"Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness."

In a society steeped in a mercenary culture that seemingly entertains few qualms, for instance, over American football star O.J. Simpson reportedly signing a multimillion-dollar deal with media-mogul Murdoch’s empire to reenact the ‘hypothetical’ murder of his wife and her friend – art imitating reality? - it’s no surprise that George W. Bush should seek to cap his successful eight-year-long reign of venality in an equally appropriate manner, soliciting huge ‘donations’ for his post-White House Presidential Library project in return for lucrative access to his Administration’s top inner circle.

A recent Sunday edition of The Times, London, revealed that Stephen Payne, a major Bush-Cheney campaign fundraiser, was caught on tape by the newspaper’s undercover investigators offering them access to Bush’s key cronies in exchange for "six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency."

In the Times’ video, asked if he could arrange a meeting for an exiled Kyrgyzstan leader with Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, or John Negroponte, in return for a $250,000 donation, Payne agrees, adding, "But it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library." The balance was for his own lobbying firm, Worldwide Strategic Partners.

"There’s some people who like to give and don’t particularly want their names disclosed," Bush had told the press in November 2006 after a news report that month disclosed he had launched what it described as "an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive" for his proposed presidential library. The New York Daily News reported at the time that Bush hoped to get roughly $250 million in ‘mega-donations’ from some key allies, including "wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry."

When Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas agreed to house Bush’s monument, Dallas billionaire Ray Hunt - another old Bush-Cheney fundraiser, a 2000 campaign ‘Pioneer’ and formerly on the Board of the notorious Halliburton - promptly donated $35 million, no doubt in return for George’s teeny-weeny kind gesture back in 2006; when Bush decided to extend the US-Mexico border fence by 700 miles, the planned barrier, by a lucky stroke, was also to "abruptly end" at Hunt’s property in the small town of Granjeno, Texas.

The Dallas billionaire had an even better stroke of luck in 2008. The New York Times reported that the State Department actually had an ‘integral role’ in the recent awarding of no-bid contracts to develop Iraq’s oil fields, although the White House denied the Administration had a role. One of the chosen few – you’ve guessed it – was Ray’s firm, Hunt Oil.

The University’s decision to host the Bush Library was greeted with protests from faculty, administrators and staff. Scholars, too, were appalled. Why?

To answer that, it’s helpful to bone up on contemporary history. Forty-two years ago, and significantly on July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act. Significant, because it represented the realisation of the promise of self-governance that may have been born on July 4, 1776, but was never fully realised until 190 years later.

Moreover, the 1978 Presidential Records Act mandated that all but the most highly sensitive documents were to be made public twelve years after a President left office. In terms of that Act, on January 20, 2001 when George W. Bush assumed the presidency, the first batch of Ronald Reagan’s papers - 68,000 pages - was due for routine release. But without giving reasons, the new White House incumbent chose to impede availability, taking advantage of a clause in the Act allowing a 30-day delay to accommodate "presidential consultation".

Needless to say, the 30-day deadline never seemed to expire; rather, for Bush, it was as if time stood still. And then 9/11 happened. The climate of fear that gripped the nation after the catastrophe was the ideal environment for the Bush-Cheney cabal to start implementing their secret plans for an imperial presidency. Less than two months later, and just ten months in office, Bush signed an Executive Order [No. 13233] declaring that a sitting President could block the papers of a predecessor, even if that predecessor had approved their release. What’s more, the Order empowered current and previous presidents to withhold from the public’s prying eyes their records, believe it or not, indefinitely! [Giving the whole exercise an Orwellian touch, Bush’s Order bore the title ‘Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act’. Only fools fail to appreciate that, when it comes to public accessibility, less actually means more.]

What was George so hell bent on hiding, anyway? Since the Act already exempted the most sensitive documents from disclosure, academia became suspicious of the need for Bush’s additional Executive Order. "It’s pretty fishy," said one academic, Anna Nelson, an American University history professor who had worked with a number of scholarly and historical organizations on presidential papers access. "The precautions on ‘national security’ are extreme," she added. "These are not Iran/contra papers."

Nelson scored a bulls-eye when she surmised that twelve-year-old memos written then by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld when they worked under Reagan were the reason for the prohibition: "They probably don’t remember what they said, and they are feeling iffy about it." George’s 2001 ruling also gave him power to decide which of his Papa’s papers would be released, if at all, regardless of the 12-year time frame which ended on January 20, 2005.

The pièce de résistance, which scholars and legal experts found especially alarming in the Executive Order was a section that allowed a former President to appoint a representative to manage the release of papers after his death (or, as in the case of Reagan, incapacitation). "The question we have to ask ourselves is, Do we want the children, grandchildren and fellow workers [of a former President] to make these decisions?" queried Anna Nelson. "These are public records."

The bone of contention for scholars in Bush’s presidential library project at SMU is that it incorporates an institute - totally independent of academic governance by the University - to sponsor programs promoting "the vision of the president" and "celebrate" Bush’s presidency. Even former ‘Bush’s Brain’, his Machiavellian chief political strategist, Karl Rove, has signed on as a ‘critical resource’ of the Administration’s record. [He’s done pioneering work on the ‘fictional’ aspects of history.]

Benjamin Hufbauer, an associate professor and author of Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory, noted that the model agreed to at SMU was "totally different" from other universities with presidential libraries. The institute that is part of the complex "has a partisan agenda - that’s very significant," he said.

Rev. William McElvaney, professor emeritus at SMU’s theology school, asked: "What self-respecting university would accept a censored library?" Susanne Johnson, an associate professor and colleague of McElvaney at SMU, said the point of a presidential library is to reflect, academically, on the presidency, not to cheer-lead for a particular president:

"The whole purpose of a library is for unfettered, unbiased, critically reflective academic inquiry into the administration of a given presidency. We all know very well that this institute - which has no lines of accountability to the faculty - is about getting some scholars lined up to put window dressing on the presidency of George Bush."

But none can possibly fault George for his unique brand of twisted logic: