Who Owns Presidential Documents...You (and me) or the Pres (and his heirs)
 

(removed graph of historians rating of Bush presidency after Ustwo had a hissy fit.)

Who owns presidential documents?

The Presidential Records Act addressed this issue by making all presidential documents the property of the National Archives and accessible to historians, media and the public after a period of 12 years from when that president leaves office. Access to the records can be denied after the end of the 12-year embargo only if a former or incumbent president claims an exemption based on a "constitutionally based" executive privilege or continuing national security concern.

In 2001, Bush issued an Executive Order that effectively extended the exemption by allowing the former or incumbent president to block the release of docs after the 12 year period for any reason.

The timing of the EO was interesting....just when 68,000 pages of Reagan records were due to be released (including Iran/Contra docs). It also gives the both the current and former Bush the means to block former Bush records (perhaps records dealing with Iraqgate/providing arms to Saddam through BCCI - only speculation on my part?).

Does the public have the right to presidential records?

Can future historians write an accurate and complete history of a president without access to sensitive and controversial documents that no longer pose a threat to national security?

IMO, this EO is right up there as one of Bush's worst abuses of power...in order to control the "history" of his administration.

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THE POLLSTERS WOULD HAVE THE BALLS TO TRY THAT KIND OF SURVEY BEFORE....

:) just kidding. I think Pan got into my head a little there.

Personally, I think that 12 years is too soon to release these kinds of records, if for no other reason that they can still impact careers. That said, "forever" is a very long time and doesn't seem appropriate either. Were it up to me, I would say 20 years is a nice round number, and would give that junior guy at the State Department a chance to run for Senate and then go down in a corruption scandal involving an underage prostitute, a golf cart battery, 7 1/2 gallons of jello and the latest issue of "Redbook".

I think the case law on this issue suggests that Presidential records are in-fact public records with the former President given an opportunity to object to private and other records being made public unless compelled to do so by court order.

Personally I think executive privilege is harmed by the law and is a violation of separation of power provision in the Constitution. I know most experts disagree. I think the net affect is Presidential communications with his cabinet and staff are tainted with participants being mindful of potentially everything being said being made public record. I think this hinders frank discussion, and encourages "group think".

I'd love to see the official documents that detail Reagan's actions during Iran/Contra. It's always nice to be justified.

Two more thoughts:

1) Abuse of power - The President has the power to issue executive orders. Issuing one is not an abuse of power. I am not sure how Bush's 2001 EO is an abuse of power, I think it clarifies the original law.

2) Historians not being able to record history accurately w/o the records - On its face this point is pretty weak, but deserves a response. Kind of like saying Historians could not record the historic dominance of Alexander The Great because they did not have access to his messengers.

Ace, we could know a hell of a lot more about Alexander the Great had there been more records that were accurate left behind. I think that's significant. Moreso, we know that Bush has been a secretive president, which means that if we don't act now while the information still exists it may very well be lost and future generations could make the same mistakes.

Yes we could know a lot more, but do we need trivia? Many would love to know about his sexual activities, etc., I but think we know plenty about his military and political strategies which lead to his world dominance. I would argue the same about Reagan or any other President, focus on actions, inactions and results.

ace....most Executive Orders are administrative.....it becomes an abuse of power when they change the intent of laws enacted by Congress and signed by former presidents.

And how can historians accurately "focus on actions, inactions and results" if documents pertinent to those actions, inactions and results are selectively withheld?

Maybe we should allow the historians to decide what is trivia and what is important.

Well since you put up the graph I decided to read the site a bit.

4 years ago 81% of the same group called him a failure.

Lets see guy gets re-elected, and was a failure to a large majority of 'professional historians'.

So in other words, they didn't like him or his policies.

Ah well those who can't do.....

As for who owns the records, thats a bit of a tough one as there are many factors to consider. My thoughts are always to security on such matters and while I think from a long term prospective there should be a right to know, it needs to be long enough that security isn't compromised. For example, I don't know when it came to light we had a high level spy in the Soviet government during the Cuban missile crisis so we knew they would blink first so to speak, but odds are it wouldn't have been good for that to come out until said man was no longer in a position to be hurt.

