Groundbreaking of the George W. Bush Presidential Center

Transcript

Let us pray. We rejoice, oh, God, for the George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU. We pray, our Lord, that it will be a place to answer the call to action in order to make this world a better place. We pray that it will be a sanctuary to enhance learning, inspire patriotism and offer insight into the world’s future.

We pray a very special prayer of thanksgiving for the leadership of President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. We thank you for their shared commitment to our country and to the tenets of democracy. We pray that this Center will be an inspiration to those who choose public service as a life’s vocation. Moreover, we pray that those who study and learn in the context of this great institution will have a deeper appreciation for the history and for the very future of the United States of America. God, bless us now and bless the very fabric of this Presidential Center. In your holy name we pray, amen. 

Mark [Craig], thank you for the blessing and inspiration of your words. What a wonderful crowd for an incredibly joyous occasion. Good morning to all of you.

Welcome to the groundbreaking ceremony of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the beautiful campus of Southern Methodist University at Dallas, Texas.

What a thrill to be here on this historic day, joined by more than 3,000 friends, supporters and the Bush-Cheney Alumni. 

I would also like to extend a word of welcome to the several hundred members of the SMU community, who are watching down the block at Mustang Mall, as well as supporters from around the world, who are participating via live website.

Today’s celebration represents the culmination of a lot of planning and hard work by literally thousands of individuals.

It began with the Library Selection Committee, whose efforts led to our partnership with SMU and this incredible piece of property.

The Design Committee, chaired by Mrs. Laura Bush, created a plan for a beautiful and elegant and forward-looking building and grounds that will complement this campus.

The Foundation Board has overseen the establishment and development of the Bush Center and its many components.

The Institute Advisory Board members provided counsel resulting in the launch of several initiatives and hiring of distinguished fellows.

And the National Finance Committee and donors, whose hard work and sacrifice have built a solid financial foundation for the Bush Center and its activities moving forward.

While much has been accomplished in a short period of time, today marks another major milestone as we turn our sights to the future.

We break ground on a Center that will serve as a resource for thousands of visitors each and every year and, as an epicenter for research, innovation and action that will result — to borrow the words of a fearless leader of ours — will result in a “freer and better world.”

Today is, indeed, a celebration, a celebration of President and Mrs. Bush and their service to our country, of the enduring principles that motivate their life’s work, of the future the Bush Center will help make possible, and finally, a celebration of each and every one of you.

For the love that you have for President and Laura Bush and the love that you have for America, thank you. 

Thank you for your friendship, for your service, your generosity and your commitment that has made this wonderful and glorious day a reality.

And now, please join me in welcoming to the podium my good friend, the President of the George W. Bush Foundation, Mark Langdale.

Thank you, Don [Evans].

We are gathered here today on the campus of SMU to celebrate the start of the construction of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, an important institution for this nation and the world. It will include the 13th presidential library in the National Archives and Records Administration system. It will contain the archives of the official records of the 43rd President, a museum that will tell the story of the two terms of President Bush. And unique to a presidential library, the Bush Center will include a policy institute.

This project has been many years in the planning and would not have been possible without the service to country that so many of you gave and the support that so many of you here have provided throughout. We thank you for that. We start with an incredible site — 23 acres on the campus of a respected University that is on the rise, in a world-class city. We are grateful to SMU for providing this site and for the deepening partnership that we are developing in so many areas of mutual interest.

Laura Bush has chaired our design committee. Her keen eye and gracious style is reflected in the building and the landscape that will come up on this site. Robert Stern, one of the greatest living architects in America today, has designed a building that is human in scale and appealing and approachable. The design is not a monument making a statement from the outside, but a building reflecting the important message that is within. A classically-proportioned courtyard with an appealing fountain beckons the visitor to come inside, and Freedom Hall, the centerpiece of the building, says it all.

This place is about the message inside, a message of enduring universal principles that are important to all of us. This project is designed to attain LEED Platinum designation, the highest statement of sustainable building and design practices. This sustainable design example will be an important message to send to future visitors, but it is also a reflection of what the First Couple has always believed. Many of the sustainable design elements reflected in this project — judicious use of the footprint of the building to preserve green space, reusing storm water runoff for irrigation, attention to shade and sun, use of native landscaping — are all techniques that Laura Bush used 11 years ago in the design of their Crawford Ranch house.

There is a lot about the Bush Center reflects the values, substance and roots of George and Laura Bush. There will be touches of pecan, the official state tree of Texas, and mesquite, the unofficial tree of West Texas, a tree that is tough as nails and can put up with just about anything. Limestone quarried near Midland, Texas, where George and Laura Bush grew up, will embellish and frame the architecture. All of this will be set within 15 acres of Texas native plant landscape designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh that pays homage to the Texas landscape that George and Laura Bush love so much. But it will fit perfectly right here on the distinguished campus of SMU. Clad in red brick and timeless limestone, the building will reflect the essence of the elements of American Georgian, in a forward-looking way, appropriate for the first Presidential Library of the 21st century.

