Besides hanging out at his Texas ranch since vacating the White House, George W. Bush has apparently been spending some of his free time planning his presidential library.
The library, projected to cost between $200 million and $500 million, will sit on about 25 acres at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Construction is slated to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013.
Several universities in Texas actually bid to become the site of Shrub’s library. According to published reports, Baylor University, the University of Texas, Texas Tech, the University of Dallas and Midland College also submitted bids, as did the city of Arlington, Texas, which offered to provide land near the stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play. But the question you’re naturally asking is: What were they thinking?
This will be a $500 million facility that — if you believe the popular mythology about the man — could have a single book (“Reagan: A Life in Letters”), if that. Shrub, after all, was described by many of his closest aides, includingKarl Rove, as not much of a reader. This is a guy, after all, who announced to the world that he doesn’t read newspapers, and who got most of his news from Fox.
Turns out that may have been a bad rap. In the waning days of his administration, someone let slip that Shrub in fact read about a book a week — an impressive achievement, since most Americans don’t read a single book in a year. Shrub apparently read a number of serious books like Stephen W. Sears’ “Gettysburg,” David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” and U.S. Grant’s “Personal Memoirs.”
He is also a big fan of action/adventure fiction. Besides finishing most of the Travis McGee novels by John D. McDonald, Shrub read Vince Flynn’s “Executive Power,” Stephen Hunter’s “Point of Impact” and Michael Crichton’s “Next.”
Most of those books are in my own library, and with the exception of the Travis McGee ones, which I read years ago, I also read those novels last year. It came as a big shock to me to learn that I share my reading habits with someone like George W. Bush, with whom I believed I have nothing in common.
As a matter of fact, while I hate his politics and think he was probably the worst president in history, I’d sort of like to sit down with him and talk books for a while. Writers like Vince Flynn and Stephen Hunter are an acquired taste, but their fans hang on every word and preorder their upcoming releases months in advance. They follow their book signings like rock stars.
Last year, Lee Childs — who writes the Jack Reacher books that my wife, my oldest son and I follow — had a book signing in New York City for his latest release, and the three of us all planned to go. On the night of the signing, however, I had a bad cold and stayed home alone feeling sorry for myself. About 10:30, as I was snuffling Vicks and kicking my heating pad up a notch, the phone rang.
“This is Lee Childs,” the voice on the other end said. “And I’m just wondering why you couldn’t get your sorry self out of bed and come to my book signing.”
I could hear my wife and son laughing in the background — they’d asked him to call me and the author agreed. And I could almost hear them gasp as I told Childs
didn’t particularly like the ending of his new book.
“Christ, Pop,” my son said when he got home. “Only you would criticize a best-selling author who you adore and who takes the time to call you to make you feel better.”
That episode will go down in family lore, but, truth be told, that call put a spring in my step for days, and meant more to me than a call from most politicians would have meant.
“Hello, Greg. This is John Kerry and I was just wondering why you couldn’t get your sorry self out of bed and come to my rally.”
Click.
So learning about Shrub’s reading list did more to humanize him for me than anything I’ve ever read, including the fact that he cuts his own brush on his Crawford ranch.
This library may turn out to be useful after all, at least if you want to read the latest Jack Reacher or the latest adventures of Vince Flynn’s muy macho protagonist Mitch Rapp. I wonder if you’ll be able to check books out, and what the late fees will look like.
Of course, the wags are already jumping on this library like bass on a hatch of June bugs. One friend sent me a hilarious e-mail about the library which, according to the missive, will have lots of reading rooms, including the Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won’t be able to remember anything; the Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one will be able to find; the Airport Men’s Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican senators; and the Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.
The walls of the library, according to this whimsical account, will be festooned (don’t you love that word?) with some of Shrub’s most pithy quotes. Quotes like “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child”; “I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy — but that could change”; and the incredibly appropriate “One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”
I doubt any of those things will happen, although they’re lots of fun to contemplate. In fact, Shrub will probably build a stately library where the books and materials will do their best to spin his presidency in its best light. To do that successfully, however, the library would likely end up costing $1 billion, instead of a paltry $500 million, because they’ll have to pay an army of writers to pen those favorable books. Even so, I’ll probably stop by Shrub’s library if I’m ever in Dallas. It wouldn’t be as much fun as a visit to Billy Bob’s, the world’s largest honky-tonk in nearby Fort Worth, but it would probably be a good way to kill a rainy afternoon.
At the end of the day, however, I’m still left with one nagging question. If George W. “Shrub” Bush read so many books, why didn’t it make him any smarter?
Former Greater Media Executive Editor Greg Bean may be reached at gbean@gmnews. com.