In the original law, to me, it did not seem clear under what circumstances a current President could deem an issue worthy being held in confidence due to for example national security. Also, it did not seem clear to me under what circumstance a former President could deem something personal and not public record. I think Bush's executive order gives the benefit of the doubt to the President and former President - with the issue still being subject to court order.

The reason I used Alexander The Great as an example is because I think historians have done a excellent job or reconstructing his political an military strategies and actions/inactions without extensive records of Alexander's, writings, messages, private meetings and conversations.

I have listened/read some of Johnson's phone conversations while he was President - I can't say they added any value to the historic record in my opinion. In Nixon's situation that is different, but he was under no obligation to record all of his conversations - and Presidents after him certainly would self edit what they say on tape. History in my opinion is best served when information his gathered in circumstances where the participants act as they normally would. We don't need staged history.

I think the records belong to the govt, the same way that any employer owns records the employee created while acting on the employer's business.

That said, because of the sensitivity of this stuff, I'd say 12 years is probably too short a time. It should be more like 30 years. Many historical courses of events haven't fully played out in 12 years, and disclosure of internal presidential documents could affect current events at that stage. It's unlikely that would be true after 30 years, except in unusual circumstances.

Who are the historians? Where would you draw the line? Do we need to have record of bathroom visits? Do we need to know if a President had a sex with his wife/mistress/girlfriend? I think we, the public, should have input on what is important for recorded history. I like the idea of standards and I respect personal privacy.

I think 12 years (3 presidential terms) is sufficient. given that the law (before Bush's EO) still allowed for further withholding if national security or "current events" might be compromised.

Should a former president whose legacy is under review be the one to make that determination?

I would prefer seeing someone like the National Archivist in consultation with national security officials (past and present).

Historians = anyone interested in history. Leave the information available to anyone and everyone. If people are interested in getting information on the bathroom, there's certainly no harm in it. The real issue, though, is ensuring that truly important information is available... but important to me may not be important to you. As such, all information should be available.

There are rules that govern Congress and others public office holders, local and state. There is a point when activity is on the record and public, rules governing what constitutes a meeting, and rules regulating notice, etc. These people have an opportunity to be off the record, and have personal and private thoughts, shouldn't the President have the same opportunity?

Like I wrote earlier:

If I knew everything thing I did was being made public, my behavior would be "staged", wouldn't yours? Our best historic records are from sincere/honest sources. Hence I think history is better served if we give a President some feeling of privacy and then discovering that information. That kind of record (i.e.- Nixon) is priceless.

ace.....Isnt the likely outcome to be "staged history" if a president can`withhold relevant documents for as long as he is alive (or beyond) that may reflect questionably on his PUBLIC policy decisions and actions?

Forcing them to behave by recording their actions? Cry me a river.

12 years is fine, because exceptions can be made, page by page, instance by instance. What happened here is about overall intent, overall disdain for public accountability....deep seated, long standing:

11-29-2005
[quote]http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=51

Research does wonders for a truly curious mind.........
One thing you are right about, ustwo, is that there is much that we cannot know for certain. Bush and Cheney have worked O.T., to insure that!

Didnt they airbrush Jack Abramoff out of WH photos?

No wait, they just destroyed any e-mail that pertained to Abramoff's WH visits. The photos were beyond their control.

12 years is fine, because exceptions can be made, page by page, instance by instance. What happened here is about overall intent, overall disdain for public accountability....deep seated, long standing:

11-29-2005
and when you come on here to defend a president and an administration that have shown only contempt and disregard for the law, what does doing that speak about you?

I dunno.

I feel historically empowered hearing LBJ talk about his bunghole.

Compelling and rich history.

ustwo, you can keep your "manly man" "war criminal", TORTURER, "decider", all to yourself....you can have him!

What can you be thinking, Ustwo...still holding out for their favorable place in history....they are the worst ever...there is no chance, give it up!

Please Host, Jimma Carter WAS the worst ever, look at how bad he fucked up this country, not to mention our standing in the world.

But hey he did pardon all those draft dodging felons.

