Flocking To The Bush Library?

You may have heard that the George W. Bush library is coming to Dallas. SMU is expected to win the "behemoth that's expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually and cost well over $200 million" according to the Dallas Morning News.

Continuing on in the Dallas Morning News article, "...if SMU secures the library, the Park Cities are expected to face the hordes of tourists, RVs and tour buses that flock to presidential libraries year-round...".

Wow. That's just hard for me to believe. The George W. Bush library a big tourist spot? Now I have no problem understanding that the library will certainly bring in a lot of academicians and historians doing research on a presidency that has been very pivotal in this country. Questions that they are likely to explore in the coming years will include this administration's impact of policy on privacy, health care and the deficit among others. And, of course, the biggest research will be centered around the Iraq war and questions about whether that was the right course.

But tourists? Really?

I suppose that presidential libraries around the country get their fair share of tourists (I don't really know) but I suspect that the George W. Bush library will take a few years before tourists flock if they ever do. This is not a very popular president.