Washington--It's not easy for a world leader to create a public image that will last long after he or she leaves office. But it's a bit easier for American presidents.
Those who spend time living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue then have the privilege of setting up a presidential library, housing their papers for public study, coupled with a museum -- all in an architectural monument to their glory years.
Often, these libraries are located in the president's home state -- Ronald Reagan's is in Simi Valley, California; Bill Clinton's is in Little Rock, Arkansas; and George W. Bush's library, which was inaugurated in April 2013, is in Dallas, Texas.
Almost two years before he leaves office, Barack Obama seems to have settled on a spot, according to media reports: Chicago, where he launched his political career as a community organizer.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 until his death in 1945, launched the now time-honored library tradition as a way to preserve his archives for generations to come.
Historians, political nerds, tourists and the general public have long shown a strong interest in presidential libraries and their contents.
The Lyndon B. Johnson library in Austin, Texas has a veritable gold mine of files including hundreds of hours of recordings of telephone conversations.
When visitors pick up telephones attached to the wall, they can experience Johnson's inimitable negotiating style, peppered with both threats and gentle cajoling as he persuades lawmakers and others to back his policy positions.
But these buildings are not just sterile reading rooms and warehouses containing untold reams of paper documents -- they are museums of contemporary history and sometimes architectural gems as well.
And despite their stated aim of providing an impartial accounting of a president's tenure, the libraries often morph into "shrines of spin," according to Benjamin Hufbauer, a professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, who has written a book on the subject.
"Basically, there is a final campaign for a president to try to elect himself to a better place in history, and that's what the presidential libraries and museums are ultimately all about," Hufbauer told AFP.
New York University history professor Jonathan Zimmerman agreed, recalling a cartoon published in The Washington Post that referred to Johnson's library as the "Great Pyramid of Austin."
"Like the pharaohs, the presidents get to literally construct their own monuments, starting while they are in office, as we are seeing, and thereafter," Zimmerman said.
Shadowy moments in a presidency, controversies and straight-up mistakes rarely find their place in presidential libraries.
The Monica Lewinsky affair gets scant mention in Clinton's library.
Some of the controversies of George W. Bush's two terms, including the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- eventually called torture in a Senate report -- only get a tiny mention in his library.
AFP