Carter was a god-king compared to Bush.

Right 20% interest rates, gas lines for miles, Iranians taking our embassy with no response, all you know about Carter is what you have read, this country was in shambles under his leadership, if thats what you want to call it.

Adjusting for inflation gas is more expensive now, the Fed is falling apart trying to fix the horrible mess that was inevitable with our economy that was exacerbated by some of the dumbest policy in history regarding fiscal responsibility, Iraq is experiencing an all-out civil war as a direct result of a war of aggression that had no planning, we're actually torturing people, TORTURING... I mean how blind can one be? Carter was a fantastic president when compared to Bush.

Shouldnt "what we read" (and what historians have access to) include all relevant presidential documents (like all of Carter's publicly available background docs on the Camp David peace accord, docs that lead to the first national energy policy or a foreign policy docs that promoted human rights, etc)....rather than only the docs a president wants to provide?

That is the question that should be addressed.

Should Bush be able to withhold documents from the Reagan and GHW Bush presidencies to protect their legacies? Should he be able to withhold docs from his own presidency if it prevent us from "reading the truth"?

I was reading the comments on the site about the poll, I found this one to be pretty good.

I would really like to see who these "historians" are. Bush is the worst president ever? Not by a long shot. This "poll" has no merit whatsoever. Did the “pollster” even control for political ideology? There are so many factual mistakes in these comments that I question if all of the respondents were actually historians, including the author. It’s almost as if their knowledge of history only extends to the latest MSNBC news cycle. The tax cuts were not just for the “rich” (whatever that means). They actually applied to everyone who pays taxes. Furthermore, tax revenues actually increased as result of the tax cuts, as they did for the Reagan, Kennedy, and Mellon tax cuts. The deficits were due to record spending on both sides of the aisle. One respondent calls the Iraq war disastrous. Really? Compared to Vietnam? How about Korea, where in less than three years over 30,000 of Americans died? How about the War of 1812, during which our capital was burned to the ground and all of New England very nearly seceded? And Bush trampled on the Bill of Rights? How, exactly? By rounding up hundreds of thousands of Americans and putting them in concentration camps like FDR? Oh, that’s right, I forgot, wiretaps of terrorists phone calls (perfectly legal under FISA and employed by every president since Carter). LOL. Are these guys even historians? It is way, way to early to judge the Bush presidency. Everyone said the same thing about Reagan, and now he’s ranked in the “near great” category. Same with Harry Truman who left office with a lower approval rating than Bush’s. If democracy hold in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush, like every other wartime president with the exception of Nixon, will be in the top 20. BTW, If I had a kid studying history at Millsaps College, I would ask for my tuition money back.

Yea suck it libs, seriously dc if you wanted a real discussion you don't start it with that steaming pile of crap and then pretend it doesn't really matter.

UStwo....I removed the poll from the OP just for you. I hope you will show me the same courtesy in the future by not posting bogus sites like Junk Science and the American Center for Voting Rights :)

Now....Should Bush be able to withhold documents from the Reagan and GHW Bush presidencies to protect their legacies? Should he be able to withhold docs from his own presidency if it prevent us from "reading the full and unvarnished truth" of his WH polices, actions and decisions?

BTW, many of your posts are steaming piles of crap....most recently:
In this case, literally.

You cooked the meal, I sent it back to the kitchen, deal with it.

Edit: And since you didn't get the joke....


LBJ: But, uh when I gain a little weight they cut me under there. So, leave me , you never do have much of margin there. See if you can't leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to.

http://americanradioworks.publicradi...bj_haggar.html

Its better if you listen to the audio.

Ustwo, I'm not coming off as a snarky POS in my posts, because I sincerely attempt to provide REAL content in my posts....substance...kinda like what dc_dux tries to do. What do you try to do here....incessantly?


Not to worry, dc_dux....watching these loyal Americans attempt to defend and obfuscate the indefensible and the unavoidable, is what it is, a spectacle.

Torture, war crimes, deliberate violation of the Geneva conventions....the senate signed those Geneva treaties to protect your fellow Marines....deliberate destruction of white house records....years of internal communications among the entire executive branch.

