In DC, 16th Street NW has a special significance. In much of the city, looking down the street means looking directly at the White House, which sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It’s exactly this significance that led Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) to quietly introduce a 106-word resolution last week that would rename 16th Street to Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
“Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon,” Bonilla, a former television news broadcaster elected in 1992, said in a written statement yesterday. “He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation’s capital.”
Bonilla must not get around the city much. If he did, he might realize that the largest federal building in the District of Columbia is the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. (Bonilla has probably passed thousands of times; it’s just down the street from the Capitol.) For that matter, maybe Bonilla isn’t paying attention when he arrives from San Antonio that he’s flying into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Reagan “deserves an honor in the nation’s capital”? That’s a debatable point, but even if you grant the premise, he already has two.
As a substantive matter, no serious person seems to believe this is an idea worth pursuing. Changing signs and addresses along 16th Street would cost the city at least $1 million, the mayor of DC is strongly opposed, and Rep. Thomas Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee with jurisdiction over Bonilla’s legislation, called the idea “ridiculous” and said he would put it in the “appropriate file.”
But merit aside, I actually feel kind of sorry for these Reagan worshipers. They seem to believe renaming everything they can get their hands on after the former president will somehow change the historical record. Maybe, they think, people will forget Reagan’s actual presidency and find him great if the populace is constantly bombarded with his name on streets, schools, courthouses, government buildings, etc.
It’s as if they’re arguing, “Never mind what you experienced during Reagan’s presidency; plastering his name to landmarks necessarily makes him great.”
How sad.