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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........

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