You post about what Carter did to our "standing in the world"....when did you ever show any concern for our standing in the world? What do you think world opinion is of the Bush administration, of the American people for permitting their continued ability to stink up the place? The rest of the world is voting on US standing:
The US dollar: Against the Euro....last 24 months:
<img src="http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/2y?usdeur=x">

Dollar since Bush TOOK office:
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/US/M

The US Military:
More of what you stand up for, reconmike...a toast to these wonderful, all suffering leaders....hip, hip, hooray !!!
Compare what a REAL president said about the deaths of the American soldiers his orders sent into battle:

We the citizens of the United States need to take back our government. The whole idea of a democratically elected President and congress was to give the people a voice, yet ever four years or two years for congressional elections our collective voices are silent. In 1996, according to the Federal Election Commitee, a little over 49% of citizen eligible to vote actually voted. There can not be change in this country if we continue electing people with the same ideology as the last previous idiot we put into office, or worse yet if we fail to take time away from daily resposibilities to perform our most important resposibiltiy as a citizen and go vote. You may not have voted for George Bush, but did you go to your neighbors or friends and talk about voting for your candidate. Did you pass out bumper stickers or information about the candidate you wanted to win. Don't feel bad, I didn't either. During this election season, forget about the mainstream media. Read the blogs, go directly to all of the candidates websites, do your own research on the candidates. The national news outlets are only going to mention the candidates that will get them the most viewers. Hillary and Barack initally, in my opinion, got more exposure than the other candidates, not because of their ideas or visions of the future, but because Hillary is a woman and extremely popular and Barack is black and extremely popular. It made for good television. They both say exactly the same thing that every other Democratic candidate has been saying since the beginning of the year last year....We need to leave Iraq and fix the mess the Idiot currently in charge has created. I really don't care if your republican, democrat, or a member of tSocialist Party USA(yes it's really a political party), if your not getting out and organizing support for your candidate, your not doing enough to make sure "We The People" and not the news media or corporate America still control the government of this once great nation.

“When citizens fear government, we call it tyranny When government fears citizens, we call it freedom”
~Unknown~
Thanks for letting me vent. Sorry if I rambled too long. Its my first post too a blog and I kinda got carried away.

this seems the central problem or dividing line: conservative "history" is more a saint's life of the Powerful, a list of Glorious Deeds of the Great Man than anything even analytic (why did this happen?) not to mention critical (what were they thinking?)

conservatives seem to want amateur history. amateur history that affirms what they already believe. reagan was a great man--a claim by and for amateurs; jimmy carter was the worst president in history: a claim by and for amateurs: people are unfair to george w bush: a claim by and for the dissociative.

===


but i dont think that's what's at stake in the eo.
many offices and many other countries seal archival materials for a certain period---for example when i was doing diss-research in paris, i tried to access the archives of the political surveillance arm of the city police for information about surveillance of the left in the context of the algerian war--those records are sealed for 50 years.

so on this one, i dont really know....i doubt seriously that any president has made their papers available too quickly, and most have delayed with less problematic a record than cowboy george and the mayberry machiavellians.

The response to the poll question as to whether it is the primary job of the US press to uncover the secrets of the powerful,

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...81#post2410981

was uncannily along the same lines as it is to the question here. It seems that a defense of the privileges of both wealth and power, go hand in hand. I thought that defenders of wealth did so because they aspired to be wealthy, and did not want their future wealth taxed. The defense of the powerful I do not understand as well. All of it seems to be about a belief in minimal or no accountability.... except of course, for the two million plus prisoners already in US jails.

Corporate polluters, wall street manipulators, republican politicians = "hands off"....from the press and government regulators. Where does a world view like that, come from? It seems the opposite of the American values held so dear.

No.

Seems what you really want is something "history" doesn't require. For example: I married my wife. The historic record is our marriage, children, the public records of our actions, etc. In my opinion having documentation of meetings or discussion I had with my best friend before making my decision to enter into marriage with my wife is not relevant for historic purposes. If I knew that my discussions with my best friend were going to be made public, I would carefully craft my comments to make sure the record reflected what I wanted.

