For the past few days, I have been in Washington DC on a business trip. Thankfully my meetings ended early enough in the afternoon to give me some time to once again, play tourist and explore the Nation’s Capital. While here I also had the opportunity to attend the National Police Unity candlelight vigil for Law Enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty last year.
I remember the first time I came here. It was when I was in grade school, when my family took a trip during Spring Break. My second time was a few years later to participate in the
“Kids to Kids” International Satellite demonstration as part of the American Council for Better Broadcasts annual conference. Aside from two other brief visits to attend the 1989 and 2000 Inaugurals I have not been back until this past weekend.
For someone who has spent a good part of my adult life as an expat living outside the United States, visiting Washington DC is always in interesting experience. The City always had a certain majesty to it. A palpable sense of history and American exceptionalism. Embodied in granite and marble. A story told in museum exhibits, and by grand statues and fountains at intersections. It is a city that was designed to convey American Greatness, to inspire and humble foreign visitors and place the machinery of government in a stately setting, apart from the politics of any one particular state.
There was some of that, this trip. The candlelight vigil for fallen law enforcement officers and their surviving families was a powerful moment and one that made you feel grateful for the heroic men and women who stand on that “
thin blue line” to serve and project us all. It was a humbling experience to stand there among the crowd of Law Enforcement offers, their families and friends as the names of the fallen from each state were read aloud. A sobering reminder that the men and women who have made protecting public safety their professional calling, often pay the ultimate price.
I made it a point to visit four things while here. The first was for the Star Trek fan in me.
The original model of the Starship Enterprise from the first Star Trek TV series. It has been restored and is now back on display in the National Air and Space Museum. The first time I saw the model, it was hanging in a forgotten corner of the Museum’s gift shop. Now it stands proudly near John Glen’s Mercury capsule and Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis”.
After satisfying the SciFi geek in me, I made a more serious pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial, the National World War II and Korean War Memorials. The WWII Memorial is , I think after the Lincoln Memorial, the most impressive on the National Mall. With it’s two opposing towers commemorating both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of that war it is a fitting tribute to the generation that truly did save the world from fascism and tyranny.
The Korean War Memorial is located near the Lincoln Memorial and was dedicated in 1995. With its ghostly figures moving through the brush, it is especially powerful when you see it just after dusk when the memorial's lights first turn on. It is a powerful and moving tribute to what is often known as the “forgotten war”. The memorial commemorates the sacrifices of the 5.8 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed services during the three-year period of the Korean War.
I don’t care who you are, or what your politics are, but if you visit the Lincoln Memorial and are not deeply moved by the experience, there is something wrong with you . With it's walls inscribed with both the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's second inaugural address, the interior of the memorial reads like a marble storybook of the greatest challenge our nation has ever faced, and the tall quiet man from Illinois who truly gave his full last measure of devotion to preserve that nation.
Off to the right side when you enter the memorial itself, there is a small gift shop with your standard collection of refrigerator magnets, postcards, and Abe Lincoln bobble-head dolls. After paying my respects to the memory of our 16th President I went into the little shop to see what they had.
It being May there were groups of middle school students from all over the country visiting the city. Everywhere I went I would see them in their matching t-shirts and lanyards being shepherded by tired and harried teachers constantly checking to see they hadn’t left anyone behind at their last stop.
There was a group from Texas at the memorial and the shop was full of young students jostling to get souvenirs . A group of girls were excitedly talking to each other alternating between speaking Spanish and English.
One girl turned to a friend and suggested she get a souvenir magnet that had the likeness of Lincoln over an American Flag. Her friend examined the magnet then said “why would I want that? Her friend replied that Lincoln was a “famous President of our country”.
Her friend then audibly scoffed and said “We speak Spanish, our country wants to get rid of us, so why should I care about America or a President, when the one we have now hates Latinos?”
I stood there speechless from what I had just heard this eighth grader from Houston TX say. One of her Teachers standing near by looked at me sympathetically and shrugged. Then ushered the group out of the shop and back down the steps towards their bus.
I followed them out, pausing before the massive statue of Lincoln. Half expecting it to stand up out of the chair, chase after that young girl and tell her that
America is better than the racism of one man or his followers. I wanted to bring her back inside to where the Gettysburg Address is carved in stone and read it to her,
I wanted to tell her how the man memorialized here felt that she was as much a part of the fabric of this nation as anyone. How he had given all he had, that full last measure of his devotion to the idea that America was has much hers as it was anyone's
I wanted to take her to the spot only a few feet away, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood as he spoke of his dream of an America where a child like her is judged not by the color of her skin but by the content of her character. But she and her friends were gone. Moving away into the early evening, their voices a mixture of Spanish and English fading into the background. I walked over to the MLK inscription and paused for a moment. I then moved to the side and sat down on the smooth white marble steps, looking out at the National Mall with the Washington Monument off in the distance.
As I sat there I couldn’t help but think about what the last two years have cost us as a Nation. I felt utterly defeated, knowing that there was nothing I could have said to that young girl that could have possibly countered the messages of racism xenophobia and hatred she hears on a regular basis coming from the President of the United States.
The American Presidency is first and foremost about
stewardship. You are the caretaker of American greatness, NOT the owner of it. It is not a mantle you can claim, it is duty you fulfil.
Even the smallest of men who have held that office felt the need to rise above their own failings to meet the expectation.that the office is greater than its occupant.
You are the steward of something far greater than yourself. Something too big ever be reduced to a glib slogan on a cheap red had made in China.
The Presidency is about making the promise of America, “E Pluribus Unum” out of many, one, real for as many of our citizens as possible.
We have had weak Presidents. We have had fearful Presidents, We have had Presidents who lacked intelligence, saw compassion as weakness, and who didn’t understanding their duty and even disregarded the truth. But never before have all those human flaws congregated in one man who then became President.
That is until now.
Donald Trump sees the Presidency as a show. It is all about him. He will never see the need to serve something greater than himself, because in his mind there is nothing greater than himself.
Washington DC is the ultimate “company town”. The machinery of government is the only real constant in this city. Many here have taken comfort in knowing that like so many others that came before him. Donald Trump will one day be gone, and things will then get back to normal.
But even that has been damaged by Trump. His temper tantrum shutdown of the Federal Government earlier this year took a heavy toll on people here, and you get the impression that this city has not yet fully recovered. As I walk the streets I get a sense of loss for some of the majesty that so awed and inspired me years go. Instead, it feels like just another city, trying to get through the day.
Donald Trump has made being President all about him, at expense of nearly everything else the Office is meant to represent. At the expense of truth, at the expense of America's credibility on the world stage and worst of all, at the expense of an eighth grader from Houston Texas' faith in the idea that the President of her country is there to work to help make her dreams possible.
Donald Trump has inflicted such damage on the American Presidency and to the very things that office is sworn to preserve and protect, that it may well take an entire generation to repair it.
