Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory
| Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory | |
| |
| Author(s) | Benjamin Hufbauer |
|---|---|
| Publisher | University Press of Kansas |
| Publication date | 2005 |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 0700614222 |
What role do presidential libraries play in American society and how have they developed over time? Benjamin Hufbauer seeks to answer these questions in his 2005 book, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory. Through his analysis of three presidential libraries – Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson – and a variety of related memorials and exhibitions, Hufbauer provides a two-pronged overview of the entire library system. First, he argues that the libraries reflect the growing power of the executive branch in government, and second, that the library system supports a form of civil religion for the nation.
Hufbauer’s description of civil religion in his introduction is central to his book and imparts a degree of collective significance and meaning to the chapters that follow. “Presidential memorials can be nodal points for the negotiation of who we are as a people,” he writes, “and where we are going, politically and culturally.” In describing civil religion as originally defined by sociologist Robert N. Bellah in the 1960s, Hufbauer argues it has at least four distinct elements:
- “saints,” such as Washington and Lincoln; sacred places, such as Mount Vernon
- and the Lincoln Memorial; sacred objects, such as the Declaration of Independence
- and the Constitution; and, finally, ritual practices, such as the Pledge of Allegiance,
- Fourth of July celebrations, and pilgrimages to sacred sites.
As Hufbauer writes, “Presidential libraries are an attempt to construct sites that have all four of the elements of civil religion.” While national events and crises can spur participation in civil religion naturally or spontaneously, presidential libraries play a more propagandistic role in support of civil religion. They are “temples that promote the best possible place for their subjects within civil religion” (7). As of Hufbauer’s writing in 2005, there were twelve presidential libraries in operation (the George W. Bush Library, which opened in 2013, makes thirteen), and while their approaches to promoting civic education and curating exhibitions may vary, they generally share similar goals of exalting the presidency and enhancing presidential legacies (194).
In his first chapter, Hufbauer describes the origins of the presidential library system under Franklin Roosevelt, who “so desired to be remembered, and to be remembered in a particular way, that he altered the essential terms of commemoration for the American presidency” (23). Roosevelt’s library is modest in scale, but his personal choices in its development led to many standardized practices at subsequent presidential libraries. For example, Hufbauer illustrates an early illusion about access to records. While ex-presidents were often outspoken about creating easy access to their papers, they placed behind-the-scenes restrictions on certain records in an attempt to shape their post-presidential image (33). Congress ultimately settled this issue – after Richard Nixon tried to block access to some of his own papers – with passage of the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in 1978, permanently establishing “the public ownership of all subsequent presidential records, starting with the Reagan administration” (186).
Subsequent chapters analyze select presidential libraries with an aim towards clarifying the further development of general practices for the overall system as well as understanding the symbolic role of libraries in creating spaces for civil religion and public memory. Hufbauer alternately incorporates social history, cultural studies, art, architecture and exhibition reviews, and biographical detail into his telling. He devotes two discrete chapters to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, one on the symbolism of Truman’s oval office replica early in the life of the library and the other on more recent fundraising efforts for state-of-the-art multimedia programs geared towards school students.
In his chapter on the Truman Library’s oval office replica (the first of many in the presidential library system), Hufbauer reviews Thomas Hart Benton’s mural titled "Independence and the Opening of the West," which frames the entrance to the replica. “The painting visually expresses the ideology of Manifest Destiny in which Truman and Benton were steeped,” Hufbauer writes. “The mural has the effect of surrounding the Oval Office with inevitability, by paralleling the success of earlier generations of white Americans on the western frontier with the success of twentieth-century Americans on a global stage” (45).
To further chronicle the development of presidential libraries as monuments to American prestige and power in the twentieth century, Hufbauer describes Lyndon Johnson’s development of his own library while still in office. Johnson allotted significant time to planning his library, its monumental architecture reflecting his own personality and wielding of power and its ties to the University of Texas at Austin, where a school of public affairs was created under Johnson’s name (74). Both concepts would continue with the development of subsequent libraries, as ex-presidents sought to compete for attention and long-term prestige after leaving office. Hufbauer refers to these growing trends as a “symptom of the striking expansion of presidential authority that has occurred during an era when the United States has become the most powerful country in the world” (3).
Hufbauer’s chapter on the evolution of the first ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian provides additional evidence that memorializing presidents, as well as their spouses and families, is an active attempt to promote civil religion. The first ladies’ inaugural gowns collection organized at the turn of the twentieth century remains one of the Smithsonian’s most popular exhibitions dedicated to presidential history (109). The exhibit, which arguably plays on civil religion’s concepts of both “sacred objects” and “ritual practices,” has evolved from a fashion display to a more complicated exploration of presidential spouses’ public image and political role (133). Observing its success in attracting visitors, curators at presidential libraries across the country developed their own exhibits about the role of specific first ladies, even creating replicas of their White House offices in some cases (105).
Hufbauer’s exploration of the rise of the presidential library system in the twentieth century is the first of its kind in a burgeoning field of academic study. While subsequent books and articles examine presidential libraries according to more rigorous criteria, Hufbauer’s broad review of select libraries and their development over time complicates the role of the larger library system in American society. Hufbauer leaves the future of presidential libraries an open question. “The cult of the imperial presidency as envisioned by some presidents and their supporters,” Hufbauer writes, “may increasingly become an attempt to sell uncritical acceptance of a president’s self-proclaimed list of achievements and inspire veneration of an individual idol of the civil religion, rather than contemplation of national history” (199).
