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Every time I get asked by a TV anchor what I think about the drama of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, my favorite “historical” headline from the Onion comes to mind: “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg.”
And every time I do, I hear from defenders of the Trump administration complaining about the disproportionate media coverage of what should be a very minor story in the grand sweep of things. They have a point. President Trump has done some good work rehabbing Washington, D.C., where I live. But the Reflecting Pool has bedeviled him. Algae keep returning to the pool, despite the administration’s best efforts, and attempts to remedy the problem have yielded further problems.
I can think of scores of stories that deserve more attention on the merits.
But there are two problems with this complaint. First, it was Trump who invited extensive scrutiny of the effort. “I’m very proud of it,” he said before the algae counteroffensive. “I’m very good at building things and constructing things, so I hope you go take a look at it.”
Second, there’s the metaphor-on-the-Mall problem. The Reflecting Pool is a microcosm of nearly everything that vexes people about the second Trump term. We can start with his decision to ignore the usual rules and procedures to give a no-bid job to a contractor for the repair and paint work. Trump said it would cost $1.8 million. The costs have grown nearly tenfold. To deal with the insurrectionist algae, he gave another no-bid job to a Mar-a-Lago crony, campaign donor and convicted felon who looks like a villain from the old Dick Tracy comic strip.
The man who vowed to “drain the swamp” of D.C.’s corrupt cronyism used figurative swampy means to deliver literal swampy ends.
Another familiar aspect of the pool fiasco: A project Trump touted as proof of his genius and expertise becomes proof of unpatriotic enemies undermining him when it flounders. Without any evidence, Trump claimed that the only reason the Reflecting Pool’s paint is peeling and algae blooming is because anti-American “vandals” sabotaged it with a “300-foot long gash.”
How vandals evaded park police, security cameras and his own National Guard deployment remains unknown. Never mind how they put a 300-foot gash in a paint job Trump described as “So very strong. You couldn’t, if you had a knife — I don’t want to give anybody ideas — if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it. So strong, so powerful.”
But the metaphorical meaning of the miasma on the Mall hardly ends there.
During a May 27 Cabinet meeting, Trump boasted at length about the Reflecting Pool job and then handed the meeting off to his secretary of Defense. “I think, actually, your efforts on the Reflecting Pool are actually a great segue,” Pete Hegseth said.
“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people,” Hegseth gushed. “And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged … there’s only one man, over the course of both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”
As with so much Hegseth says, this is not exactly true. Every president since Bill Clinton has said that a nuclear Iran was unacceptable. It’s true that Trump is the only president to use massive military force in the name of preventing it. Whether his efforts have made the “never” claim a reality is, at best, an open question.
What isn’t an open question: Trump’s unilateral Iranian adventure did not go as planned. What began as another example of Trump trying to will into existence the reality he wanted segued into a murky, embarrassing and costly spectacle with no satisfying end in sight. Talk about metaphors.
That’s because, as the saying goes, the enemy gets a vote. Trump can bypass or ignore many laws, but not the law of unintended consequences. The defining feature of Trump’s presidency is his unvanquishable belief that laws, rules and norms are impediments to his will and genius.
He expects, nay demands, Hegseth-like sycophancy and praise recognizing that alleged genius. And when events conspire against Trump, the fault must lie in vandals and lies from “fake news.”
The international order, like the domestic order, is not natural. They are more like a man-made garden constructed out of the wilderness of the human condition. When the garden is not maintained, when the rules go ignored, the jungle grows back. Just like the algae.
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Perspectives
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article argues that Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has produced peeling “American flag blue” paint and a persistent algae bloom despite a multi‑million‑dollar outlay, has become a symbol of the murky, embarrassing and costly character of the second term.[1][2][5]
- It contends that Trump sidestepped standard procurement procedures by awarding no‑bid contracts to politically connected firms, including a company owned by a donor, for both the repainting and water‑cleaning work at the pool, and presents this as emblematic of the cronyism that undercuts the promise to “drain the swamp.”[6][8][9]
- The piece emphasizes that Trump personally promoted the pool project as proof of construction prowess, then, as problems mounted, shifted to blaming alleged “vandals” and hostile media rather than accepting responsibility, mirroring a broader pattern in which setbacks are attributed to saboteurs and “fake news.”[1][2][3][5]
- The article highlights Trump’s claims that a long gash in the pool’s coating and corrosive substances poured into the water are to blame for the algae and flaking sealant, and uses the lack of publicly presented evidence and continued deterioration to underscore how assertion and bravado are favored over transparency and accountability.[1][2][3][5]
- It notes that the ballooning costs of the Reflecting Pool work, far exceeding the figures Trump initially touted, echo wider concerns about mismanaged projects and cavalier stewardship of public funds within the administration.[2][8][9]
- The piece suggests that Trump’s approach to Iran—portrayed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as uniquely resolute in preventing a nuclear weapon—fits the same pattern: unilateral, force‑heavy moves intended to will a preferred outcome into existence, but instead yielding open‑ended, expensive complications that expose the limits of personal will in the face of an adversary that “gets a vote.”[7]
- It argues that Trump treats laws, rules, and norms—both domestic and international—as obstacles to be bypassed rather than guardrails to be respected, and that the Reflecting Pool’s descent into algae‑choked disrepair serves as a metaphor for what happens when institutions are neglected and expertise is subordinated to ego.
Different views on the topic
- Trump’s public statements and social media posts maintain that vandalism, not shoddy work or poor planning, is primarily responsible for the Reflecting Pool’s troubles, asserting that saboteurs cut a long slit in the coating and introduced harmful chemicals, and framing the controversy as evidence of enemies undermining an otherwise successful project.[1][3][5]
- Administration messaging has stressed Trump’s long experience in real estate and construction, presenting the decision to handpick contractors—including a firm that previously worked on a Trump swimming pool—as an exercise of hard‑earned judgment aimed at quickly revitalizing a major national landmark for public events.[8][9]
- Statements from Trump and aides have highlighted that repairs are ongoing and that algae has, in Trump’s words, been largely reduced, portraying the situation as a temporary technical problem in a complex water feature rather than a broader indictment of competence or ethics.[1][5]
- Supportive commentary has echoed Trump’s charge that media coverage of the Reflecting Pool is disproportionate and politically motivated, arguing that opponents are seizing on a relatively minor maintenance issue to caricature the administration and to distract from policy achievements.[1][4]
- In the national security realm, Hegseth and other administration voices have described Trump’s posture toward Iran—including threats of severe military retaliation and efforts to gain rapid air superiority—as necessary demonstrations of strength intended to deter aggression and prevent nuclear proliferation, and have contrasted this approach with what they depict as the insufficient resolve of prior presidents.[7]
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