Historians Have Political Sway? What?

The National Archives just ordered the nation's intelligence agencies to quit reclassifying previously declassified documents after complaints from historians. The reclassification effort was stupid. Many of those documents had already been used in books and so just on the face of it, it was pointless exercise. The paranoia of government in classification is laughable anyway--OK, I can deal with not declassifying our most recent developments in keeping our nuclear arsenal safe, but 50 year old documents should be declassified no matter what information they have in them.

But the real story here is that people in power evidentally care what historians think. This is truly amazing. I think we should next demand a massive pay raise for all historians in the country and that the nation pay for a series of America's most prestigious historians to teach George W. Bush something about the history of the country that he governs.