D.C.’s majesty eventually erased by political realities
I suppose I should be grateful for little respites here and there. Winters of late have had all the bitter cold we’ve come to expect, but every week or so there is the relatively warm day or two to take the pressure off us. This past winter has been so much easier to take than those of my youth I found myself thinking to myself how smart I was to not become a snowbird, as so many of my friends have. I considered how much money I’ve saved not maintaining two residences as I saw more than two feet of snow disappear over a week and a half in our back yard……..in the month of February!
I was on a business trip to Washington, D.C. last week and found myself with an unscheduled hour Wednesday night. Staying only four blocks away from The White House, I took a walk, in shirtsleeves, and visited the iconic mansion for the first time in my life. Of course, at 7 p.m. I was not going to go inside, but just standing outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. was a lot better idea than sitting in a hotel room watching TV.
The experience was somewhat akin to walking up the ramp at Fenway Park and seeing “The Green Monster” in person for the first time. Seeing something you’ve only seen on TV and in pictures with your own eyes makes a memorable impression.
So there I was, seeing the executive mansion without the aid of a man-made lens and free to look at anything I wanted to look at, not just what a photographer thought was important. My impressions were many and varied. The building is further back from the street than it looks. There are two fences these days. There’s the black wroughtiron fence you see in pictures, and then there’s the mobile, waist-high fence the Secret Service put up on the sidewalk to keep you away from the main fence after somebody vaulted over the main fence some years ago. Gazing to the right, there’s the well-known “West Wing,” and then a huge building which looks like an old French castle separated from The White House by a parking lot which used to be Connecticut Avenue. This seemingly out-of-place edifice is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice president has his office as well as many of the actual White House staff, the overflow from the West Wing.
Vehicular traffic on this block of Pennsylvania Avenue has been prohibited for years, so the only cars we see are those of the body-armored police, who try unsuccessfully to blend in in plain sight (how can you blend in dressed like that?) Continuing our turn to the right, there’s Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue, a group of 60 or so protesters in support of what they called “abused immigrants,” and the barricaded, gated entrance to The White House under an attractive street light adorned with a common street sign indicating the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Then I saw it. I had been unconsciously aware of it since I’d arrived, but it didn’t register until now. As I finished my full-circle turn to the right I saw the source of the unmistakable aroma permeating the area. The tree in front of me…the cherry tree…was in full bloom. You’ll never experience this in movies or on TV, folks.
As I gazed across the North Lawn, beyond the water fountain, at the White House, my thoughts drifted to all the great men who have occupied it in the past, and then finally to the man who lived and worked there today. The previous night, President Trump had finally looked and acted like a President of the United States when he delivered his message to a joint session of congress. It was a message so presidential, so unlike Donald Trump, that media critics were struggling for comments. For an instant, this instant, I was just so happy to be an American.
The next day while I was at the Federal Communications Commission in the meetings which brought me to the nation’s capital, I looked out the window and saw the three “Marine One” helicopters flying the serpentine path over the Potomac River and knew that one of them carried the president. Then an unwelcomed feeling of reality started creeping in when we got the news that another one of Mr. Trump’s nominees had withdrawn themselves from consideration. This one was a nominee to be an FCC commissioner, so it “hit home” within that building.
Returning to my home in Woonsocket, the news only got worse. The litany of “he did/she did” accusations of wrong-doing reached a disturbing pique when Mr. Trump himself accused former President Obama of wire-tapping the phones at Trump Tower. Ugh!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this before, but there has been a long-standing tradition of “moving forward” and not trashing your predecessor when you become president. To aid in this, the former president usually does what they can to keep a low profile and let the new president do his job. That tradition has been broken now, leaving me to wonder what other rules and traditions are in line for elimination in the coming months.
It does little to give a citizen a feeling of well-being when North Korea is firing off numerous test missiles, inching toward their obvious goal of being able to threaten not only their neighbors, but our country as well with nuclear missiles. But all we can do is bicker and fight among ourselves like adolescent siblings. There are serious matters to address here, darnit! And I don’t think we should wait until “dad threatens to intervene” to sober up and get down to the important work of unifying our efforts to preserve and protect the Republic so many others before us have sacrificed so much for.