Friday, August 15, 2008
A Tourist’s View of History
From the time we flew the family into Washington, D.C., dramatic passages of actual history kept intruding onto the grand touristy spectacle of our nation’s capital. Just before landing we easily spotted the big monuments and memorials–the razor-sharp Washington obelisk, the curving elegance of the Jefferson memorial, and the stately Capital dome at the end of the National Mall. And near Lincoln’s powerful columns was the black gash of the Vietnam memorial, a tear in the earth where so many people come to pay their respects. Once our plane landed, we were startled to see Senator Obama’s campaign jet parked across the way. All this history, all this government stuff is real.
But soon we’re distracted by family vacation basics, Tourism 101: Adventures in Transportation. In this course we study how to buy tickets for the Metro, which direction to travel on the Yellow line toward our hotel, and how to catch a cab to Chinatown for dinner. History recedes a bit, waiting to catch us unaware.
And even though we vow not to treat the city as a mere checklist of landmarks, we ride the elevator to the top of the Washington monument, gush at the Hope diamond, and nod appreciatively at how little wiggle room John Glenn had in his Mercury 7 space capsule. Sure, we’re passing Tourism 102: Monuments and Museums but only with a grade of B. We lost points for running the kids ragged in the Washington heat.
History, meanwhile, has its eye on us. A placard indicates the spot on Pennsylvania Avenue where our fellow Americans used to buy both produce and slaves. We stand on the steps where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of tens of thousands. Our friend points to the front of a hotel and says, “That’s the sidewalk where Ronald Reagan was shot.” From the gallery of the House of Representatives we see the podium where Franklin Roosevelt said the words that took the country into World War Two. Real things that mattered happened right here. Today, though, we see House Republicans hooting like high schoolers at a pep rally, and a little boy beside us asks if they are having a clapping contest. The next morning we read about it in the paper.
Memories accrue day by day in Washington, but it’s hard to know whether they belong to the story of our vacation or the story of our country. One story is a lot easier, a lot less frightening, to tell. In the Newseum I see a stretch of the Berlin Wall, all bureaucratic gray cement on one side, and a free artist’s rainbow of words and images on the other. Behind it, the guard tower stands without ornament of any kind, implying a dictator’s gray threat of surveillance and torture – words that are hard to survive. And on the walls of the Franklin Roosevelt memorial, inspiring words that are hard to live up to: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests upon the cooperative effort of the whole world.” Idealism, Roosevelt implied, is not a naïve luxury; it is the key to our survival. Overhead, President Bush’s helicopters pass by, in a hurry to be somewhere.
The Hoosier intern who showed us the House of Representatives confessed that it helps to have an important friend if you want to find a job in Washington. It’s tempting to say, “Well, that’s just the way our government is.” On the other hand, we have the history, the many thousands who have rallied on the Mall, the elected officials who have sometimes chosen wisely on our behalf, and the millions who have voted them in and out of office. Thank goodness it’s an election year.