Sometimes honesty is best served by being anonymous or the the thought of being anonymous. History is best served with honesty.

I would rather have Nixon on tape thinking the tapes would never be made public than Nixon on tape when he knows the tapes would be made public. Wouldn't you?

i don't think you understand what history is, ace--not in the sense of history=stuff that happened in the past, but more history as what historians make, what they do.

to stick with your analogy---a social historian, say, might look at the official document trail your marriage generated as elements within larger patterns that would be interesting or shaped by a bigger project or problem--this stuff is usually material for making inferences about type of activity done by folk who left no documentary traces behind. another type of project might be involve interviewing you about the reasons for your marriage. yet another--depending of course on who you are--might be set up so that the transcripts of your discussions leading up to the marriage are crucial.

it all depends on the type of history being done, what the project is.
there are many types of history, many types of projects.
what distinguishes one from the other is really type of data used and type of inferences made.

but the basic problem is that you are not george w bush and the analogy is basically flawed that would equate your decision to get married and what bush may have discussed or done while in office.

The "truth"??? Oh, I get it. Why don't you folks just cut to the chase. Impeach Bush if you think he lied, abused power, and committed crimes. With subpoena power you can get access to what you want.

You are correct I don't understand history as you define it - I don't even understand your definition.

Using Alex Haley's book "Roots" as an example. In his book he had documented history. The rest he made up, so if you call him a historian and his book history - we clearly disagree about what history is. In my view history is what really happened. Trying to document the feelings, motivations, stories behind the "history", and other abstract issues involving human decisions is an exercise in fiction. Even if you have, for example, "love letters", all you really have are words on paper. When you have a marriage, you have something of historic note. If you have a "love child" you have something of historic note.

In the context of the Bush Administration for example, we have the war in Iraq. Having documents of meetings indicating that Bush may have had second thoughts is not really material to the historic record in my opinion because the real point of interest is the fact he lead us to war.

All analogies are flawed. So what. If an analogy was exactly in the context of reality it would not be an analogy. An analogy is used to amplify a point. If you don't get the point, I understand the failing of the analogy.

Now there is "conservative" and "liberal" history?

I am conservative - What Monica did or didn't do to Bill Clinton in my opinion was not worth of historic record. Do you?

I think LBJ was a better President than Kennedy. I think Nixon was the most dishonest politician in modern times. I think FDR was the greatest President of the 20th century. Do these thoughts fit your preconceived notions?

well, ace, i'm not sure i see the point of continuing this, but i'll see what happens.

1. history is what narratives about what happened say it is.
in principle, history is everything that has happened, but if you think about even the most ordinary aspects of your experience every day, most of what happens drops away. you can't hold onto it--try to describe the process of making a sentence that you type here if you want an example. describe what goes through your mind as you write a sentence. all that is happening, but all that falls away. so there's no hope of capturing everything that happens.

so history as a genre is not that--it is a type of text taken up with narratives that construct and link elements--maybe events, maybe other things--into a type of pattern.

2. your notion of history via the example of "roots" is kinda absurd. historians make shit up all the time--but that doesn't mean that therefore the histories they write are any more or less "history" for that--it depends on the type of argument, the nature of the materials used as evidence and the logic that links them. it's a type of conceptual art.

if you want to hold up the standard of "what actually happened" and you take that idea "what actually happened" at all seriously, then there is no written history, just types of fiction. i have no particular problem with that, but i doubt seriously that my reasons for this have the slightest to do with yours.

3. as for documentation of the bush-process of selling the fake case for the iraq war--you wouldn't be interested because you're politically inclined not to be, and methodologically inclined not to look at that sort of documentation. so your history--the one you'd write--wouldn't use them. almost any other historian doing the same project would use those documents, were they available. your history would soon become an example of politically motivated fiction claiming to be history because its arguments, types of evidence and logic that connected these into patterns, wouldn't stand up. if you don;t believe me, try doing it. it'd be fun.


