A new book containing some of the Reagan diaries will appear soon, and it occured to me that in the not so distant future, historians are not going to have the same luxuries. I simply do not know anyone who has a diary, and after the Packwood affair, I doubt very many politicians do, either.
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The Other Steve
Perhaps GW Bush maintains a blog on an RNC server?
Media Glutton
Well, Bush started one but the CIA put the kibosh on it.
Brian H
Oh, you haven’t heard? Check out telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/04/21/dlrecall21.xml
and
edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/10/16/explorers.memory/index.html
Unfortunately, there will be no literary, witty, or insightful writing. Unless one counts extempore musing etc. which would be captured. Think of all the brilliant soliloquies you’ve muttered to yourself over the years, now lost forever!
;)
Davebo
Dairies are for little girls!
Real men keep Journals.
jg
Pat Tillman had a journal. No one can find it.
crack
You do have a blog. Granted it doesn’t dwell as much on the personal, but many blogs are little more than poorly written uninteresting diaries.
Of course they’ll only be available in google cached versions before too long.
Tsulagi
I liked this from the WaPo link…
That’s funny. I know a knock on Reagan was he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but I tell you, I’d take 10 Reagans as president versus a possibility of one GWB.
skip
The very idea of Reagan having a journal/diary is astonishing. 1970s advance excerpt:
“Up betimes. Nancy and I rode to the beach, got sunburned. Caught a crab.”
George Bush summer 1967:
“Whoa, this FOUNTAINHEAD is but a pale reflection of real truth. Where is my annotated copy of SEIN und ZEIT?
ThymeZone
Was his diary in one of those little padded red book things with the lockstrap and the tiny key?
Adorable, really.
gus
From the excerpts I’ve read it sounds like he wrote them for posterity, not for himself. Nothing revealing there, really.
Tlaloc
” I know a knock on Reagan was he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but I tell you, I’d take 10 Reagans as president versus a possibility of one GWB.”
The problem is that while Reagagn was being dim int he Oval office George Bush (sr.), Donny Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and all the other ethically bankrupt losers were running a criminal empire. Reagan’s administration gave us ever so many contemporary problems.
Reagan may have been just a boob, but he was a boob cynically used by some down right vicious bastards.
ThymeZone
True. They saw him as the ultimate front man for a grand con, and …. they were right. He was.
stickler
I dunno. I’ll bet that guys who see themselves as Big Men Of History figure out some way to write down details of their day; it makes writing (or, more likely, ghost-writing) their massive late-in-life tomes easier.
Nixon wasn’t much of one for writing diaries, so far as I know, but he was interested in Posterity. So he used the Oval Office taping system to record every conversation.
Sure, there were a few drawbacks to that approach, but things turned out fine in the long run anyhow.
Zombie Santa Claus
December 26, 545: Got around to giving Empress Theodora that coral loofah she’s had her eye on. What a dish! Christmas finally came for Santa this year. As for Justinian, he finally got coaled for fucking over Belisarius. Meanwhile, the Byzantine ruling family finally has some elven blood floating around in it.
December 26, 1776: Ho ho ho! Looks like good King George will finally show this colonial rabble who’s the boss! Fuck you, colonists! Fuck you, peasants!
December 26, 1811: Could Napoleon’s star rise any higher? Huzzah for the French Empire! I got crab lice in Paris, and I’m drunk as a fucking skunk!
December 26, 1944: Nuts!
ATS
“… Went back to Bohemian Grove today. We all spanked Karl untill his flesh asumed a ruddy red glow. Meanwhile, Israel rolled all the way up to Beirut tonight. Ellioit Abrams said we should teach them a lesson by bombing Ghaddafi’s house. Where is my Donkey Kong?”
Otto Man
No, dairies are for big cows.