Nixon Library Is All Bound Up in the Bureaucracy

If it were run on a sensible schedule, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in San Clemente would be the sixth presidential library to be built in the nation. There’s an odd chance that the Presidents Carter and Ford libraries will beat it to the ground breakings.

The problem with the Nixon library is government obscurantism. The California Coastal Commission is standing in the way of its being built on a sensible schedule.

The commission has decreed it will withhold its permission to develop until the adjacent developer, John D. Lusk & Son, wins approval of its master plan of development of a residential/commercial tract.

James Roosevelt, a trustee of Chapman College and a former member of Congress, says the delay is “incredible. I thought I knew all about red tape. I helped to create some of it. But this is unconscionable!” Roosevelt, the eldest son of President Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, does not seem to be a vituperative man by nature.

His indictment of the Coastal Commission was delivered gently, but was no less in earnest. He has been working in behalf of Chapman College of Orange to bring the Nixon archives to a 16-acre knoll overlooking the sea. In addition to the library, another building will be constructed to house Chapman’s academic arm, devoted to study and scholarship.

A Newport Beach resident and business consultant, Roosevelt told a gathering of Newport Beach Friends of the Newport Beach Library that Chapman will be lucky if all the permits are approved by Nov. 1. (Come to think of it, he didn’t specify the year.)

Roosevelt is a tall, slightly stooped gentleman, in the purest sense of the word, in his 78th year. The charismatic aura of his father and mother lies about him. His warm, engaging smile recalls that of his father. A cigarette in a holder clenched jauntily between the teeth would complete the illusion that the 32nd President of the United States was present.

He recalled the establishment of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, the first presidential library, in 1945. The tone for succeeding libraries was set then. One of the policies was to seal from public scrutiny papers that might prove embarrassing or damaging to certain individuals, until the death of those individuals. Otherwise, these libraries are open to scholars. He said the purpose of such libraries is not to make idols of the Presidents represented but to serve in the interest of history.

As an addendum to Roosevelt’s estimated timetable of library construction, I learned from Don Steffensen, senior vice president of John D. Lusk & Son, that it would likely be 1986 before the Coastal Commission approves the Nixon Library as “a package deal” with the Lusk property.

Steffensen told me that plans for the Marblehead development of mixed commercial and residential use would probably be submitted to the City of San Clemente for approval sometime this April. He estimated that it would be sometime late this year before the plans would go to the Coastal Commission, placing approval of both the Nixon Library and the Marblehead development into next year. Marblehead will consist of 236 acres and will surround three sides of the Nixon Library property.

Alas, I’m afraid that the Coastal Commission’s insistence on package planning in this case represents (to paraphrase Emerson) a foolish consistency that is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen.