Reply #44: short memories...

[piece sine]

At the insistence of the Secret Service, President Bill Clinton approved the closing of Pennsylvania Ave. the day after the heinous Oklahoma City bombing. All D.C. was enraged! Traffic is still a mess, years later, but we've gotten used to LOSS of one of the city's main arteries.

The battles in Congress and the DC City Council have been waged endless, with Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton leading the fight, to re-open the boulevard to traffic. Security concerns prevailed.

The project in question has been designed, and re-designed and fussed-over to make the former Pennsylvania Ave. footprint blend into adjacent Lafayette Park. Future Presidents, tourists, visitors and even protestors will experience less barricaded asphalt and more greenery and stonework, blending urban design with heightened security concerns put forth during the Clinton Administration.

DUers have leaped upon the mention of Laura Bush's name to heap every variant of animosity toward her because she agreed to showcase the U.S. Park Service's final plans. She had literally nothing to do with the formulation or implementation of the final design. Congressional funding was granted from the get-go.

SO go ahead, fire away! I don't particularly like the woman myself, but not one poster here has any idea about the subject except that it is something to do with Laura Bush. I get a sense there's little or no peripheral vision about the Pennsylvania Avenue issue, or how or why it started, or what closing Pennsylvania Ave. means both symbolically and practically.

When you visit YOUR capitol in future, and you're looking at the White House from a handsome new park that used to be one of the great boulevards of the world, all you'll remember is "that damn Laura Bush" had something to do with this. And history is richer than that.