The Death of Nonpartisan Presidential History
Americans are in a heated fight over how schools teach kids about love. What they should be exercised by is how schools teach kids about war and insurrection.
About a month ago, the National Archives and Records Administration signaled in a notice to Congress that it was effectively renouncing its responsibility for fostering and disseminating nonpartisan public history. If Congress does not stop this plan, “NARA Notice 2022-125,” the National Archives will cede control of the museum and classrooms at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, to the private George W. Bush Foundation. The National Archives, which has run the Bush Library since its opening in 2013, will no longer be able to shape the design or have veto power over the text of exhibits in the museum, including on the war in Iraq, the global war on terror, Hurricane Katrina, and the start of the Great Recession.
The implications of the NARA plan would go far beyond what one presidential library in Dallas says about a very controversial war. Hidden in the new NARA notice is language indicating that the approach for the Bush Library would be a model
