The George W. Bush Presidential Library Within weeks the White House announced that the official repository of the forty-third president would be erected on the campus of an evangelical university in Texas, and that the cost would run to about $200 million. One unnamed source says that a secret reception for potential donors had already been held at Halliburton's Houston headquarters, where a model of the library—designed by the head of the art department at Oral Roberts University—was unveiled. The president was careful to assure his Arab guests that despite the building's shape (a "neo-fundamentalist exploration of the cruciform vernacular," in the words of the architect), all denominations would, of course, be welcome.  Because President Bush has been such a courageous champion for people of faith, he has earned the enmity of militant atheists in the Democratic Party, some of whom (according to defectors secretly interrogated by the vice-president's office) may possess weapons of mass destruction. It will therefore be necessary to insist that all visitors undergo a thorough security check before entering the building. In addition to walking through metal detectors, adults who are not wearing an American-flag lapel pin will be required to take a loyalty oath. Edward Sorel lives in Manhattan. His Literary Lives series, which ran in The Atlantic over the past few years, will be published as a collection this spring by Bloomsbury. Cullen Murphy is the managing editor of The Atlantic.
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