Every time a TV host asks me what I think about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool drama, my favorite “historical” headline from the Onion comes to mind: “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg.”
And every time I do, I hear defenders of the Trump administration complain about the disproportionate media coverage of what should be a very minor story in the overall situation. They are right. President Trump has done a good job rehabilitating Washington, DC, where I live. But the Reflecting Pool has tormented him. Algae continues to return to the pool, despite management's best efforts, and attempts to remedy the problem have led to more problems.
I can think of dozens of stories that deserve more attention in terms of substance.
But there are two problems with this complaint. First, it was Trump who invited close scrutiny of the effort. “I'm very proud of it,” he said before the algae counteroffensive. “I'm very good at building things and building things, so I hope you'll take a look.”
Second, there is the problem of the mall metaphor. The Reflecting Pool is a microcosm of almost everything that bothers people about Trump's second term. We can start with your decision to ignore the usual rules and procedures to give a no-bid job to a contractor for repair and painting work. Trump said it would cost $1.8 million. Costs have increased almost tenfold. To deal with the insurrectionary algae, he gave another no-bid job to a Mar-a-Lago crony, campaign donor and convicted felon WHO looks like a villain from the old Dick Tracy comic strip.
The man who promised to “drain the swamp” of corrupt DC cronyism used figurative swampy means to achieve literal swampy ends.
Another familiar aspect of the pool fiasco: A project Trump touted as proof of his genius and expertise becomes proof that unpatriotic enemies undermine him when it fails. Without any evidence, Trump claimed that the only reason the reflecting pool's paint is peeling and algae is blooming is because anti-American “vandals” sabotaged it with a “300-foot-long gash.”
It is still unknown how the vandals evaded park police, security cameras and their own deployment of the National Guard. Never mind how they made a 300 foot cut in a Trump painting described like “So strong. You couldn't, if you had a knife (I don't want to give anyone ideas), if you had a knife, you couldn't even cut it. So strong, so powerful.”
But the metaphorical meaning of the miasma in the Mall does not end there.
During a May 27 Cabinet meeting, Trump boasted at length about the Reflection Group's work and then turned the meeting over to his defense secretary. “I think his efforts at the Reflecting Pool are actually a great transition,” Pete Hegseth said.
“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men who faced monumental tasks and historically stood up and delivered for the American people,” Hegseth gushed. “And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran delivered… there is only one man, across both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”
As Hegseth says a lot, this is not exactly true. Every president since Bill Clinton has said a nuclear Iran was unacceptable. It is true that Trump is the only president to use massive military force to prevent this. Whether their efforts have made the “never” statement a reality is, at best, an open question.
Which is not an open question: Trump's unilateral Iranian adventure did not go as planned. What began as another example of Trump trying to make the reality he wanted become a murky, embarrassing and expensive spectacle with no satisfying end in sight. Talk about metaphors.
That's because, as the saying goes, the enemy gets a vote. Trump can avoid or ignore many laws, but not the law of unintended consequences. The defining feature of Trump's presidency is his invincible belief that laws, rules and regulations are impediments to his will and genius.
He expects, rather demands, Hegseth-style adulation and praise that recognizes that supposed genius. And when events conspire against Trump, vandals and lies from “fake news” must be to blame.
The international order, like the internal order, is not natural. They are more like an artificial garden built from the wild nature of the human condition. When the garden is not maintained, when the rules are ignored, the jungle grows back. Like algae.
UNKNOWN: @JonahDispatch