4. on the last point about your analogy--well, ace, this one i dont care about.
fact is that you aren't cowboy george and so are not president and so are not past a certain point used to having what you say recorded for posterity or whatever and so you would react differently to the idea of being recorded.

this is so obvious that it is not worth arguing about.

ace...this is not about impeachment or subpoenas. It is about access to presidential documents after they leave office.

I agree with rb....you dont understand history or the value that uncensored presidential policy documents bring to a more complete understanding of a president's policy decisions and actions, and thus a more complete history of that president's term of office.

As the National Archivist noted in recent testimony, the 1978 PRA provided a "careful balance between the public's right to know, with its vast implications to historians and other academic interests and the rights of privacy and confidentiality of certain sensitive records generated by the President and his staff during the course of his White House activities."

Bush's EO was a blatant attempt to overturn a law enacted by Congress and signed by Carter 30 years ago, and subsequently accepted by Reagan, George HW Bush and Clinton as a reasonable way to ensure that balance.

I disagree.

I disagree.

Historians may make stuff up, but made up stuff is not history. Again I disagree.

I disagree. We have written records of people in the military, weapons inventories, battle communications, medical records, reports of deaths/injuries, etc. these things make an historic record. A historian can even count the number of spent shells on a battle field to help determine the course of a battle. That also would be real history, that can make up a real historic narrative.


What is it that we don't know about the lead up to the war? I clearly state why I supported the war, and the information I used to come to my conclusion. I gladly include the trade-offs and the costs. I have never ignored them.

Like I stated history is best served with honesty. If you don't understand how information and documents can be "staged" that o.k. , however you will be generally be taken advantage of as you seek truth.

...

If you dont understand how more can be "staged" by the "actors" in question when presidential documents are withheld from the public...thats ok too.

I understand, that is why I prefer discovered historic documents over "staged" documents.

You intrigue me. You think Bush is dishonest, yet you want documents from Bush to prove his dishonesty. Odds are a dishonest person will keep dishonest documentation. That is why I don't force this issue. I would rather historians spend time researching things that are "spontaneous".

what do you mean by "things that are spontaneous"?

I want a more open transparent government.....I dont know why that is so intriguing.

For example Scooter Libby sends Chaney an email about a conversation he had with a reporter about a CIA agent. If Libby knows the email is public record, the email will reflect how he wants his email to be perceived by the public. If Libby writes a note on a napkin to Chaney, and Chaney throws the note in the trash, and someone finds the note and makes it public. I would put more value on the note than the email. I understand that both could be staged.

I told you what I found intriguing. Honest government suggests that the players have an opportunity for private thought. If I support an action by a ratio of 51 to 49 percent in my mind compared to a person who supports an issue 99 to 1, and we both vote the same way, I focus on the vote and have less interest in the minutia surrounding the vote.

ace....you obviously dont accept the characterization of the PRA by the National Archivist...:

provides a "careful balance between the public's right to know, with its vast implications to historians and other academic interests and the rights of privacy and confidentiality of certain sensitive records generated by the President and his staff during the course of his White House activities."

... lets just leave it at that.

I have no idea what this means nor do I care.

isn't this obvious?
btw--do you write emails as if they are matters of public record?
just wondering.

Yes.

Because I don't know how they do that objectively. Seems to me that a person (s) with an agenda could be very dangerous.

We agree on something.

You mean like Bush by preventing (or delaying indefinitely) the release of Reagan and GHW Bush documents as well as his own in the future?

Perhaps more than half of the Repubs in the House (as part of a bi-partisan 333-93 vote) felt that way when they supported the '07 PRA amendments to restore the original intent of the '78 act (or something close to it)....or perhaps they simply believed it balances the public interest and the interest of past, present and future presidents.

What happened to - "...lets just leave it at that."?

I know Bush has an agenda.
I know what his agenda is.
I know that records destine for the public domain will be "staged".
I know our best sources for historical information are facts regarding what happened rather than what people write.
I know that Bush's EO clarified the issue of access to Presidential records as we entered a war that had elements currently relating to an area of the globe dating back over decades and involving mutiple administrations.

What I don't know is - can I trust the judgment of a National Archivist.

