January 22, 2013

Los Angeles Sunday Afternoon

From the Tar Pits, we went to pick up Doreen's friend Tim Naftali. Tim was, until recently, the Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

I grew up politically under Nixon. I am not now, nor was I then, a Nixon fan (or Nixonian, as Tim calls them)

I will not dwell on the trials and tribulations of Tim's work at the museum (I am sure that there will be a memoir in there somewhere) but show some photos.

The museum was nice. Here is Tim and Doreen in front of the entrance.


Nixon wanted to show his interaction with international leaders, so they had theses life-size sculptures made, and put them all in a room. I will try and do this from memory: Zhou Enlai, Mao, Brezhnev, Kruschev, Sadat, Golda Meir, Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, and Kijūrō Shidehara



They had a good sized moon rock:


and this, which is the most poignant:

Every Presidential library is allowed to re-create one room from the White House. Every other President chose the Oval Office. Nixon chose the Lincoln Study. He spent a lot of time here. Alone. During his re-election, he was getting updates on the election from his son-in-law while sitting in this room, alone.


Tim is responsible for all the Watergate exhibits. They are tremendously detailed, and you can listen to any of the tapes you want. Tim also interviewed many of the people who are still alive who were involved.

Nobody can come away from this very fair exhibit and believe that Nixon was innocent.

 
But, I am not a crook.

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