Inside, the building will permanently house the official records of our 43rd President, two consequential terms comprised of a long list of key decisions, difficult decisions. These records will be available to scholars and historians to research and reflect upon the challenges this nation faced and how President Bush handled them. The records have already been transferred to Dallas and are being cataloged by 15 archivists under the direction of Alan Lowe and NARA.

The Center will also contain a permanent museum where those who remember the challenges of the first decade of the 21st century and students who are learning about them for the first time will experience in one space the challenges that President Bush faced. From 9/11 to the financial crisis of 2008, the story will be told through the key decisions that President Bush made during his Presidency to advance the ideals and principles that are so important to all of us.

President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the first Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York in 1939. At that dedication, he said, “The purpose of a presidential library is so that future generations can study and learn about the decisions of our presidents so they can make and learn how to make better decisions in the future." We have kept that vision in mind as we have designed this Center and believe it serves that worthy purpose right here on the campus of SMU.

But we will do more than that. President Bush commissioned us to develop a policy institute alongside the library as a place for world-class scholars and leaders to gather and work together to improve peoples’ lives. They will do that here in the offices and conference facilities that will contain the latest technology for connecting and disseminating the good work of the Bush Institute. And always, the principles that guided President Bush in his presidency will guide our work here. In fact, they already are. Institute programming began last year. We have 20 scholars and practitioners working on education reform, advancing human freedom, enhancing economic growth, and improving global health.

We are all privileged here today to witness a small part of American History, of the continuing history of the American Presidency, the groundbreaking of the 13th Presidential Library and the George W. Bush Presidential Center. On a beautiful spring day in 2013, we will return here to dedicate its opening. Another Presidential election will have taken place, and by tradition all current and former Presidents, a very exclusive club, will come here to commemorate that occasion. The official records of the 43rd President of this nation will be placed here, testimony to a consequential time in American History — a history that President Bush and Laura Bush will continue to shape through the work here at the Bush Center.

It is now my pleasure to introduce to you our partner in this project, the official custodian of the historic records of American, the tenth Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero.

Thank you, Mark [Langdale].

President and Mrs. Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other distinguished guests on this platform and in the audience. On behalf of all of us at the National Archives, Sharon Fawcett, the Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries, the director of all the Presidential Libraries; Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Library; and his wonderful staff, I want you to know how proud we are to be in Dallas today.

The Presidential Library system was created along with the National Archives during the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. The intent from the beginning was to have the Presidential Libraries throughout the country, where scholars and school children could learn about their government, the Presidency, and perhaps be inspired to public service.

The George W. Bush Library is the 13th Presidential Library to be administered by the National Archives. The other 12 libraries have created a foundation upon which this library will build in the years to come, but this library will be the best yet and will have features the others do not have.

And a nod from this librarian to another librarian, Laura Bush, for your fine work in making this the best ever.

First, in addition to large paper, artifact and digital photos, the Bush Library has nearly 80 terabytes of electronic information, including more than 200 million emails. And as you told me in June when we met, Mr. President, not one of them is yours. This is the first Presidential Library with a major digital collection, a collection that is larger than the holdings of all the other Presidential Libraries combined. Having an archive of electronic records of this size and complexity poses new preservation and processing challenges to us.

These challenges will require new solutions and innovations because this information is of tremendous value and will be of interest to generations of researchers and the general public. 

Second, the museum at the Bush Center will be quite unique, engaging the audience directly in the experience. The galleries will be arranged by examining key presidential decisions and exploring the four principles of freedom, responsibility, opportunity and compassion that President Bush has enunciated.

Within that framework, the exhibit will also show the decision-making process the President followed when the many challenges of his Administration were before him. The museum will employ interactive digital technology to reach our diverse audience both onsite and virtual.

And finally, the Library will benefit greatly through its close partnerships with the Bush Institute and with SMU. 

With the Institute, we look forward to working with its fellows on research, taking part in its programs, and showing the students who come here the work the Institute is doing around the nation and the world. 

At the same time, we are proud to be a member of the SMU family, and we are greatly appreciative of the wonderful welcome we have received from the faculty and students here. Under the leadership of President Gerald Turner, and with great students like Jake Torres, SMU has reached out to the Library in so many ways. We look forward to the many partnership opportunities ahead with students and faculty.

Throughout the Presidential Library system, we seek to educate and to inspire. We believe that from civic understanding comes civic engagement, and the National Archives is proud to be part of that important effort.