Sorry, but I voted for Bush, he is my elected President and I want him to make the decision on what information gets released. When Obama or Clinton gets elected, they can do whatever they determine to be correct.

modern history--you know, history in the modern period, capitalist-style rationalized history, professionalized as a "science"--relies almost entirely on documents--all the more the further back in time you go. this is not open to dispute: it's simply how the form operates.
so this distinction between "what happened" and "what people write" is a kind of throwback. like a serious one.

anyone who is not an idiot (and many are idiots, trust me) who does history knows that something written down is more often than not problematic, and much of (to my mind) the fun of doing history lay in tinkering with the status and meaning of documents--and playing around with the status of this idea of "the document"--and playing with the conceptual frameworks that let you talk about history at all--but i digress---so anyone who writes a history is going to be entirely aware that written=written not that written=definitive or "true" because it is written.

this is linked to the importance of argument and procedures for building them in a piece of historical writing--the argument and procedures generate a distance from particular pieces of writing (necessary for critical appraisal, however that runs) and the integration of an interpretation of these pieces of writing back into an image of the world or what happened in the world or in that particular region of social being at that particular time.

ace, congress determined how it should be done....all president since the law was passed in 1978....followed it's provisions, until Bush came along and politicized the process. The purpose of the 1978 law was to depoliticize it:

Perhaps I have not been clear.

Written information is important. Here is how I would prioritize it.

Written factual information is most important, i.e. dates, times, people in attendance at meetings, recorded minutes of meetings, etc.

Legal documents, rulings, findings of fact, judicial opinions are next or first depending on the issue.

"Spontaneous" writings are next of importance in my opinion.

Written opinions, interpretations of facts by decision makers is next.

Written opinion, interpretations of facts, etc by support staff and others is next.

(Understand that the above was written off of the top of my head, I am not an expert and I am sure if I gave the issue more thought the list would be more detailed and more thorough. If you want to overlook the point and focus on that aspect - I am not interested)

However, for example I don't think President Clinton should be forced to disclose the donor list for his Presidential Library. I think the donors should have a right to privacy as does the former President. If we suspect illegal activity we should take legal action to obtain the information. Otherwise, in my opinion, the historic relevance is the library, not the written list of donors. In fact I think people want to see the list for purely political reasons and are not concerned with history. I would argue the same point regarding much of the interest in Presidential documents.

You don't think this was a political issue from the beginning??? I think the only reason the bill was passed and signed was because of Nixon and a weak President Ford - at a time when the public was most distrustful of executive power.

Since 1978, four presidents approved and followed the PRA for the next 20 years, until GW Bush, and as I supported with the first article in my last post, he used his new directive to keep secret the Reagan presidential papers, while publicly disclosing the Clinton papers.

You did not answer my question. Do you think this was a political issue from the beginning?

If this an issue about open government, should members of Congress be held under the same standard as the President?

that's a reasonable list to use as a starting point, ace.
i'd probably not sequence it that way (from most to least "reliable" seems to be how you organized it)...
but with that, it seems like we don't really have a disagreement about the importance such documents play in the building of an understanding of what an administration might have done and why after the fact---maybe only about how each of us would approach that history, were either you or i to write it.

so what it seems the issue is comes down to whether you are inclined to support the bush administration's sealing of its documents for 12 years and why.

i do not support it. i think that it is particularly incumbent on this administration to make its rationale--its internal processes--available if only because of the extraoridinarily problematic and divisive policies that it has chosen to pursue--so "for the country" maybe an act that cuts against its apparent grain and takes transparency a little seriously would be good.

i don't really understand why a conservative would support less rather than more transparency on principle--it runs against everything about the usual criticisms from the neoliberal set of government functions, regulation, institutions, etc.

why do you support this again?

I trust the judgment of the President. Given the fact we are at war I would prefer the government to error on the side of disclosing less information about how decisions were made regarding the issues involving the ME in particular.

I have no interest in "voyeurism" in the context of wanting to have private matters made public.

