Presidential Librarians Can Learn From Their Predecessors

Looking back almost 40 years, the director of Texas’ first presidential library says he should have been tougher on Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Harry Middleton, 86, said he and fellow staffers in the 1971 opening of the LBJ Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin were too close to the former president to give a highly critical account of the controversies that defined his tenure – especially the Vietnam War.

More reminiscences in this story from the Dallas News and from the former director of the LBJ Library, who suggests that there are lessons to be learned by the staff of the GWB Library at SMU.

Do you think the GWB librarians will be too kind to the next former president?