Landing right

National Review, March 9, 1998 by Matthew Scully

Mr. Scully, formerly NR's literary editor, is a writer in Herndon, Va.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE griping isn't quite over yet, but the signs are going up and it's now official: Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

If you didn't follow the debate here over renaming the airport, you missed some real fun. For one week in Congress it was the early Eighties again: Democrats cower in the shadow of Reagan. Liberals desperately hold their ground. Senate Republicans, in fear of offending cowering Democrats, compromise. Final vote: Something a shade less than complete victory, but good enough, and the results set in stone.

The compromise was to keep the "Washington" instead of a straight "Ronald Reagan National Airport," like New York's JFK airport and Paris's Charles de Gaulle. The idea began with activist Grover Norquist, whose avowed mission in life is to have one large thing in each state named for the Gipper. In September he pitched the idea to Rep. Bob Barr (R., Ga.) and to Kyle McSlarrow, an aide to Sen. Paul Coverdell (R., Ga.), who promptly introduced bills to rename the 58-year-old airport "Ronald Reagan National."

The effort went mostly unnoticed until the opening of the 1998 session, on the eve of President Reagan's 87th birthday. In January, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R., Miss.) and Speaker Newt Gingrich (R., Ga.) not only signed on, but decided to make the bills the session's first order of business.

Resistance in the House was led by Rep. James Moran (D., Va.), whose Alexandria district includes the airport. He pointed out that there are already a few things named for Reagan, like a new Nimitz-class carrier soon to be christened and a big federal building to be formally opened in April. More important, said Moran, the bill went against everything Reagan himself stood for: "federalism," local autonomy, self-government. "I know Ronald Reagan would not want us to do this. Its an arrogant abuse of power."

Sen. Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) likewise noted how very "ironic" it was "that in the name of Ronald Reagan we carelessly demonstrate a lack of sensitivity to the local officials that Ronald Reagan said ought to be paramount in governmental decision-making. Do we really want to do that? Again, how ironic it would be if we did."

President Reagan, to examine this little "irony," in 1987 signed a bill granting local control over both National and Dulles International Airport some twenty miles further into Virginia, both of which are operated under a federal lease. The problem with the deregulation argument was that everyone who lives in the area knows how selectively all this cherished autonomy is practiced. There is still, for example, a rule authored by Texas Democrats in the Eighties decreeing that no plane departing National shall fly further than 1,250 miles. The westward-bound traveler is forced either to leave from Dulles or touch down at Dallas - Ft. Worth for some quiet time in the Jim Wright Memorial Waiting Lounge.

When the irony-of-it-all line failed, we then heard the appeal to economy: It would cost $60,000 for new airport signs, untold thousands for local businesses forced to print new stationery, new brochures and maps, and costly new cab receipts, thus wreaking havoc on the region's economy. Ronald Reagan was for cutting costs, observed Sen. Charles Robb (D., Va.). Surely he would not want to burden small businesses. "Creating a controversy that is contrary to his legacy does not honor Ronald Reagan." (Subtext: "Why aren't we naming stuff after my father-in-law, LBJ?")

This prompted a Florida man watching the floor debate on C-SPAN, Robert H. Downing, to fax off a letter to Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) offering to pay the sixty grand, and so we moved on to the "dishonoring George Washington" argument. Not since his entombment has our first President been the object of such encomia on the floor of Congress. "Virginia," declared Moran, "is a state which is proud to have produced so many Presidents and Founding Fathers for this nation. We do not want to have the name of our first President taken off the busiest airport in our state." The Moran amendment: "Page 3, line 2, strike 'Ronald Reagan' and insert 'George Washington."' Daschle suggested that maybe faraway Dulles "might be a better candidate."

Here the problem was that if the airport had been named for the man and not the geographical location, then presumably the namers would have thought to include "George" as they did with the "George Washington Parkway" that runs past the airport and on down to Mount Vernon. Clearly the airport is named for the city named for Washington, as Baltimore - Washington Airport is named for the cities it serves and not for the greater glory of Lord Baltimore. Probably a shrewder move would have been for Democrats to insist that Reagan be accorded full honors with nothing less than his full name, thereby inserting both a Democratic President and son of Virginia: "Ronald Wilson Reagan Washington National Airport."

Next came the "historical perspective" argument, along with the obligatory amendment from Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to rename the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, which led in turn to a discourse on how Hoover had "conducted surveillance on Albert Einstein, Wernher von Braun, Hubert Humphrey, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Rock Hudson, Elvis Presley, Sen. John Tower, Cesar Chavez, and Irving Berlin, who wrote 'White Christmas,"' winding, in time, back to the airport question and summary rejection of Reid's amendment.