You’re no doubt seeing the now endless run of stories about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, now beset by rubberized coating which is already peeling off and algae blooms due at least in part to a darker bottom which is absorbing more heat.
Let me note an admittedly picayune part of the story. We’ve discussed in the past Donald Trump’s penchant for creating spurious backstories to justify his various building projects. We were told last year that presidents and executive branch officials had been complaining for decades — or centuries! — about the need for a White House ballroom. “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc,” he claimed at one point. And it took him to finally create it.
Rinse and repeat: these absurd fairy tales are always part of the Trump sales job. With the Reflecting Pool it’s apparently been in crisis for the last century. Only Trump is going to be able to fix it for good.
Everyone sees these absurd stories and mostly recognizes them as such. What I wanted to highlight is the ways this seeps into a lot of coverage. So, for instance, this story in the Times reports that the manager of Trump’s Bedminster golf club apparently directed the current “repair.” But there’s this aside in there which I see in almost every report on the topic …
The Reflecting Pool is not a swimming pool, and repairing it is not an easy task. The iconic site has been plagued for decades by leaks and algae blooms, which various administrations have been unable to permanently fix.
Obviously, things just need to be repaired. And algae blooms happen. But the idea that this has been some out-of-control or bedeviling-for-generations problem, as opposed to just a matter of repairs and renovations, just doesn’t add up. I’ve certainly stopped by the Reflecting Pool from time to time. I even lived in the nation’s capital for five years. It always seemed more or less fine: water, reflecting, no evident swampiness. I started googling at first and Google AI told me how this has really been a big deal for ages and no one had been able to fix the problems. But when I looked at the articles they were getting this from it was all stuff from the last month, with sections that were longer versions of the snippet I just showed you.
The last major renovation was part of the Obama stimulus package, which budgeted $750 million in renovations nationwide and assigned about $55 million to National Mall, of which $18 million was budgeted to refurbish the Reflecting Pool. Notably, at the time, an Interior Department spokesman had to explain that these repairs were really important. Hugh Vickery told the AP in an April 22nd 2009 article: “The sea wall (protecting the Jefferson Memorial from the Tidal Basin) is crumbling and the Reflecting Pool is cracking. Anybody who tours the Mall know this work needs to be done.”
I don’t doubt it. Repairs are important. But I’d say that Vickery’s comments suggest that these were important repairs and upkeep even though that might not be obvious to a casual observer — not a response to some Reflecting Pool crisis bedeviling the capital. In 2016 a donation from billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein funded renovations of other parts of the Lincoln Memorial. A February 16th, 2016 Times article described these new renovations and mentioned the 2009 restoration of the Reflecting Pool in passing, but without any mention that it hadn’t worked or had been some big failure.
I’m certainly not claiming that there aren’t structural flaws with the Reflecting Pool or leaks or occasional algae blooms. Hundred year old things need repairs. Anyone who’s ever owned a home or a piece of real property or even a car knows things need to be fixed way more often than you’d imagine. Just as important, Trump appears to be retroactively grabbing on to the limited issues with the Reflecting Pool when his proposed fixes didn’t address those at all. He was just fixated on having what he calls “flag Blue” as the color. This earlier story in the Times explains how the actual problems with the Reflecting Pool aren’t even address by Trump’s fixes. We don’t need to buy into Trump’s inane legends or — as seems to be the case here — prophylactically anticipate his goon’s criticisms by leaning into this idea that the Reflecting Pool has been this running national wound that Trump was trying to fix, rather than just another ego trip gone wrong.
