The National Mall Goes Kitsch

America's cluttered back yard shows just how hard it is to say no to special interests.

Radley Balko | November 27, 2006

Two weeks ago, several thousand people gathered on the National Mall for a "virtual groundbreaking" for a proposed Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial.

Planners hadn't even obtained the permits, yet. The event was more a fundraiser than an actual groundbreaking.

The memorial is set to go up on a piece of land just off the Tidal Basin, putting it within view of the Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt memorials.

Plans are also in the works for an African-American History Museum on the National Mall, as well as a memorial to President Eisenhower. And it's probably just a matter of time before conservatives in Congress again begin agitating for a Ronald Reagan Memorial. It's likely that we'll also get a memorial to Sept. 11, and/or to the victims of, and the war on, terrorism.

The National Mall, originally envisioned by Washington, D.C.'s planner and architect Pierre L'Enfant (yes, the architect of America's capital was French!) as a serene place for public celebration and quiet contemplation, is quickly turning into a kitchy amusement park of aggrieved parties and special interests.

Recent additions — the FDR Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and the National Museum of the American Indian — have added clutter, pedestrian traffic, and further obstructed the serene views L'Enfant intended.

Congress itself isn't immune to the problem either. Six years ago, it approved a half-billion dollar "Congressional Visitors Center" on the Mall to pat itself on the back.  It's now three years and more than a hundred million dollars behind its scheduled completion.

Times change, of course. And it's certainly understandable why Congress might want to add more recent events of significance to the roster of history and collective memory that lines the Mall. But we're to the point now where some groups — some deserving, some not — have come to see a slice of real estate in America's backyard as a symbol of how seriously we take their grievances, significance or contribution.

The problem is, with only 700+ acres to work with, there's only so much recognition available.

The mall in many ways presents a tidy symbol of what's happened to the federal government over the last half-century, all the more appropriate given that it's owned by the federal government, and lies between the Capitol in the White House.  If Congress hasn't the backbone to decline aggrieved parties when meting out a limited supply of vaunted acreage on the National Mall, you can see why the federal budget would present the same problems, only writ large.  Mall acreage may be limited, but the budget offers deficit spending, "trust fund" dipping, and tax increases.

Economists frequently talk about the problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. Select groups of people with a strong interest in, for example, a federal subsidy can come to Washington and wield quite a bit of clout. Few will object, because say, a $250 million subsidy to cranberry farmers doesn't much affect the average taxpayer.

An individual congressman, then, will feel tremendous pressure from hundreds of groups like our hypothetical cranberry farmers, and little pressure from the federal taxpayers who subsidize them. But soon enough, there are hundreds of such programs, the federal government grows bloated, and taxpayers do begin to feel the pinch.

Of course, Congress still won't want to actually eliminate any of these programs for the same reason they started them — each small, powerful interest group getting these benefits has much more incentive to punish lawmakers who cross them than does the average taxpayer footing the bill.

What's happened to the Mall is a tidy, tangible illustration of these problems in action.  When Vietnam veterans groups first approached Congress about a memorial, who — after the sacrifices they'd made — could possibly tell them no?