Now, I’d like to thank President Turner for his leadership and bring him to the podium.

SMU President R. Gerald Turner

Thank you, David [Ferriero].

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, the faculty, staff, and students and alumni of the University, I welcome all of you to our beautiful campus, the home of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. And we thank you, President and Mrs. Bush, for making this day possible at SMU. Thank you.

If this is your first visit to campus, we hope that you will stay with us long enough to be able to experience the energy and vitality of our campus, as well as the beautiful oaks and stately collegiate Georgian buildings. But having the George W. Bush Presidential Center on our campus provides a unique opportunity to develop joint programs involving the faculty, staff, and students of the University with the fellows and visiting scholars of the Bush Presidential Center. Last year, four conferences of the Bush Institute on important global issues resulted in a partnership between the Institute and the University and gave us a glimpse of the tremendous potential that is available for the future. 

In addition, groups of students already have visited the temporary library site that Alan Lowe has made possible, and they have enjoyed classroom visits by President Bush. Some of them barely survived that experience when he walked in.

But having the historic resources of the Library and the Museum will provide remarkable opportunities for research, not only for our faculty and students, but for scholars worldwide. Close to home, these resources will provide educational experiences for the almost 200,000 K–12 students who live in the Metroplex. But it is the joint programming and interaction with fellows, visiting scholars and leaders at the Institute that will constitute most of the intellectual dialogue and debate that will carry the impact of the Bush Presidential Center far into the future.

Today is another milestone along a timeline that began for us in December of 2000, when we determined to try to bring the Bush Presidential Center to SMU, the alma mater of the First Lady. Although the process at times was challenging, we have never wavered in that quest. We knew that SMU would benefit from the presence of the Presidential Center on our campus, and we believed that the Presidential Center would benefit from its association with SMU because of the academic resources, vitality of dialogue and research programs and our location in the heart of one of the most dynamic regions in the United States. 

This groundbreaking foretells the great celebration of the Center’s opening in 2013 and the development of a vibrant educational partnership both now and for generations to come. So it is an honor to have the Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus. 

And now, to bring greetings from our students, it is a privilege to introduce the President of the Student Body, Jake Torres, a senior from Mertzon, Texas, majoring in English and Spanish. Jake Torres.

SMU Student Body President Jake Torres

Thank you, Dr. Turner. It is a wonderful day to be a member of the Mustang family and a special privilege to be here, representing the 11,000 students of Southern Methodist University. It was a great day for SMU when we were chosen as the future home of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

Educational opportunities and partnerships have already been made available to the students of SMU and will continue to benefit the SMU community for years to come. Over the past two years, President Bush has made surprise visits to classes, as Dr. Turner mentioned, and students have attended Bush Institute conferences and even served as interns for President and Mrs. Bush and for the Bush Foundation. Many of us chose SMU because of its location in Dallas, its small class sizes and its excellent faculty. But we also selected SMU because of its commitment to provide experiences outside of the classroom that benefit and enrich what we are learning inside the classroom.

The fact that I am here today — and am joined by several hundred fellow Mustangs — is a perfect example of how the Bush Center is enhancing our SMU education and experience in a way that none of us will ever forget. Thank you for allowing us to share in this special moment. And to President and Mrs. Bush, on behalf of the SMU student body, welcome home.

Gerald Turner

Thank you, Jake. It is now my honor to introduce The Chair of the George W. Bush Institute Advisory Board, former Secretary of State, and what we really like, an academic, former Provost at Stanford, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for that warm SMU welcome.

Mr. President, Mrs. Bush, Mr. Vice President and my fellow members here on the dais, I could not be more delighted to be with you and more honored to serve as the Chair of the George W. Bush Institute Board. On behalf of my fellow Institute Board members, the Advisory Board looks forward to continuing the great work that has already begun under the excellent leadership of Jim Glassman. 

I want you to know that the Institute looks forward to continuing to be a place where SMU students feel welcome, where they can participate in the work of the Institute and where faculty from SMU, from around the country, scholars and practitioners from all over the world can come together to explore powerful ideas and to find ways to put them into action.

The hallmark of the Presidency of George W. Bush was the fundamental bedrock belief in the inherent worth of every individual, and because every individual is worthy, every individual deserves to live in freedom. The President and Mrs. Bush believed that America had a special responsibility to use its power and its generosity and its compassion to advance freedom for those at home and for those abroad. A belief that free people are most creative and most fulfilled in free economies, where their activities and their creativity can lift millions out of poverty. A belief that every individual has the right to be free from ignorance and that the transforming power of education is owed to every child because every child can learn. A belief that human beings also need to be free from disease and that healthy societies are more likely to be partners in peace and in prosperity. A belief that societies that do not fully bring the potential of their women to bear will be poorer for it and ultimately that societies that treat women badly are dangerous societies. And a belief that no man, woman or child deserves to live in tyranny, that tyranny must be spoken of and broken down in every corner of the world. A belief that the voices of the so-called powerless can be incredibly powerful, that they have brought down walls and that they have brought down dictators.

