The opening of the new Clinton presidential library, “a gift to the future by a man who always believed in the future,” provides yet another example of why we shouldn’t fund monuments to the pride, arrogance, and ambition of politicians. Put their archives somewhere where scholars can sift through them to figure out how they got away with so much, but do we really need displays of all the little gifts they received from foreign potentates or taxpayer-financed political messages about how wonderful they were? Can you imagine the presidential library for Dubya?
If size of government has any correlation with size of presidential libraries, Dubya’s library is going to be huge!
Aren’t the libraries privately funded?
According to the website of the Jimmy Carter library:
“Each President is responsible for financing and building his own library. Once built, the federal government becomes responsible for the administration and operation of the library. Teachers, students, and others come from all over to use the materials in the library for research purposes.”
So he raises the money for building it, but the taxpayers run it.