The Rehabilitation of George W.

This column is dedicated to the late Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, an ordained United Methodist minister, a research psychologist, and a kind and gentle man who was one of the key organizers of the campaign to keep the Bush Library off the SMU campus.

With his new book, 'Decision Points,' heading the New York Times best-seller list and the building of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU now underway, inquiring minds want to know: Will Bush escape the harsh judgement of history?

First the memoir, then the ground breaking.

Less than 10 days after George W. Bush's memoir "Decision Points" hit the streets and America's 43rd president hit the airwaves to promote it, multiple shovels of dirt were hoisted and ground was broken for the George W. Bush Presidential Center located on the campus of Southern Methodist University. After several years of often acrimonious debate about the appropriateness of its location, more than 3,000 friends and supporters of Bush, as well as a notably thinner -- after of a long hospital stay following heart surgery over the summer -- former Vice President Dick Cheney and Former Cabinet Secretaries Don Evans, Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Spellings, participated in the event.

"When it opens in 2013, the center will feature a museum, library, archives and policy institute," The Dallas Morning News noted.

According to newsok.com, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Manhattan Construction Co. began construction on the project the week before the grounbreaking: The Bush Center, which will "sit on 23 acres of the SMU campus," contains a "226,565-square-foot building [that] was designed to achieve platinum certification in Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, the first presidential library to do so. Among other features, the design includes a 15-acre urban park of native landscaping and includes a rainwater collection system; and a Texas Rose Garden in the same proportions, solar orientation and formal organization as the White House Rose Garden."

(A live web cam at the construction site is available on Manhattan's website: http://www.manhattanconstructiongroup.com/manhattan-construction/projects/webcams/george-w-bush-presidential-center.)

The groundbreaking ceremony also saw several dozen anti-war activists protesting, KERA reported. The activists' coalition, called The People's Response, is a group that believes Bush should be arrested for war crimes for "trumped up" intelligence in the war in Iraq, KERA said.

"I'm saddened by this whole episode. The eight years of the Bush era and now the same discredited and repudiated ideas that him and the neo-conservatives gave to this country are going to be back again," peace activist Hadi Jawad told The Dallas Morning News. "This time they're going to have the seal of approval of a venerable American institute of higher learning, the SMU. I find it sad, and maddening in many ways that we have to go down this path."

The group "offered prayers, poems, hymns, readings and speeches," admonishing Bush for his wartime policies, the Morning News said.

"Today we're here to oppose the marriage of this great university with [an institution] bearing the name of the former president of this country, George W. Bush," Dallas minister Holsey Hickman said at the event. "We're here to give our voices to those innocent victims who died as a result of the aggression managed by President George W. Bush."

One of the overarching goals of this entire enterprise is to rehabilitate the Bush presidency, countering a burgeoning consensus among historians that Bush was one of the worst presidents in American history. If the Presidential Center is anything like Bush's memoir, it will take more than the hosts of The Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" program to ferret out the truth of Bush's presidency.

A gushing Dallas Morning News Editorial headlined "George W. Bush library will add intellectual dimension," pointed out that "the fullness of the center's impact will be felt far into the future and far beyond the former president's adopted hometown," as "[t]he library will add another intellectual dimension to North Texas." The editorial predicted that the Bush Presidential Center will have just as great an impact on intellectual pursuits as the libraries of two other presidents that are located in Texas - the Lyndon B. Johnson library in Austin, and the George Bush Library located on the campus of Texas A & M University in College Station.

According to Business Wire, "The Bush Center includes the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the George W. Bush Institute, which launched programming in early 2010 and is focused on unleashing human potential around the world through its focus on human freedom, education reform, global health and economic growth."

Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation said that, "More than 150,000 people have joined as founding members of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, representing every state in the nation. This groundswell of support for President and Mrs. Bush honors their service to our country and signals an ongoing commitment to the work they will continue to do through The Bush Institute for years to come."

According to SMU's Bush Center website (http://www.smu.edu/bushcenter.aspx): "Through February 6, 2011, visitors can preview some of the Presidential Center's historic holdings at SMU's Meadows Museum. The free exhibit, 'Breaking New Ground: Presenting the George W. Bush Presidential Center,' showcases the building design, ongoing initiatives of The Bush Institute and key artifacts and papers of the Bush Administration." Some of the artifacts in SMU's Meadows Museum include a pistol of Saddam Hussein's, the sweatshirt Bush wore while throwing the opening pitch at game three of the 2001 World Series and the president's handwritten notes as he prepared to speak directly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

As construction proceeds, questions remain about what other - perhaps more dicey -- exhibits will be on display. For example, Will the "Mission Accomplished" banner be on display? As NPR's Frank James recently reported, "The sign [which is said to be currently housed at the National Archives], the backdrop for Bush's appearance aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in May 2003, came to symbolize the bad assumptions Bush and his national security team made about Iraq before the invasion and during the occupation." According to Alan Lowe, the director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the banner will become part of the museum's collection. A decision has not yet been made as to whether it will be displayed.

Center staff will have to grapple with several questions: What's the best way to exhibit the non-existent WMD's? How much attention will be devoted to Team Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina? Will there be a water-boarding exhibit? Will there be a re-creation of Bush flying back to Washington in his pajamas to help "save" Terri Schiavo?

Over the years, Bush single-handedly provided near-nightly material for comedians: When he promoted his book on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" - his first Leno appearance in 10 years -- Leno said that Bush had provided him with a decade's worth of material. Other comedians no doubt feel the same way.

Finally, since the issue took up so much time and space during the first few days of Bush's book tour, the question remains: Will there be a Kanye West exhibition?

Berkowitz is a freelance writer and longtime observer of the conservative movement who documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right. In addition to BuzzFlash, his work -- which has been cited in a number of books -- has appeared in Alternet, Inter Press Service, The Nation, Religion Dispatches, Z Magazine, and numerous other online and print publications.

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