LOCATED FOUR BLOCKS from the White House, the National Archives are best known as the home of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The two founding documents are beautifully displayed in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. Every day tourists line up for the exhibit, and after they’re done, some step into the Archives Shop on their way out. Most of what you find in the Archives Shop is what you would expect in a kitschy modern museum store. Reproductions of Confederate currency are on sale next to Lewis and Clark action figures (the set includes a bonus figure–Sacagawea!) and snow globes with a picture of Nixon greeting Elvis. There are T-shirts and posters and, of course, books.
Lots and lots of books, from The Story of the Civil War Coloring Book to Michael Beschloss’s The Conquerors, John Keegan’s Intelligence War and solid biographies of Jefferson, Lincoln and LBJ.
And then there are the books on George W. Bush.
At the National Archives, although you can find not one neutral or admiring book on the current president (there are many in print, by the way), you can find Helen Caldicott’s The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex, not to mention Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.
The Phillips book is merely an angry polemic against the president, but Ms. Caldicott’s–excuse me, Dr. Caldicott’s–work is the product of a bona-fide conspiracy theorist. She refers to the “2000 Republican presidential coup” and the “right-wing putsch,” which has been out to get Saddam since 1991. She finds ties between Raytheon and Halliburton and the Defense Policy Board and Rupert Murdoch. Sweet mercy, can’t you see it’s all connected?
At the store’s entrance is a display of books on current events, prominently featuring Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia, an anthology of left-wing essays from such luminaries as Bill Christison. He asks, by way of arguing against the war in Afghanistan: “Is it clear that all Taliban members were accomplices of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? And if they were accomplices, is it not true that the better legal systems of the world do not punish accomplices to a crime as severely as the criminals themselves?”
A section in the rear of the shop features John Prodos’s Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War, Paul Krugman’s The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century and Charles Lewis’s The Buying of the President 2004. These august titles are all just prologue to the three–count ’em, three–volumes by Noam Chomsky, also on offer.
But the selections are not all glamorous polemics. There is academic tedium too. A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush v. Gore</<i>I>, the Supreme Court and American Democracy” sits on the National Archives’ shelves. Edited by Ronald Dworkin, the collection features essays by Lani Guinier, Laurence Tribe, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and, from the right, one supposes, Richard Posner. As Floyd Abrams testifies on the dust jacket: “For those of us who can’t–or won’t–put the 2000 election and, in particular, Bush v. Gore, behind us, this book is a sparkling tonic. And for those who want to ‘move on,’ the book will stop them in their tracks.”
The real stopper is on the next shelf over: Michael Mann’s Incoherent Empire. The book’s blurb explains that America’s “only real strength is an ability to bully weak Third World countries.” Mann holds dual citizenship in America and Britain but doesn’t seem to like either country very much. “My two governments are currently threatening the peace and order of the world by pursuing extraordinarily foolhardy militaristic policies,” he writes. “I analyze and pick apart their ‘new imperialism,’ armed with my general comparative knowledge of power and empires, militaries and clerics, and fanatics of all stripes.”
He knows something about fanatics. Discussing America, he solemnly warns: “For the sake of the world, it must be stopped.”
It’s not that the Archives Shop is one-sided in its offerings. I spotted three books on contemporary Democrats, too. Although I didn’t see any books on Bill Clinton, there was one copy of Wesley Clark: A Biography, which seemed like a leftover from primary season, and two books on John Kerry. The first was Douglas Brinkley’s truckling Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. The second, prominently displayed, was Carole Marsh’s John Kerry: Successful Senator and 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate! Admittedly, Marsh’s book isn’t as hard-hitting as, say, Dr. Caldicott’s. But it’s intended only for children ages 8 and up.
Who wouldn’t be enticed to buy a few titles from this abundance of strong opinion? When I sidled up to the checkout counter, anti-Bush screeds in hand, the friendly sales clerk whispered conspiratorially: “So, I guess you don’t like him.” I mumbled something noncommittal.
“You know,” he said, “we actually get complaints just for selling these books.”
I told him I was shocked. He nodded his head sadly. “We get complaints on a daily basis–one or two people a day at least. People come at us full-force because they think it’s anti-Bush for us to sell them.”
I asked what he told these disgruntled customers. He shrugged his shoulders. “We tell them they’re not anti-Bush. They’re just correcting the facts.”
Oh, I said.
Maybe the books at the National Archives really are just telling it like it is. After all, it’s possible that George W. Bush is an illegitimately installed fascist monster leading America’s military-industrial complex on a nuclear crusade for world domination. But what kind of dime-store dictator can’t even crush dissent at his own bookstore?
Jonathan V. Last in online editor of The Weekly Standard.
