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Jewish World Review Sept. 28, 2000 / 28 Elul, 5760
Philip Terzian
It's a cleverly worded sentence. To the uninitiated, it sounds as if recapturing the
presidency for the Republican Party would restore the rule of law in the White House
-- which, when you think about it, makes a certain sense. But what it really refers to
is, ostensibly, a parochial matter: The two blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue between
15th and 17th streets, bounded by the White House and Lafayette Square, have
been closed to traffic since 1995, and the Republicans are determined to welcome
cars back onto the Avenue of Presidents. The Democratic platform has nothing to
say on the subject.
To be sure, this is a traffic-flow debate only Washingtonians could love, or care
about. Everyone agrees that the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue has been a
hardship on the life of the city. The thousands of cars that used to traverse the
boulevard are now routed onto narrow nearby streets, none of which is equipped to
handle the increased flow. The city has lost parking-meter revenue; the metropolitan
bus system has been disrupted; local businessmen complain that trade has
suffered. Downtown Washington is in perpetual gridlock.
For that matter, the avenue itself has become an eyesore. There was an early White
House proposal (mercifully forgotten) to transform the open space into some sort of
park named for Jackie Kennedy. In the meantime, random concrete barriers have
been erected at either end of the enclosure, and informal parking lots for the various
-- and increasingly voluminous -- federal police agencies have grown in their midst.
Pennsylvania Avenue has not become a lively pedestrian mall but a slightly
desolate, and deteriorating, asphalt strip, populated mostly by skateboarders.
Chroniclers of urban psychology should note that pedestrians (including me) still
tend to cross the street at the old traffic-light corners.
Now comes the Federal City Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit committee of
"business and civic leaders," chaired by former Sen. Robert Dole, devoted to reviving
the nation's capital. The council has proposed a detailed plan for the reopening of
Pennsylvania Avenue, featuring low-hanging elevated crosswalks, a security bend in
the street away from the White House, and a ban on trucks and other heavy
vehicles. The council's design has acquired widespread bipartisan support on Capitol
Hill -- notably from Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y. -- and been endorsed by the
District's nonvoting delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). Architects,
commuters, city planners, tourists, area residents, urban designers and downtown
merchants and pedestrians are united in their hope that the Federal City plan may
actually achieve what years of griping, writing letters to the editor and pleading have
failed to yield.
The problem is that the Secret Service is opposed to the idea, and in the Clinton
administration, what the constabulary says goes. By contrast with his predecessors
-- one of whom, named Reagan, was shot and nearly killed -- President Clinton is
especially concerned about his personal safety. And in 1995, when a car bomb
ripped apart the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the Secret Service made
its move. Not only did it persuade Bill Clinton to close traffic on Pennsylvania
Avenue, but it sealed off traffic on the thoroughfare south of the White House, the
two blocks on either side of Lafayette Square -- and, to give Congress a comparable
sense of importance, from streets around the House and Senate office buildings,
and the Capitol grounds. The executive and legislative branches of government are
now thoroughly protected from citizens in their automobiles, just like the presidential
palace in Pyongyang or Baghdad.
The upshot, naturally, is paradoxical. The measures are ineffective: Any
self-destructive truck bomber determined to barge onto the White House or Capitol
grounds can still do so, regardless of barriers or pistol-wielding cops. They are also
embarrassing: Instead of symbolizing the strength of a people's democracy, they
suggest a ruling elite paralyzed by fear. The threat of terrorism has so gripped the
imagination of the federal government that it has, in effect, surrendered to its baleful
influence.
The Secret Service has the safety of presidents in mind, which is commendable. But
short of moving the White House underground, and concealing the president from
the public, it is impossible to guarantee an absence of risk in public life. Security is
important, and guards have a job to do; but security is never an end in itself, and
when democracies adopt the trappings of police states, it is time to stop and rethink
such measures. Pennsylvania Avenue is more than an east-west corridor in
Washington; it is America's Main
09/22/00: Preparing for a new administration
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