Reagan Airport? What Next, Clinton Monastery? By Richard Craig February 6, 1998

In the latest chapter of How to Honor Presidents Without Messing With Mount Rushmore, today President Clinton signed a law renaming Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan.

The timing seems perfect. Today is Reagan's 87th birthday, and this is an ideal opportunity for Clinton to score some points with Republicans (at a time when he needs all the help he can get).

Still, you have to wonder about the wisdom of naming an airport after the man who fired 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981. They wouldn't hold a grudge, would they?

I don't know about you, but from now on I'm flying into Baltimore.

It's not that naming airports after people is anything new. In America there are dozens of air fields honoring senators, governors, presidents and even a few real people. Airports have been named for everyone from Will Rogers to John Kennedy to Neil Armstrong to John Wayne. Even one-term presidents get their own airfields -- Houston renamed its airport in honor of George Bush just last year. Shoot, James M. Cox lost his only run at the presidency in 1920, and Dayton, Ohio still named its airfield after him.

By these standards, Reagan easily qualifies for consideration for the honor. However, it should be noted that none of the other honorees ever fired thousands of airport workers.

Not only did Reagan break the controllers' union, he implemented harsh penalties on those who did not defy the union. He hired replacements for all of these controllers and issued an executive order permanently banning the FAA from rehiring any of them. This ban remained in effect for 12 years until it was lifted, ironically, by President Clinton early in his first term. In fact, Clinton was so sympathetic to the plight of the ex-controllers that in 1996 he issued an executive order of his own, calling for hundreds of them to be rehired by the FAA.

So what's Clinton doing signing off on the Reagan Airport? Well, from his point of view, it might be hypocritical, but it's a relatively harmless way to reclaim some of the political capital he's lost due to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It doesn't involve acquiescing to some important policy change that he would otherwise oppose. It's not going to affect the economy or cost people their jobs.

In spite of this, it's hard to believe that nobody has pointed out the absurdity of the situation to him. Of all the things that could have been named after Reagan, an airport has to be among the least appropriate. The Federal Reserve building, yes. The Treasury building, sure. The floor of the New York Stock Exchange, definitely. But an airport?

It makes you wonder what's next. Maybe the Gerald Ford School of Ballet? The John Kennedy Marriage Counseling Service? Richard Nixon Polygraph Testing, Inc.? Or how about the Bill Clinton Monastery?

What's worse is that the Washington airport is owned and operated by none other than the Federal Government. Yes, this is the very same entity that Reagan spent eight years bashing mercilessly. Furthermore, the airport is actually located across the Potomac River in Virginia, and local officials there opposed the move. They said that it represented an intrusion by the Federal Government into their local affairs. This sounds just like the type of uninvited governmental intervention that made Reagan's blood boil.

So while the move might seem like a great honor on the surface, what it's going to create is essentially the Ronald Reagan National Paradox, flown into and out of daily by thousands of unsuspecting travelers. They'll be in too much of a hurry to realize that they're walking through an 800-acre monument to irony.

Of course, if we wanted to be truly accurate, we wouldn't name an airport for Reagan. We'd name the national debt after him.

©1998 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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