President George W. Bush has assented to participate in the Miller Center’s ongoing presidential history project, The Daily Progress reports. Every president since Carter has been interviewed—along with hundreds of administration officials—for their Presidential Oral History Program, which has used that extraordinary level of access to create an extraordinarily in-depth treasure trove of information for historians present and future. (For instance, here’s Zbigniew Brzezinski talking about President Carter (253k PDF) back in 1982.) The Miller Center is willing to go to great lengths to get answers of the utmost honesty and frankness: they’ll embargo interviews until the subject’s death, or even until the death of the subject and his family. And if they believe that an interview subject isn’t being honest, they’ll kick him out, rather than taint the record with inaccurate information. Chronicling each president takes many years, so they should stay busy with Bush for a long time to come.
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