Readers React: Viewing Nixon

Timothy Naftali’s Op-Ed article is a timely reminder of how, in spite of being overseen by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library continues to have its public charge of presenting the history of the administration and the Nixon era in a spirit of “disinterested objectivity” severely compromised by the partisan politics of the private, nonprofit Richard Nixon Foundation. (“There’s new trouble in Nixonville,” Opinion, May 14)

As the founding director of the Cal State Fullerton Center for Oral and Public History, I find this situation particularly disturbing. On a recent visit to the Nixon Library, my historian and archivist wife and I had our contemplative viewing of some controversial photographs interrupted by a docent who insisted on imposing a favorable Nixonian spin.

Then, upon visiting the “bookstore,” we discovered an inventory of volumes that so overwhelmingly placed a positive construction on the Nixon presidency and its political tradition as to border on rank propaganda.

Arthur A. Hansen

Yorba Linda