Apart from hopeless dysfunction, K Street excess, and mindless Republican nihilism, the most annoying thing about Washington, D.C., is its airports. Not the facilities—they’re all right, pleasanter and more navigable than the sprawling, Mumbai-like chaos of New York’s. The names.
The other day, deplaning at the older and closer of the two portals, I (along with everybody else) was met at the gate by a young woman with an official-looking uniform, a bored look, and a rote greeting: “Welcome to Reagan National Airport.”
“Ugh,” I said. “Let’s make that Obama National Airport.” The young woman’s expression brightened and she rewarded me with a conspiratorial smile.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds it irritating that what used to be Washington National Airport is now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The truth is, though, that I wouldn’t want it to be called Barack Obama Washington National Airport, either. No airport—nor any other public work worthy of being called “infrastructure”—should be named after someone who has been dead for less than, say, ten years. Make that twenty if the honoree is a non-martyred politician. The shorter the interval, the ranker the whiff of Ciudad Trujillo.
Even more objectionable is the fact that both the capital’s airports are named after Republicans. At least Reagan was a President. John Foster Dulles was only a cabinet officer. As Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, he was full of scary-sounding notions: “brinkmanship,” “massive retaliation,” “agonizing reappraisal,” “unleashing” Chiang Kai-shek. Fortunately, Ike gently steered him away from his nuttiest enthusiasms, such as a proposal to drop nuclear bombs on Vietnam in order to preserve French rule.
Here’s the three-point program:
Imagine the satisfaction of a boarding pass that read:
That would make me even prouder to be an American than I already, needless to say, am.
Don’t worry overmuch about Reagan. His followers have taken advantage of more than enough naming opportunities. Prominent among them is the Ronald Reagan Building, a couple of blocks east of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. This gargantuan structure is a suitable memorial to our fortieth President for several reasons, most but not all of them ironic.
First, size: in the entire Washington metropolitan area, in the entire country for that matter, the only Big Government big building that’s bigger than the Ronald Reagan Building is the Pentagon.
Second, cost: the final bill came to $816 million, a figure that reflects a Pentagonian overrun of $448 million—no mean accomplishment, when one considers that it (probably) had to be realized without recourse to $7,622 coffeemakers, $640 toilet seats, $437 tape measures, and $2,228 monkey wrenches.
Third, ideology: the very first of the Ronald Reagan Building’s tenants was the Environmental Protection Agency, a.k.a. the Great Satan.
Fourth, ideology again: the Ronald Reagan Building is the only federal building that is partially privatized. It houses a privately run trade center, which, the Web site boasts, has “a premier conference and event center, executive office space, ample meeting and event facilities, retail and dining opportunities.” (That’s the unironic reason.)
By all means, then, let the Ronald Reagan Building be the Ronald Reagan Building. As for the salutary renamings, they must await the distant day when the Presidency, the House, and the Senate are all controlled by Democrats, and the filibuster has been definitively defanged. Meanwhile, dream on.
(For previous complaints about public works and other governmental entities being named after politicians, Democrats included, see this ’n’ that.)
Photograph by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty.
