Living just 30 miles from Little Rock, Arkansas, I was nearly overcome by the noxious fumes of power emanating from Thursday’s dedication of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library. Presidential libraries, of course, are part shrine and part propaganda machine. They’re hardly worth celebrating. The best you can say about them is that they are privately financed—in a way. (Let’s not forget that Clinton’s was funded in part thanks to a last-minute pardon. Whether fugitive financier Marc Rich actually committed a real crime or not, it certainly looks as though Clinton sold the pardon.)

Whenever the President and the living ex-presidents get together, the power worshipers get all dewy-eyed about democracy. (Did anyone see Geraldo Rivera gushing about it on The O’Reilly Factor. Bah!) Imagine that, more than one person said (including Jimmy Carter), two Republicans and two Democrats (Bush I, Bush II, Carter, and Clinton) standing together peacefully. (Gerald Ford was ill.) Well, maybe it’s because they’re so much alike! The commentators also like to remark about what an exclusive club the presidency is. It certainly is. These few men have had the unique experience of running the most awesome apparatus of political power the world has ever known. It extracts about $2 trillion from the hides of the American people each year, bullies us in countless ways, has military forces in 135 countries, and spends more on armaments than most other countries combined. And these men all got there by bamboozling the American people.