Capitol Ideas: Memorials are Made of This
Bethell, Tom
by Tom Bethell Memorials Are Made of This They're close to completing the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington. It is an exercise that has been going on for so long, inching forward...
...Jesse murky here, but it seems that Moynihan Helms...
...and there you will see the new limestone-clad mon- of these developments published by the ument to big government...
...For a while Work began in the late 1980's, and cost there was talk that Moynihan's name estimates for the building have now dou- would grace the building...
...He thought eral government went on an unprecethe whole thing "grotesque...
...Daniel Patrick grams, even as he added to those deficits Moynihan, whom I saw described in the by indulging his edifice complex...
...But was he...
...20 March 1997 • The American Spectator in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and asked if Roosevelt would be depicted with his famous jutting jaw, cigarette holder, and, er, cigarette...
...Revolutionary is not too templation...
...I refer to the huge new Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...And now the 7.5-acre memorial is going up in broad daylight, on the Tidal Basin, not far from the cherry trees and the Jefferson Memorial...
...In compliance the times he led us through...
...The victim lobby took sure where to locate FDR's marbled neigh- umbrage ("he is the role model for the 5o bors, a map showed lines of sight to the million disabled people living in this counWashington, Jefferson and Lincoln memo- try"), but for once did not prevail...
...So, perhaps the tration, in fact...
...The lady on the phone said she would get back to me on that...
...No problem enlisting the support of Citizens Against Government Waste, of Bob Dole, of course...
...Congress can...
...Towering above Austin American-Statesman...
...Then I realized that we do in fact have a Reagan memorial opening here soon...
...Did you see the column by Senator Inouye...
...Moynihan, ranking Demo- FDR Memorial could be adjusted not by crat on the Senate Public Works Corn- adding a statue of Roosevelt in a wheelmittee, and a great believer in grandiose chair, but by adding to one of those out-government projects, saw the opportuni- door "rooms" a cheery little statue of ty to carry out the urban planning of his Ronald Reagan...
...As Francis X. Clines wrote in the New York Times: The FDR memorial "will equate him with Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington, placing him far above other presidents in the nation's official memory...
...She jumped at about David Stockman's "axe," the fed-it as soon as it was offered...
...name would later be on it...
...Only two known photographs (out major U.S...
...Reagan grew up in FDR's shadow, and (See what we've come to...
...Amazingly, he The huge lot had remained vacant for even said that Roosevelt was the president decades—since the first FDR adminis- he admired the most...
...tributes to those four great of more than 35,000) show Roosevelt in a American leaders...
...The building was "named for of foreign aid, the Environmental Protec- a great president and a good cause," tion Agency, the U.S...
...donations...
...Surprisingly, she did...
...Among the building after Reagan...
...Maybe on the same day as the FDR Memorial...
...Also a major bas-relief sculpstrong a word, I'm afraid...
...Hard to believe "An earlier design, which depicted the that no more than $42 million in taxpay- First Lady with her trademark fur piece, ers' money has been spent on all this, with was rejected after the commission anticianother $5 million coming from private pated protests from animal rights groups...
...A s I drove away from West Potomac Park I idly wondered how a Ronald Reagan Memorial would go down with the powers that be in Washington...
...Daniel K. of quiet contemplation to a nation's great Inouye did put on an emollient display president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and of sensitivity, however...
...Tom Schatz, president money...
...Perhaps the old FDR fervor was fading...
...ture titled 'Social Programs' includes 54 Visitors will enter a sequence of four detailed images, each with braille for the outdoor "rooms," one for each term in sight-impaired...
...truth than we like to think...
...A faxed dented spending spree with no resistance request for further information was not from Reagan...
...she hurriedly added...
...The grand animal-rights groups than the disability opening is scheduled for May 1. lobby...
...Nancy Reagan was terribly keen tax rates were reduced in 1983...
...office...
...When FDR with the spirit and the letter of the Amer-took office, the commission has also said, icans with Disabilities Act, the FDR Americans found themselves "without Memorial was designed, from the begin-jobs, savings or hope...
...A dozen workmen's pick-up trucks lined Ohio Drive—desultory work of the Davis-Bacon variety was evidently proceeding backstage...
...A "line of sight" could dreams...
...The prime mover plained that the Reagan deficits were behind these strange developments crowding out other worthy social pro-seems to have been Sen...
...David B. Roosevelt, a grandson of the great man and a member of the commission, said in opposition to the wheelchair lobby that "the memorial should not be a vehicle for making a social statement" Well, yes and no...
...Competitions were announced, plans were advanced and publicly rejected...
...Go to the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street N.W...
...Then they were revised, and once again the project crept forward...
...The American Spectator March 1997 21...
...worship weakness, whether physical, mental, or moral, because we want to advance "the twisted notion that the unhalt, unlame, unstupid, unvulgar, unpoor and uncriminal are somehow not playing fair...
...But of course it was not the New Dealers who forgot, or died off...