I respect and honor the notion of private council, attorney/client privilege, and people having a right to express private opinion in the context of historic decision making processes.

ah. so this is a straight political question for you--as i suppose it is for me.
but i see politics as entirely intertwined with history and how it is done, and i think that it is politically important (and not just for reasons of debunking, but for a host of reasons that i alluded to earlier) that these documents be available
---while it seems that for you this is not really about history or historians or the historical record or any of that--it's about supporting the bush administration.

which is fine, i suppose: but there's no real discussion in it.
i mean, it's obvious that neither of us is going to budge.

ace....I'm guessing that this post didn't do it:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=95

This is a serious question...I think you see the effort I put into this to be a sign that it is a serious question.

Since the contents in the post I linked to, have not influenced you to be too embarassed to post:
Is there ANY information that you can think of, that I could post, that would influence you to be too embarassed?

...i.e., How could you possibly post:
Is it because of his tight rein on spending?....His penchant for clearly and constantly telling the truth to us? His canny decision making on who presents an imminent threat to our national security, and then who to preemptively attack and occupy? What?

ace.....take Bush out of the equation if you possibly can and think President X

Is this really the approach to presidential documents you think best balances the public interest and the interest of President X in the future?

Pres X speaking:
"We should not be required by law to share source documents (including your top priority docs - written factual information, i.e. dates, times, people in attendance at meetings, recorded minutes of meetings, etc. ..and legal documents, rulings, findings of fact, etc.) with historians (and the public) 12 years in the future for fear that those historians may have a dangerous or political agenda.

Trust us to tell future historians (and the people) all that they need to know about our administration so that they may write about our actions and policies based on our version of the truth.....why would we lie to you?"

I just dont get it.

Did you think the Star Report was worthy of publication?

Do you think President Clinton should disclose his Presidential Library donor list?

Does history require the publication of the First lady's schedule on the days the President had meetings with a certain intern?

I say no to all of the above, and none of it is about Bush or past Republican Presidents.

Host on this issue I would defer to the judgment of any Commander in Chief. If the leader of our military the person most responsible for national security wants to keep a document confidential - I would support him or her.

Why do you folks keep wanting to make this a Bush or partisan issue? Why don't you trust that I believe what I write?

O.k., I don't have anything else to help clarify my position. I have made many points, used several examples, and gave clear and specific reasons for my views. Unless another, someone on the sidelines who has been reading this thread, can tell me what I missed or how I am wrong in my view of the situation, I am going to assume it is you and not me.

Teddy Kennedy would be an amusing read I'm sure.

This is an excellent point, that was ignored. Whats so special about the president that congress should be exempt from the same standard?

Yep.

It is me, and host and roachboy, and Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and the American Historical Association, and every non-partisan open government organization, and 333 members of the current House of Representatives......

First, I would note that Congress has always been much more transparent than the White House....the records of every speech, every debate and every act on the floor of the House and Senate and every Congressional Committee are included in the Congressional Record. The same cannot be said for every White House meeting or decision.

And in the short term (while in office), members of Congress are held to pretty much the same standard as a president (or cabinet secretary, etc) through the Freedom of Information Act, which has similar exemptions:

(1) properly classified in the interests of national defense or foreign policy,

(2) consisting of internal guides or directives discussing enforcement strategies, the release of which would risk evasion of the law,

(3) the disclosure of which is specifically prohibited by other laws,

(4) containing confidential or privileged commercial or financial information,

(5) protected by certain litigation privileges,

(6) the release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,

(7) compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to create the risk of certain harms,

(8) contained in or related to oversight of financial institutions by an agency charged with regulation or supervision of such institutions,

and ? (9) containing geophysical and geological information regarding oil wells.

The courts have nearly always ruled to narrowly construe these exemptions in favor of disclosure of relevant documents......until Bush's EO, which impacted FOIA (by putting a greater burden on the "requester") as well as PRA.

In the long term (after they leave office), documents of individual members of Congress, as opposed to documents of the body as a whole, are not the property of the National Archives.

Ustwo and ace....if someone were to propose a bill to make records of ALL members of Congress the property of the National Archives and thus subject to similar long term requirements...I would probably support it. :)

But damn,you're talking millions and millions of documents of thousands of members of Congress over time.....big $$$$ !!!!