More Dubya Mementos

(And I also posted here.)

The New York Times (via Think Progress) tells us here today that when Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History opens his library at Southern Methodist University in 2013, “visitors will most likely get to see one of his most treasured items: Saddam Hussein’s pistol.”

The Times also tells us that another library memento candidate could be “a brick from the Iraq safe house where the Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an American air strike in 2006.”

I think it’s telling that no direct role was played by Dubya in acquiring these items (the story also tells us that, along with gifts donated to presidents, “sitting on John F. Kennedy’s desk in the Oval Office was a paperweight made from a coconut shell he had carved with a distress message after his PT-109 was sunk during World War II”).

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest these “additions” to Number 43’s SMU library…

A portion of the levee that ruptured along the Industrial Canal of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (the occasion of Dubya’s infamous “fly-over”)

A slice of the birthday cake Dubya presented to “Straight Talk” McCain on the occasion of the senator’s 69th birthday on an Arizona airport tarmac, which also occurred while New Orleans drowned (the cake reportedly melted in the heat)

A Florida voting ballot with a so-called hanging or partially perforated “chad” from 2000 during the contested election which made him president

A book of fart jokes to commemorate Dubya’s preoccupation with that genre of humor (Timothy Noah of Slate tells us that a “whoopee cushion” trick carried out against Karl Rove was postponed for two weeks in deference to the aftermath of the London al Qaeda bombings)

A manuscript of Dubya’s 2003 State of the Union address, one of the most grotesque examples of wall-to-wall lies ever foisted on this country

His ceremonial veto crayon, which he used only once before the Democrats took over Congress in 2006 – after that, he vetoed 11 bills until he left office last January

A copy of the Iraq Study Group report, issued in December 2006 after the Democrats had recaptured Congress, which recommended a “phased withdrawal” from that country and negotiations with Iran and Syria over Iraq; this was promptly ignored in favor of “the surge”

This is all I can think of for now. If I come up with anything else, I’ll update this accordingly.

Think Progress notes that historian Douglas Brinkley said Bush has “a True West magazine kind of pulp western mentality,” and I think that makes these items appropriate; I would tend to think “pulp” is an apt description also (as in the matter between his ears).