A Conservation About America

Last month I was in Washington, D.C., to give a speech so I decided to do my usual routine of walking the monuments. When I was younger it was my morning jog but I’ve slowed down. This time I had a companion, a young man who had written to me about his concern for his country and his hope that we could talk.

He had been working with a youth leadership organization since graduating from college and now wanted to start down a path that would put him in a leadership position. He wanted to make a better world. I wanted to be around his idealism and his basic decency. He wanted a mentor and I realized that maybe I was old enough to be that.

We started at the Vietnam Memorial, always the hardest because of the tears. Maya Lin, by making the deaths so individual with names you can touch, changed our willingness to accept thousands of body bags. When war symbols change, the legends that depend on them change. We lost our interest in statues of generals on horseback.

By the time of the Gulf War we were less interested in heroics and more interested in stopping the deaths of our soldiers. By the peacekeeping venture in Somalia we were devastated by a single body bag. The new Korean War memorial will have more than 7,000 faces on it. We can now see the young soldiers behind the general’s horse, we know their names, we know their faces. The myths of war have changed forever.

I had not seen the new statue of the women who served in Vietnam. It was a collage of grief as women who were nurses held dead or dying men. What struck me was their uniforms and their faces - they were dressed in combat boots and one woman’s face was African American. I had never seen a battle memorial with women as soldiers, nor one with other than white faces. Three other visitors, men from perhaps Turkey, were pointing at the women with questions. The myths were crashing around me.

We walked over to the Lincoln Memorial, which always makes me catch my breath. The design somehow lets you feel the power of this great man and you are safer because he has lived, and because he is still somehow present. I looked back at Washington, D.C., from the steps and was amazed at the beauty of the capital and the obvious strength of our union. When you stand here you know the next generation will be fine.

We skip the Washington Monument. Not because George Washington was not a great man because he was an unusually powerful and courageous leader. We skip it because it says so little about him. It is just the traditional spire, the illusion of touching the heavens. It is a celebration of victory but not an understanding of the legacy of the man. It is cold.

I always go back to the statue of Einstein a few blocks away after I talk with Lincoln. Einstein is seated in a big chair, too, but it is eye level, almost close enough to crawl into his lap and ask questions. What would he tell this young man? He would say perhaps, “You cannot solve the problems of the present by the same thinking that created them.” He would tell us to crack the old models so new ones can emerge.

I once tried to get into the lap of this statue, but it is daylight on this trip so I suppress the impulse to try again. We walk toward the White House, past the Treasury, the Red Cross, the Senate, the Supreme Court, talking about the future. He is interviewing for a job as a press aide to a politician and he wonders how to distinguish himself in the interview.

Should he lay out his concerns about a message that bridges the gap between the need for new models and the fears of the public? He doesn’t want to be a spin doctor playing with words after a mistake or an accusation. He thinks the job should be to carry the basic beliefs of his boss to the public with integrity. He believes it takes a strong character to stare down the sound bite needs of the media and the cynicism of the tabloid press.

We stand in front of the White House, so accessible compared to other countries. We are so close you can see in the windows as people move around their offices. We talk about grief and change, a process I have written so often about. He sees it and hears it everywhere in Washington, D.C. The denial, the anger, the bargaining that results in things somehow staying the same. He sees the depression that comes with acceptance and the recognition that much of what we have been doing is wrong and much of what we are trying to do is wrong as well.

The last stage of grief is recovery or rebuilding. That is where he wants to be. We look around at the heart of American government. It is spring. The magnolias are in full blossom, as are the pears. The famous cherry trees are everywhere just about to open. He flags down a taxi so I can catch my flight. He gives me a hug and walks off to his interview.

I keep looking at this city as the taxi passes the Jefferson Memorial and the hills of Arlington Cemetery. Do not worry, I tell myself, your country is in good hands. Maybe not on a year-by-year basis, but through the centuries, as young men walk the monuments of their history with older women and talk about what they can give to their country.

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