Why, why, why does the current occupant of the White House feel free to horn in on everything that happens in this country?
He is the president, governed by law and precedent, not a king with divine rights who can indulge himself at will.
But that isn’t stopping Donald Trump from announcing that he’s taking over the national Fourth of July celebration, which the city of Washington, D.C., has hosted successfully for years. He’s changing its location from its long-established site near the Capitol, completely disrupting traffic patterns. And he is likely making a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as well, adding to the logistical nightmare.
Why? Presumably because he can, presumably because no one with common sense has nerve enough to stop him and presumably because he likes to commandeer the tools of the government – his government? – to make it happen.
But it’s crazy, a repellent idea and completely without precedent. One could say it’s downright un-American, turning our national birthday party into a massive Trump rally.
Almost 2½ centuries ago, we fought a bloody war to establish our sovereignty, to kick the troops of the king who’d ruled us from an ocean away back to England. And one way or another we – the people – have been celebrating that extraordinary achievement on July 4th since 1776.
It’s Independence Day, the one true American holiday that we share with no other people on Earth, a day of picnics and parades and, in the evening, festive fireworks. We celebrate it in backyards and parks, in small groups or in large gatherings. We have lots of parades, lots of fireworks.
And since 1981, we’ve had a national celebration as well. Two years earlier, the National Symphony Orchestra had begun performing Independence Day concerts on the Capitol lawn. Fans raised money for a national television production, and voilà! A tradition was born. And has flourished. Thanks to cameras spread throughout the Mall, television viewers can feel almost as if they’re there among the throngs.
The show is consistently one of the top-rated programs on PBS, its longtime producer Jerry Colbert told The Guardian a year ago, and has become the country’s premiere Fourth of July celebration, with tens of millions across the nation adding it to their own celebrations. Asked about the popularity of the telecast, Colbert thought for a moment.
“I feel that for an hour and a half we unite the country in this celebratory moment where everyone is in a joyous mood. We help them to forget about their differences and to remember that we are all Americans.”
For millions of us it has become the fitting end to our holiday, a festival of patriotic and popular music followed by spectacular fireworks. And not a political speech within earshot.
Then President Trump arbitrarily decided to change that. We got a glimmer of this in February when in a tweet – what else? – he told Americans to “HOLD THE DATE” of July 4 for “one of the biggest gatherings in the history of Washington,” highlighted “by an address by your favorite President, me!”
It was easy, then, to dismiss the tweet as just more blather, but about a week ago it was evident that the threat had become a promise, with reports that event planning was well underway. Trump – famously inattentive to most details of actual governing – was, in the words of the Washington Post, deeply involved in “the minutiae of the planning,” receiving regular briefings on the event’s progress.
Critics mocked the whole idea, accusing the president of hijacking a national holiday as a way to honor himself – which, of course, he is. And of politicizing a day that has historically been utterly apolitical and nonpartisan.
Since the beginning of the country, it turns out, virtually all our presidents have – like most other Americans – simply enjoyed the day.
Yes, someone with, clearly, a lot of time on his hands, has posted on the wonderful internet-of-all-knowledge a list of all known presidential Fourth of July activities since 1791, when President George Washington spent the day in Lancaster, Pa., “enjoying fine cuisine and walking about town.”
Since the start of the televised Washington festivities and fireworks, some presidents have simply left town, gone on vacation. Those who’ve stayed in the city have often invited military families to the White House for picnics and barbecues, which the Trumps themselves did in 2017 and 2018 – after the president spent much of the day golfing, of course.
And recent presidential families in residence tended to watch the fireworks from the Truman balcony of the White House. They knew instinctively what Donald Trump seemingly finds incomprehensible: That the Fourth of July is our Independence Day.
If our politicians want to get on the act, we welcome them, let them walk in our parades with other Americans, to celebrate the foundation of our nation. We want to keep it that way.
And a postscript: Mr. Trump, ditch this idea of giving an address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The inevitable contrast between the two of you is obvious – and brutal.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)