He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.
***
Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential "mega" donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.
***
"It's a stretch," said another source briefed on the plans. "It's so much bigger than anything that's been tried before. But the more you have, the more influence [on history] you can exert."
The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.
The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.
Pretty much summarizes what we've all come to expect.
Other targets of SMU fundraising:
- The Rosie O'Donnell Cocksmanship Foundation.
- The Ron Mexico Chair in Women's Studies.
- The Mel Gibson Judaica Center.
- Rumsfeld School of Human Rights Awareness.
- The Dahmer Culinary Institute.
- Lynyrd Skynyrd Aviation School.
- The NBC Endowment for Integrity in Notre Dame Reportage.
- The Dead Horse Center for the Study of Non-Redundant Amusements.
3 comments:
I know you're making fun of a "Institute for Democracy" honoring the appointed, freedom-hating George W. Bush. But hell, I think the idea of a building full of books named for the man is absurd enough on its face.
It's even sillier than, say, a commercial airport named for Ronald Reagan.
I agree completely with the relative lack of press this story is getting. It's also noteworthy that Texas A&M already has the George Bush School of Government (dad digs Aggies I guess) and that's where appointee Gates had his sweet post CIA kick-off-the-slippers-and-live-on-a-ranch job.
How about these:
Britney Spears Institute of Child Rearing
Georgia Coalition on Curbing Elderly Violence
NYC Target Academy
Fidel Castro Medical School
Steinbrenner Institute of Spending Thrifty
Boston Study of Inferiority Complexes
Philadelphia College of Class
My rejection letter from the DHCSNRA just came today. Thus:
-> Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' Coffee n' Monogamy Jamboree
-> The Reggie Ball Archery Academy
-> Heliocentris Redemptoris, by Pope Clement VII
-> Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department, West Virginia University School of Medicine
-> The Sufjan Stevens Lumberjack Fantasy Camp
-> The Simpson-Lewis Center for the Unstabby and Repentant
-> Dick Cheney's Civilization V (for the PC or Mac)
-> The Nashville Predators, a professional hockey team located in Nashville, Tennessee.
Post a Comment