This was our day to tour the city. We had a three-hour bus tour in the morning, which was very good. We saw the Iwo Jima monument at the Arlington cemetery for American soldiers killed in action. You’ve probably seen pictures of the Iwo Jima monument. It has four or five soldiers pushing up the American flag. We also saw exteriors only of the National Cathedral (which looks very old but was built in the 1900s), the Capitol building and the White House. Mary Speer, the U.S. consul in Winnipeg, told me an interesting story about the White House. She said Thomas Jefferson wanted it painted white to distinguish it from the red brick townhouses in upper class Georgetown, an old community, now part of D.C. Jefferson wanted the White House to be representative of the common man, not the elite. Interestingly, Jefferson also greatly scaled down the size of the White House plan. Pierre L’Enfant, the man who designed the city of Washington, D.C., envisioned a huge presidential palace on the scale of Versailles in France. Jefferson didn’t want anything of the sort, so the White House, grand though it is, is a shack compared to what it might have been had L’Enfant got his way.
While the tour was a great introduction to D.C., the moment I thought, “OK, I’m in Washington,” came in the afternoon while I was walking around on my own. I hiked the whole length of the “mall”, which stretches from the Capitol building to the 500-foot Washington Monument obelisk to the Lincoln Memorial — a distance of about two miles. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where I had my moment. From there, looking east over the large rectangular pool — the one the Forrest Gump waded through to find Jenny — you see the Washington Momument just like in the postcards. The monument completely blocks the Capitol from that vantage point, but if you move 20 paces left or right, the Capitol dome comes into view in the distance. From this same spot, Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I have a dream” speech on August 28, 1963. It is when I can stand in the footprints of history that a city comes alive for me.
Inside the Lincoln Memorial, which looks like the Greek pantheon with its marble columns, is a massive tablet etched with Lincoln’s Gettyburg address. Delivered November 19, 1863, this is perhaps the most famous two-minute speech in history. Here is the memorable lead line: “Four score and twenty years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” (It reminded me of Jefferson’s White House story.)
I have to hand it to Americans. They do a great job of idolizing their presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a more modest memorial built among the cherry trees behind Lincoln’s. Carved into Roosevelt’s memorial are not full speeches, but many of his best statements. Roosevelt led the country out of the depression and into World War Two. He was elected four times, and after his death in 1945 Congress passed the two-term limit for President. Here is one of my favourite Roosevelt passages, spoken during the Depression: “In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.” Now fast-forward 60 years. I wonder how George W. Bush will be remembered? George McGovern wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post just today calling for Bush’s impeachment. About Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, McGovern wrote, “They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world.”
Which brings me full circle back to why I’m here in Washington in the first place. The U.S. Department of State hosts 4,500 people a year, from all around the world, for what it calls the International Visitor Leadership Program. I and six other young Canadians are here together for three weeks — at the expense of U.S. taxpayers — to find out how and why the U.S. makes its decisions on trade policy. The underlying goal, I suspect, is to get other nations to like or at least understand the U.S. a little better. The purpose of this diary is to share with you what I learn each day.
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