When Bill Clinton’s presidential library opened in Little Rock in 2004, one of the most frequent and tiresome observations about the cantilevered glass-and-steel structure was how much it resembled a mobile home.
Anyone who laughed at that joke probably owes the Clinton center’s architects an apology after seeing the images of what President Donald Trump has in mind for his library when he leaves office.
A two-minute video shared on social media recently shows architects’ renderings of Trump’s presidential library, a glass high-rise in downtown Miami that the president said may also include a hotel. In the video, the glass building features Trump’s last name and a giant U.S. flag under a red-white-and blue tower.
Inside visitors will find a replica of the “golden escalator” Trump rode down when he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015. The library will also include a plane that appears to be Air Force One, possibly the Boeing 747 that Qatar gave to the president.
The images seem more akin to a casino than a site intended to help the public understand the history of a presidency.
They’re also emblematic of how Trump threatens to undo efforts to preserve presidential history and undermine a key reform enacted after Watergate. Trump’s promoting images of his library at the same time his Justice Department issued a memo declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional.
That declaration is already creating confusion and threatens to block access to other presidents’ records, including Clinton’s. It could block public access to millions of White House emails, as well as other records in the archives’ possession since the act went into effect in 1978, Politico reported.
The memo came out as thousands of records from Clinton’s administration were released to the public.
Unilaterally declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional undermines one of the most valuable aspects of Clinton’s library, not to mention other libraries around the country.
The records that Clinton’s library has released over the years have been invaluable not just to historians and journalists, but to students and other members of the public. They help the public understand parts of presidential history that resonate today.
That includes papers that shed light on Clinton’s unsuccessful health care reform efforts, his foreign policy, and Hillary Clinton’s role in the administration before she became a U.S. senator and presidential candidate.
The presidential library system and Presidential Records Act are both far from perfect. Allowing sitting presidents to raise money for museums and the lack of transparency surrounding those donations have created a system where contributors can curry favor with presidents by writing a check to their foundations.
It’s been a bipartisan problem, with questions that arose over donations to Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s presidential libraries. It’s continuing with tech and media companies pledging millions to Trump’s presidential library to settle legal disputes and Qatar’s legally dubious Boeing 747 donation.
The Presidential Records Act, the 1978 law that was intended to preserve White House documents after a president leaves, has at the same time been stymied by a number of factors. They include processing backlogs and a law that’s failed to keep up with changes in technology. President Barack Obama’s library opening this summer in Chicago is attempting to adapt to the times with the presidential library system’s first online-only archives. But that innovation could come at the cost of the value historians have found in sifting through paper records with knowledgeable archives staff on site.
Presidential libraries serve a valuable service for the communities where they’re located. Clinton’s library has clearly had an impact in Little Rock, fueling development in what was once a primarily industrial area. And it can do even more after a planned expansion that will include Hillary Clinton’s archives.
There’s no denying the libraries are tourist destinations and that it’s impossible to completely divorce them from politics. But they’re primarily valuable for providing education not just about the presidents they’re named after, but about U.S. history and civic institutions. They shouldn’t become another partisan playground.
The system that dates back Franklin Delano Roosevelt was never intended to create a series of shrines to presidents, or a shadowy way for donors to influence presidents while they’re in office. And the decades-old Presidential Records Act was intended to underscore that a president’s records belong to the American people.
Presidential libraries and the records act need reforms to provide transparency and to return to their roots. What they don’t need are changes that upend and make a mockery of systems that were meant to educate Americans for generations, not keep them in the dark.
