts. First, Nixon's two daughters have
been jaw-to-jaw over how to use the money left to the library by the
death of Nixon's old buddy Bebe Rebozo. And, second, the library
administrators ran an ad in the Los Angeles Times, accompanied by a
"media advisory" marking the 30th anniversary Monday of the Watergate
break-in.
On the surface, this seems rather like Napoleon's flacks suggesting
the date of the surrender at Waterloo as a national holiday. Actually, it
is a classic example of the Vince Lombardi dictum that the best defense
is a good offense.
These events were of special interest to me because one of my favorite
destinations in six decades of driving across and up and down this
country has been the presidential museums and libraries scattered about
the nation.
I've explored most of them -- including some you possibly didn't know
existed. I've visited Dwight Eisenhower in Abilene, Kan.; Harry Truman in
Independence, Mo.; Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Ill.; Lyndon Johnson
in Austin, Texas; Jimmy Carter in Atlanta, Ga.; and Franklin Roosevelt in
Hyde Park, N.Y.
I've also spent time with Herbert Hoover in a town right out of "Music
Man" called West Branch, Iowa. And with probably the worst president in
our long history -- although this is always debatable: Warren Gamaliel
Harding. He was the first president elected after women got the vote --
I'll let you wrestle with that one -- and several members of his cabinet
were involved in the Tea Pot Dome scandal, which held the record for
corporate greed and deception until Enron won that mantle last year.
Harding is buried in Marion, Ohio, which will take you a few miles off
the interstate but is well-worth the trip to see the Taj Mahal-like
monument erected over his grave.
With such a background, I could hardly avoid paying my respects to the
president closest to home: the Nixon Museum and Library. I've been there
several times, usually with visitors from the East Coast who share my
admiration at the manner in which the Nixon history and persona have been
re-created by the folks who put this national artifact together. The
Nixon Library, you see, is the only such presidential facility not under
the management of the National Archives and Records Administration. As a
result, historical objectivity is about as hard to come by there as the
case for reasonable gun control at the National Rifle Assn.
