The foundation will also continue to run the museum's gift shop, where visitors can purchase a stunning variety of Nixon kitsch: Nixon bookmarks, Nixon mouse pads, Nixon sparkle-lamps, even pens that feature a tiny portrait of Nixon and Elvis Presley, gripping hands as they float together through the pen's liquid center.
Items with the president and Presley are a perennial best-seller, says merchandise director Ric Leczel on a recent tour of the gift shop.
On a shelf nearby sit copies of a surprising new addition to the store: Woodward and Bernstein's "All the President's Men," an account of uncovering Watergate.
"It's part of the new feeling around here. Put the cards on the table, let people make up their own minds," Leczel says, adding that it has not sold well. "It's Orange County."
Naftali, for his part, says he had no direct hand in getting the Woodward and Bernstein book into the museum store, but is glad to see it. "Isn't that nice?" he says. "I like to think there's a certain wind blowing."
Nixon's account of the scandal that ruined his presidency has lost, even here in the shadow of his birthplace and grave, but it won't be lost to posterity.
Before he had the Watergate gallery ripped out, Naftali ordered workers to take digital photographs of every image, every line of text. He will display them on a plasma screen when the new gallery opens in a few months. He sees it as an important window into the 37th president's mind, Nixon's version of history now a historical artifact itself.
christopher.goffard
@latimes.com
