Potomac musings

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
--Abraham Lincoln (1864)

I watched Abraham Lincoln stare his eternal stare, gazing down the Mall toward the Capitol. 

Funny how a portrait (the Mona Lisa, for example) or a statue seems to change its expression each time you look at it, the expression sometimes reflecting more the mood of the viewer than the intention of the artist.

I happened to be in Washington, D.C.  No particular reason.  A few months ago, I realized it had been a long time since I'd visited our nation's capital.  I arbitrarily picked several days in June.  I returned to Seattle this morning.

I love to walk, and Washington's a walker's paradise.  After a day devoted to Smithsonian museums, I wandered about in the twilight, past the Washington monument (now enshrouded in scaffolding and surrounded by construction fences), down alongside the reflecting pool, and up the steps to Mr. Lincoln's memorial.  I stared at the creased face of the gentleman from Illinois for a while, trying to gauge his mood, and then sat down on the steps, gazing back toward the Capitol in the failing light.

I was surrounded by middle school and high school students, kids understandably far more interested in each other than in our Sixteenth President.  I suspect Lincoln would have understood, although I suspect that in his day, teenagers were, on the whole, a more serious and less undisciplined group. Maybe he would have seen the laughter and frivolity surrounding him as the happy fruit of his efforts to preserve the Union, well worth the horrible deaths that teenage boys in his own time suffered on behalf of that goal.

A day earlier, I had taken the Metro to Dupont Circle, planning to check out some of the mansions and embassies in that popular area, and then walk down P Street, across Rock Creek, and into Georgetown (which I in fact did).  I emerged from the Dupont Circle station and found myself smack in the tumultuous center of Washington's gay pride festivities.  The parade spread out for blocks along the very P Street I was to follow into Georgetown. 

I'm always a little puzzled by gay pride parades.  They bring to mind the analogy of a parade in support of Black/Afro-American rights -- a parade in which barefoot "darkies" ride on floats, playing banjos, eating watermelon, grinning and rolling their eyes at the viewers.  But, whatever. I suspect that Abraham Lincoln, had he been still alive, would have watched the weekend's goings-on in amused silence.

No, Lincoln's eyes didn't seem directed at the children running around, shouting at his feet.  Nor were they on Dupont Circle.  They were, as always, trained on the Capitol and on the government it represents.

He was watching a Congress grinding to a stop, derailed by a political party determined to prevent the government from effectively governing, as a means of persuading voters that -- because government is ineffective -- they should oppose any and all activities of government.

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
--Lincoln (1854)

Not so, says today's GOP.  Were Lincoln to step down from his Memorial and wade back into the sea of politics,  today's Tea Party Republicans would view the first Republican president with horror and contempt as a "RINO" -- a "Republican in Name Only."

But Republican obstructionism is old news.  Something new was also afoot. Once I arrived in Washington, the newspapers were full of stories of the recent leaks that had revealed the Administration's secret  surveillance policies.  President Obama, himself a constitutional law scholar, apparently has decided that our personal liberties are best protected not by the courts, not by traditional checks and balances --  but by himself.  "Trust me," appears to be Obama's announced approach to warrantless searches.  Trust him, and trust, by extension, all persons who later fill his office.

Washington looks more beautiful than ever.  The public buildings are gleamingly white.  The parks are well tended.  Once-dicey parts of town north of Pennsylvania Avenue have been gentrified, the sidewalks lined with open air cafés in which beautiful and/or powerful men and women sit and dine.

I loved my visit.

But what I saw also recalled thoughts of Rome's first emperor, Augustus Caesar.  The emperor who bragged that he had found Rome a city built of brick, and left as his legacy a Rome built of marble.  The emperor who modestly declined to call himself a king or dictator.  He was merely a consul of the Roman Republic, a consul who ultimately was persuaded to accept the honorific of "First Citizen."  The Senate still met.  The Republic's institutions continued to exist.  But, insofar as real decision-making was concerned, Augustus himself made the decisions. He essentially asked the Roman people to "Trust me."

Lincoln was frowning.  He looked troubled.  And had he, during his lifetime, been able to look ahead to 2013, he would have been troubled.  So should we be.