Blocking History

This article should be read by anyone who has even a remote interest in History. They should then contact their reps to make sure that historians are not locked out of crucial primary sources.

Someday soon, unless we stand upon our First Amendment rights and demand government transparency, a president’s legacy may depend not on actual accomplishments and leadership, but on the adroit release and suppression of certain presidential papers.

It was because Nixon, in the aftermath of Watergate, attempted to take personal possession of his presidential papers that the 1978 Presidential Records Act was enacted, declaring that the United States retains ownership of a president’s records. Under this law, the National Archives organizes these papers and, 12 years after a president leaves office, they are opened to the public.

Executive Order 13233 gives ex-presidents nearly unlimited discretionary authority to prohibit the release of their papers, and allows them to name designees who can act in their stead. Moreover, a sitting president may also prevent the release of a predecessor’s papers — as Bush has already done with some of Ronald Reagan’s papers — even when the predecessor has authorized his papers’ release. These are radical encroachments on the public’s access to documents that were produced in the public interest, at public expense, by officials elected by the public. Citizens can challenge these decisions in court, but the expense and time commitment will discourage most people from trying.

Fast-forward fifty years to that bookshop table, imagining the state of presidential history if George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13233 is permitted to stand — perhaps further refined by successors for whom spin is as routine as flossing. The best-selling presidential biography, The Decider, whose author was carefully vetted by George Bush’s descendants, is surprisingly rich in detail and anecdotes, selectively gleaned from the presidential papers.

Unsurprisingly, The Decider argues that the 43rd president, portrayed in his day as a radical but inept ideologue, was in fact courageously prescient in his bold extension of U.S. hegemony over the Middle East for the first time. It describes Bush the Elder’s blow against Iraq’s Satanic Saddam Hussein as portentous of the son’s coup de grace. And none of it would have been possible without the vision and wisdom of the man whom the author unabashedly proclaims the Father of Modern America, Ronald Reagan. Contrarians, of course, can always write their own history — it’s a free country. But without access to the primary documents, they will find it difficult to compose a credible refutation.