The Institute will seek the best ideas to put these principles into action and then go about the work that is left to us. The Institute and my fellow Advisory Board members believe very strongly that we are all doing this in the belief that, while we have to deal with the world as it is, we do not have to accept the cynical notion that this is the best that we can do. 

President Bush was sometimes considered an idealist and, at the very least, an optimist, but I would say that President Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush were more than that. They were optimists and idealists, but they were realists too because they realize that we have seen so many times, even in our lifetimes, when the impossible one day seems inevitable the next. And so we will do our part to advance toward the world, not as it is, but the world as it should be. 

I am really excited and look with great anticipation to the further work of the Institute as a part of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. It’s going to be a great future. 

Thank you. I have the honor of inviting to the podium and asking you to join in honoring the 46th Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.

Thank you very much. Well, I’ve often been overlooked during my tour as Vice President, so I am delighted to be here today. I want to thank Condi and President and Laura and all the rest of our friends who are gathered here on this historic occasion. It’s great to be back in Dallas, the city that my wife Lynne and I called home for five years.

Flying down here yesterday, as I got to thinking about my time as a Texan, we love Dallas. We miss it sometimes, and happily we now have another very good reason to come back often, to see America’s newest Presidential Library and the man whose name is on it. 

Of course the George W. Bush Presidential Center is not much to look at just yet, but the workers are ready. Construction will move fast after today’s groundbreaking. This may be the only shovel-ready project in America. 

My congratulations on the start of the center, Mr. President, as well as the success of your new memoir. The robust sales it has already had do not surprise me in the least. Two years after your tour at the White House ended, judgments are a little more measured than they were when times have been tough and the critics have been loud. You’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around.

Ten years have passed since Governor Bush asked me to be his running mate. In the days right before that decision point, we spent some time getting to know each other better. I suppose he was taking my measure. I know I was watching him pretty closely too. There are some basic attributes you look for in a fellow who may become president. To dust off a phrase from the 2000 campaigns, I saw those traits in this guy big time. 

One of the things that struck me from the beginning and that continued to impress me throughout our time in office was George Bush’s refusal to put on airs. It is a happy experience and a rare one to find the most powerful person you know is among the least pretentious, that at the commanding heights a man can be so respectful of his office, so serious in his duty and yet so unimpressed with himself. Kipling rated it a fine virtue for one to walk with kings yet keep the common touch, and nobody has ever done it quite like our 43rd President.

I have seen him dealing with the various august figures who come through the Oval Office. I have seen him dealing with the folks who look after the presidential household, and it’s always the same. We could all forgive a President for carrying himself with a certain expectation of privilege, but with this President, no such allowances were necessary. There were no affectations about him at all. He meets everyone as an equal, an attitude you do not expect to find in government, much less at the very top, but it is a classy way to operate, very American and wonderful to see in the Oval Office. It’s also quite familiar to anyone who knows the family. He is courteous, fair-minded and kind, capable of great strength and great gentleness, and in all of this, very much his father’s son.

Mr. President, when you and I started our association in Austin, we knew that big responsibilities awaited us, and though of course we could not have imagined all that was to come, somehow your life had prepared you for some of the most serious decisions any President ever had to face. When the worst came, you did your job with courage, with clarity and with strength of heart.

When I think of September 11th and the days that followed, one of the images that always comes to mind is the President standing on a flattened fire truck throwing his arm around a recovery worker and saying, through a bullhorn, that the people who knocked those buildings down would soon hear from all of us. 

Far into the future, visitors from here will still see that bullhorn, and when they do, I hope they will picture the world as it was that day and realize how it was transformed in the months and years ahead. America went from being on the defense against terrorist to going on offense against them. History is always an account of what happened, but sometimes the greatest story of all is what did not happen. And because you were determined to throw back the enemy, we did not suffer another 9/11 or something even worse.

I have a few more thoughts on the man and his Presidency, but I’ll say them when we are all back in Dallas, again, for the grand opening of the Library. Enough for now to say that it was a privilege to serve aside him for those eight years and a daily pleasure to share in the journey. I know that all the alums here feel just the same. I know the American people will always think highly of him because they can tell a decent, good-hearted, stand-up guy when they see one.

And I know that all the Texans in this audience are ready now to lead the cheers for our friend, the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush. Mr. President.