Sacred ground, stolen views: The case against Trump’s memorial arch

In March 1963, President John F. Kennedy made an impromptu visit to Arlington House, a stately mansion high atop a hill in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.  Kennedy remarked that the panoramic view across the Potomac River — including the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial, much of American history — was so magnificent that he wished he could stay forever.

Eight months later, the young president was laid to rest near the spot where he had stood in March, the view forever his.

That sublime view is about to be desecrated by President Trump’s proposal to erect the giant United States Triumphal Arch — at 250 feet almost the height of the U.S. Capitol — on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, opposite the Lincoln Memorial.  The arch — a garish, golden-gilded knockoff of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe — is another Trump vanity project. When asked whom the arch would honor, Trump replied “Me.”

Nearly 1,000 written comments submitted to the federal Commission of Fine Arts opposed the arch.  No comments supported it. Americans oppose the arch, 51 percent to 21 percent. Nonetheless, the commission, filled with Trump appointees, has granted preliminarily approval to the proposal, although lawsuits to block it are pending.

If erected, the arch will........

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