...Writing the authorization lan- show the view of the Reagan building, guage himself, he requested a building the roof at least, and an inscription could of "monumental quality" that would pro- be added, explaining that despite all the vide "visual testimony to the dignity, enter- confusing rhetoric, here was the great prise and vigor of the Federal govern- president who cemented in place the New ment" (according to an excellent account Deal, making it a bipartisan affair...
...the avenue, the inscription is already President Reagan himself approved carved in stone: "Ronald Reagan Build- the project in 1987, not realizing that his ing and International Trade Center...
...We could fax it to you...
...A stone-slab arrangement that won the 1960 competition was dubbed "instant Stonehenge...
...By comparison with that, the disability issue is trivial...
...The place will inspire "a subtle mood Commission member Sen...
...Everything was concealed behind picket fences...
...The Tom BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...ment get to be named after its (alleged) Revenues came flooding in after the top foe...
...Groundbreaking had been announced in 1991, then three more years passed before construction began...
...There will be a bronze sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt, portraying her as the first U.S...
...In case you weren't wheelchair...
...Their argument is that Roosevelt A roadside billboard, years old, pro- himself went to great lengths to conceal claimed that "the Franklin Delano Roo- his disease and that the memorial should sevelt Memorial joins the memorials to put historical accuracy ahead of current Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln as politics...
...It is an exercise that has been going on for so long, inching forward since 1946 with designs and redesigns, public laws and joint resolutions of Congress, Commissions of Fine Arts and Memorial Commissions, that I have come to think of it as the capital's stealth project...
...It was the conservative remnant, those who realized that the New Deal had undermined the Constitution and self-reliance...
...Center...
...Then, in 1994, Interior Secre- This news came as a shock to the distary Bruce Babbitt appeared at the Tidal ability people, who have been unable to get Basin site and said that "the verdict of his- the FDR Commission to change its mind tory is in...
...I agree with him about the wheelchair, and I agree with Florence King, who wrote in National Review that we in the U.S...
...Even as the on the idea," said Edmund Morris, Rea- editorial writers and journalists howled gan's official biographer...
...He and called it "one of the most notorious boon- Moynihan introduced the bill naming doggles ever funded by taxpayers...
...So he launched the ning, with the disabled in mind," he wrote nation "on a revolutionary course that in the Washington Post...
...a place he was, in a wheelchair with leg-irons...
...in a way he never left it...
...This is the first would continue beyond his four terms in memorial in Washington purposely office...
...How where "generations to come" (children come the commission was more afraid of included) will be able to visit...
...I did not expect her to, for if the answer was yes, last minute opposition from the anti-smoking brigades loomed as a possibility...
...pink granite—think of them as secular chapels or shrines to activist government...
...But in response to David Roosevelt, the whole idea behind the memorial has from the first been to make a very public social statement: nothing less than setting up FDR as the co-equal of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln in the most hallowed precincts of the nation's capital...
...Quotations from the great man will No one seemed to have noticed anothbe inscribed upon twelve-foot-high walls of er minefield...
...Then came the bled, from $360 million to $720 million...
...Can do...
...Perhaps calling the build-responded by naming the space alongside ing a "fitting" tribute was closer to the the new building Woodrow Wilson Plaza...
...It would be a its intended tenants are the Agency for "fitting" way to honor the 4oth president, International Development, the dispenser Dole said...
...Another irony is that it was answered by the office of Ronald Rea- Moynihan who most conspicuously corngan in Century City...
...I phoned the commission Of big government, that is, even in honor of Reagan...
...Government That seems to have persuaded them to spending expanded rapidly in the Reachange their minds...
...I drove into West Potomac Park in order to get an early look, but it turned out to be a "hard hat" area...
...Probably the biggest boondoggle came up with the ingenious idea of using to come down the pike in a long time," Reagan's name as a way of encouraging said former General Services Administra- reluctant Republicans to vote for the tor Richard Austin...
...gan years, almost doubling (uncorrected How did a monument to big govern- for inflation) by the time he left office...
...Back to the drawing boards, and so another decade went by...
...The record gets a little "plush new Taj Mahal," said Sen...
...We need a place that "will cap- and show Roosevelt as the polio victim that ture the greatness of his deeds...
...No cigarette or cigarette holder for FDR...
...Faced with the prospect of a ten- One is tempted to think of Dole here fold increase in its rent, the Woodrow Wil- as playing the familiar gullible Republison people at first balked...
...if no, where was the devotion to historical accuracy...
...It is the largest government building in the District of Columbia —1.9 million square feet of office space—and only the Pentagon in nearby Virginia beats it for size...
...Other winning entries were rejected in turn...
...At last you began to wonder if they had forgotten the whole thing...
...Customs Service, Moynihan added, and President Clinton and the Woodrow Wilson International signed the legislation in December 1995...
...Interior Department donated the land, a Ambassador to the United Nations...
...papers the other day as a "conservative...
...In fact, "Americans' expectations designed to be totally wheelchair accesof how we live, work and age stem from Bible, with many areas for rest and conFDR's programs...
...But road was rebuilt to allow two-way traffic, according to the New York Times, even she three parking lots were constructed near has fallen afoul of political correctness: the 4th Street Bridge...
...A cost overruns...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 3
