In June 1934 — a year into President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term — the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was established for the preservation of historical and government records. NARA, theoretically, should be nonpartisan, as Democrats and Republicans have a mutual interest in that preservation.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 12, former speechwriter Anthony Clark argues that NARA is being badly "politicized" under President Donald Trump — as is suffering as a result. Clark was responsible for NARA oversight during former President Barack Obama's first term.
"On February 7," Clark observes, "President Donald Trump fired Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan, on the job for only 632 days, without notice or cause. By statute, Deputy Archivist William 'Jay' Bosanko automatically became the acting archivist, leading the National Archives and Records Administration. Less than a week later, the White House sent Jim Byron, the president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation — one of the private nonprofit groups that builds and supports presidential libraries — to give Bosanko an ultimatum: resign or be fired."
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Clark continues, "Bosanko resigned, and the Trump Administration has made temporary arrangements for operation of NARA, designating Marco Rubio the acting archivist — his third concurrent role, in addition to secretary of state and administrator of whatever husk remains of USAID. The president is expected to nominate a new archivist, but the timing is as yet unclear."
Clark notes that "by law," an appointment to that position "must be free of political affiliation and made on professional qualifications alone — which, he adds, "has not stopped some prior presidents from nominating — or tentatively floating — individuals clearly for their politics."
"In the agency's history of 11 permanent and seven acting archivists," Clark explains, "the two confirmed archivists who have been the most explicitly political turned out to be the most disastrous: Allen Weinstein and Don Wilson. If their tenures are any indication of how badly a politicized appointment can damage the agency, the current widespread alarm among stakeholders and NARA employees is well-founded…. In NARA's 90-year history, only one other president has removed an archivist: President George W. Bush forced the eighth archivist, John Carlin — whom President Bill Clinton had nominated almost a decade earlier — to resign so that Bush could nominate the already-vetted and reliable political operator Allen Weinstein…. Weinstein’s messy departure from NARA was covered up at the time, but the exit in 1993 of one of his predecessors, Don Wilson, the seventh archivist, was much more of a public spectacle: Wilson resigned under a cloud of multiple investigations over his handling of the agency."
Politicization and extreme partisanship, Clark emphasizes, have no place at NARA.
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"One of the glaring ways this can be seen is that the new Trump Administration has devastated agency leadership and independence, firing Shogan, forcing out the deputy archivist, the inspector general, and other agency employees, and putting Rubio atop the agency, while installing as NARA's day-to-day leader Byron, the head of the most partisan presidential foundation in the system," Clark laments. "Another is that few now seriously believe the president will nominate anyone who meets the statutory requirements for the position, nor one who would reassert the independence of the agency and the position — and honorably uphold the law rather than fulfill the president’s desires."
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Anthony Clark's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.