National Review Online
Thursday, June 11, 2026
One must wonder whether President Trump’s least
discriminating critics have ever read the fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” —
or at least whether, if they have, they understood that it was not an
advertisement in favor of unyielding panic. There are many, many things to
criticize about our 45th and 47th president, but it cannot be the case that
literally everything the man does is wrong. That even his decision to clear up
the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., became an occasion
for condemnation, anger, and charges of presidential impropriety suggests that,
eleven years into his domination of American life, some among us have yet to
internalize this fact.
Before Trump decided to clean it up, the Reflecting Pool
was a mess. This was not unique in recent American history. Under President
Obama, the federal government spent $30 million renovating the Reflecting Pool
and then, almost immediately, spent yet more money to deal with an algae
outbreak. Between 2015 and 2016, further repairs were made after the eastern
end was damaged during construction. And, in 2017, the pool was completely
drained in response to an outbreak of parasites that proved harmful to ducks.
Nine years later, when Trump announced his more substantial makeover, the
Reflecting Pool needed attention once again. It was full of algae; it had
several leaks that needed attention; and, in the estimation of Trump’s
advisers, the basin required repainting to enhance the water’s reflective
effect.
As part of a broader attempt to beautify Washington,
D.C., Trump signaled his intention to take on the project and, in so doing,
provoked some wild reactions. A near-endless supply of “preservationists” told
the newspapers that Trump’s planned changes to the basin-coating would make the
pool look like a residential swimming pool, and thereby deprive us of our “our
shared cultural landscape heritage”; a series of reflexive partisans insisted
wildly that the attraction was fine as it was, despite the presence of algae
that had turned the pool a ghastly greenish brown; and Gavin Newsom, the
governor of California, took to sharing photographs of the in-progress project,
alongside captions that implied that the mere existence of a temporary
construction site represented a terminal failure of planning. (Quite how Newsom
squares this position with California’s ongoing high-speed rail debacle, he has
never explained.) The opposition was breathless, fevered, and typically
extremely silly.
The best argument made was that Trump had bypassed the
usual channels before moving ahead with his plan. But, in this case, that was
likely a net plus. It is not at all clear that there were any legal obstacles
to the White House’s decision to ignore the usual review process, and, given
that the usual reviewers are a bunch of pretentious naysayers, their
involvement would most likely have served no purpose beyond slowing the
restoration down. Clearly, President Trump wanted the pool to be presentable in
time for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, and, clearly, the only way
to achieve this was to cut out the network of groups, societies, fellowships,
and other self-appointed arbiters of taste whose implacable opposition to him
was foreordained. Absent those encumbrances, Trump put himself back into his
old real estate developer mode, and got the thing done posthaste.
And it looks good! Which is why, despite the predictions
of disaster, the new criticism of the cavilers is that the pool now looks
exactly like it used to when it was working as designed. “The Reflecting Pool
is full again — and looks almost the same,” the Washington Post declared
this week. Which is exactly what one would want to say about a
successful restoration project, is it not? (The “nearly” in that sentence, of
course, is a grudging substitute for “better.”) A monument needed fixing, and
it was fixed, quickly and competently. Not every development has to be a
crisis. Not every moment calls for extended debate. Not all features of
American life require interrogation by postmodernist bores. Sometimes, a pool
is just a pool. President Trump understood this, and for that he will never be
forgiven.
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