Gina in Washington DC

July 30th, 2008, a Wednesday

I just returned from my trip to Washington DC.  We were up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport in time for our four and a half hour flight back to Phoenix.  But when we got home after all that, it was only 9 in the morning because of the three hour time change.  So this feels like a really long day so far.  It's not even 5 o'clock and it feels like it should be bed time.  Last night, the sun dropped as a huge red ball of fire giving way to a beautiful summer evening with a breathtaking breeze.  This morning the same red ball rose up from the horizon in the East as the City braced for a very hot, humid day with possible thunderstorms.  While we rode the nearly deserted early streets of Washington to the airport, the radio was warning about a heat factor near triple digits.  I laughed, telling the cab driver it was a lot hotter than that where we were going.  He tried that "but its a dry heat" thing.  I was going to go into monsoon moisture and all but for once in my life I decided it just wasn't worth it. 

We asked our friend, who has lived and worked in DC his whole life, if he ever got used to the absolute beauty of the City.  He looked around and said, no, it still looked magnificent to him each day.  He said that every American should come to Washington because really, it was their city.  Our city, he said.  I never looked at it that way but I think we should.  It doesn't have the complex, romantic feel of Paris with its fancy, ornate style or the grand history of Rome.  It has majesty and dignity and the sweeping awe of the ideals that are America.  The foundation of the City of Washington is the same as the foundation of Democracy.  The perfect line between the Lincoln Memorial with the spectactular sculpture of Abraham Lincoln sitting in his big chair looking down to the Reflecting Pool and the towering Washington Monument straight on to the dome of the US Capitol.  You can't stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial without envisioning Martin Luther King giving his "I have a dream" speech.  Or look up to see the flicker of the Eternal Flame at Arlington Cemetery without thinking of the dreadful day that John F Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, the day we were robbed of our idealism.  And the columns of the White House beyond the lush, green lawn make you gasp because the building is so much more delicate and lovely in real life than in any photo you have ever seen.  How could you ever get tired of these sights and the way they make us feel. 

All of these symbols, these beautiful marble markers, are permanent and do not change.  They are loaned to politicians for certain time periods to guard the principles they stand for and for safe keeping.  And yet it seems so many of them have such a hard time living up to what they promised when elected.  Unfortunately when we look around the City we also remember Watergate, Monicagate, more Washington sex scandals of all varieties than we can or should recall, Vietnam, and now Iraq.  Each of these things a result of various tenants who let us down.  Only the politicians come and go, the City never changes in its resolute call, its challenge to uphold the promise.  

Being just a bear with a blog, I don't pretend to understand politics and all the issues and the policy complexities and the platforms and that kind of stuff although I try.  And between you and me, I don't think the average American voter gets it that well either.  But what they do get is that we are supposed to be as proud of our politicians as we are of that beautiful City.  And when you are standing there looking at the view that big ole Abe Lincoln looks over every day from his beautiful Memorial, you "get", maybe only for that moment, that this stuff really matters. 

So today I appear in my photo wearing my George Washington University t-shirt and my Barack Obama campaign button because I just saw the view myself.  I know everyone is saying Barack is getting too full of himself, too big for his britches, too confident and too arrogant, and maybe he is.  But for today I am riding on the hope and change express.  I'll take my chances that he may disappoint us as so many have before him.  I am a believer.  I want desperately to believe that the next guy who gets the key, who has his turn, has seen the same view I saw this week.  And gets it. 

GR