Late last week, seven House Republicans have introduced legislation to rename Washington Dulles International Airport. They propose that the name be changed to Donald J. Trump International Airport.
The seven Republican members are Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), Andrew Ogles and Chuck Fleischmann (Tenn.) Michael Waltz (Fla.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Barry Moore(Ala.), and Troy Nehls (Texas).
I understand the desire of some Republican politicians to curry favor with Trump, but renaming an airport after him? Ridiculous.
Clearly, the proposal is just a gesture. Republicans have the slimmest of margins in the House and Democrats control both the Senate and the White House. The name change won’t happen and the sponsors know it.
But put that aside. The bigger problem with the proposal is that it isn’t meritorious.
In America, we don’t name major facilities like airports after active politicians, much less presidential candidates. That’s banana republic stuff, and we haven’t attained that status quite yet.
But even if we were to name airports after active politicians, it would be a mistake to name one after someone as flawed as Donald Trump. It would be like naming an airport after Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
I confess that a part of me relishes the thought of liberal Washingtonians having to use an airport named after their nemesis:
Taxi driver: Where to?
Liberal: Dulles Airport.
Taxi driver: You mean Trump airport, don’t you?
Liberal: [Silence]
But there are limits to how far I want to go just to annoy liberals.
The Democrats’ response to the renaming proposal is about what you would expect. Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), who never misses a chance to be obnoxious, said:
Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison
Ha Ha.
If anyone is unsure why the public has so much contempt for Congress, just think about the seven GOP suck-ups and the Democrat S.O.B. from Virginia.
I’ll conclude with a note about John Foster Dulles. As Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower, he was a heroic Cold War figure and fully deserves having an airport named in his honor.
Dulles helped Eisenhower navigate through one crisis — usually Soviet induced — after another, without conceding anything and without taking us to war. All the while, he fought a losing battle against the cancer that killed him a month after he finally stepped down as Secretary of State in 1959, three years before Dulles International Airport opened.
Dulles put together many of the treaties and alliances that helped contain the Soviet Union. According to his official State Department biography:
Dulles and Eisenhower forged a strong friendship that granted the Secretary of State direct and unprecedented access to the President. Furthermore, Dulles’s time as Secretary was marked by a general consensus in U.S. policy that peace could be maintained through the containment of communism. This consensus allowed Dulles and Eisenhower to secure international mutual security agreements while at the same time reducing the number of troops in the U.S. military and the production of conventional weapons.
Because Dulles is largely forgotten today, and because many of those who know something about him minimize or dismiss the danger posed by the Soviet Union, it will always be tempting to change the name of the airport that honors him. The only good I see coming from the effort to rename it after Trump is that it might increase the likelihood that future proposed name changes will go down in partisan flames, like this one.
I would say that the unseriousness of it all is astonishing, but regrettably that is no longer true.
For many years I have chafed at the names Dulles because his foreign policy prolonged the Cold War. To me, the man who has not been given adequate recognition is Harry Truman who was a truly great man and great president. Maybe Republicans and Democrats can agree on that.