Liking Ike at his memorial -- Sept. 17, 2020 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

One of the surprising things about the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, which was formally dedicated Thursday, is that it exists at all.

In our time, many white American men once revered and honored by their country have been toppled – literally or figuratively – from their perches of prominence. 

The reputations of many presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson come to mind – have been tarnished.

And yet, the new Eisenhower memorial makes admiration not only possible but likely, even in 2020.

Renowned architect Frank Gehry elevates Eisenhower by focusing on his personal story, his ideals, his integrity and his lifetime of service to country.

The 34^th president and five-star general is portrayed in the four-acre space at 540 Independence Ave., SW, in three separate, sculptural vignettes representing different phases of his life – boyhood, the military and the presidency.

But the memorial also includes two gigantic cylindrical pillars that look like smokestacks and a 450-foot-wide, 8-story-tall metal “tapestry” of woven stainless steel whose main purpose seems to blur the ugly federal office building right behind it. For that, the location is to blame.

The memorial sits in a new urban park across Independence Avenue from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and in front of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building. That modernist building, completed in 1961, is so charmless it was originally known as Federal Building #6.

The National Mall is nearly full, and this location does offer a view of the Capitol, where President Eisenhower respected and worked with Republicans and Democrats. It’s near buildings that house federal departments with links to his presidency. In time, when the trees grow, the location may feel less odd.

Creating a memorial to the man who led the troops that saved the world from Nazism and was twice elected president might seem straight-forward, but the process was mired in controversies that lasted far longer than World War II.

Congress authorized the Eisenhower memorial in 1999 and chose Gehry’s design a decade later. But the Eisenhower family was dead-set against having a statue of Eisenhower as a boy as the centerpiece as well as three huge, metal scrims. 

After congressional hearings and years of negotiations, the family came around when Gehry moved the boyhood statue to the side, dropped two of the scrims and changed what’s shown on the remaining one.

Instead of Kansas, it’s Gehry’s own sketch of the Pointe du Hoc cliffs at Normandy, France, in peacetime. Army Rangers scaled the cliffs under German fire on D-Day, the air, land and sea invasion that changed the course of World War II and history.

The bronze statues depict Eisenhower first as a boy in Abilene, Kansas, dreaming of his future, then as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, boosting the morale of six paratroopers on the eve of D-Day.

Finally, he’s shown as president with three aides in the Oval Office. Seeing the office takes a bit of imagination, but the free audio tour, part of the E-memorial available on personal electronic devices, provides context.

The three aides are symbolic of the competing influences of domestic progress and strength abroad. Closest to Eisenhower is a Black man, carrying a briefcase. He symbolizes the work Eisenhower did to advance civil rights, the audio tour explains.

In 1957, he sent 1,000 troops from the 101^st Airborne to protect nine Black students as they integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Etched into the reverse side of huge granite blocks behind the sculptures are excerpts from Eisenhower’s most famous speeches.

“I’m quite overwhelmed by it,” granddaughter Susan Eisenhower told CBS News as she toured the memorial for the first time this week. “I’m really thrilled.”

But the $150 million memorial has received mixed reviews. “Monumentally Mediocre,” pronounced The Wall Street Journal.

 The audience for the Eisenhower memorial is not art critics, of course. The main audience is children in grades K-12, who may be inspired to dream of greatness, as well as tourists and office-workers.

They are likely to visit the memorial in the daytime, but the better views are at night, when the sketch of the cliffs is illuminated.

I think children and their families will be grateful the Eisenhower memorial exists.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Shutdown weighs on Trump -- Jan. 24, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won the battle over the State of the Union.

President Donald Trump acceded to Pelosi’s decision to postpone the address until the federal government reopens.

“This is her prerogative,” he tweeted late Wednesday night, reversing course.

Hours earlier he’d said he was looking for another venue after Pelosi said he couldn’t make the speech in the House chamber as long as the government is partially shut down. Then he changed his mind.

“There is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber,” he tweeted.

He’s right. Trump can draw a crowd of enthusiastic supporters wearing red MAGA hats to an arena anytime. But the State of the Union address is one of the rare occasions all three branches of government and the diplomatic corps gather in one august room as a captive audience while TV cameras roll.

Trump could have avoided all the drama had he agreed with Pelosi the speech was a bad idea while a quarter of the government was closed. She cited security concerns, but the administration insisted there was no problem with security.

Instead, he tried to bully her, saying he would deliver the speech despite her request to postpone. She then refused to allow the House to vote for the resolution authorizing a joint session of Congress.

And so the president who hates to be seen as weak looked weak. Three new polls, including one by his favorite network, Fox News, show his job performance ratings are slipping.

Fox found only 43 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing overall, down 3 points from December. He is also under water on border security, immigration and foreign policy, Fox reported. 

“TRUMP BLINKS” Fox blared in a headline on its website as conservative commentators criticized his State of the Union turnabout.    

“Bad decision,” Laura Ingraham of Fox News said. She said she’d give three State of the Union speeches around the country. 

But the real question is not where Trump will give the State of the Union address but when.

Presidents use the prime-time address to lay out their legislative priorities for the coming year. By postponing, Trump all but announced his agenda is going nowhere in Congress during the shutdown and perhaps after that.

Thus Trump is learning even the president has limitations in a country with three equal branches of government. Republican congressional leaders have been afraid to stand up to him, but the Democratic-controlled House has a speaker who’s keen to use her power.

Meanwhile, the country is enduring the longest federal government shutdown in history with more than 800,000 federal workers going without pay because the president has refused to compromise on his demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall.

Democrats refuse to meet his demand, contending that, if they give in now, Trump will use the shutdown threat to force passage of future initiatives. Democrats  floated the idea of $5.7 billion for enhanced border security – just not for a physical wall, which they see as ineffective.

Trump’s attempt to bring Democrats to the table failed because he offered only a temporary fix for the young people called Dreamers who came to the country as children – and no compromise on wall funding.

So far, Democrats appear to be winning the shutdown battle.

Pelosi got a higher rating for her handling of negotiations for the shutdown than Trump in a CBS News poll, which found 47 percent approve of Pelosi and 35 percent of Trump.

Republicans and Democrats each want their leaders to keep fighting, which explains the current congressional gridlock. Lawmakers are unlikely to budge unless they feel political pain.

But it’s the independents who often determine elections, and 60 percent of independents disapprove of Trump’s job performance, the highest share among those voters since Trump took office, the Politico/Morning Consult poll reported.

Is a border wall worth the shutdown? CBS asked. A whopping 71 percent of independents said no. For Trump and Senate Republicans, that’s an ominous number looking to 2020.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Homework for parents a lesson for all -- Sept. 1, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Nearly six decades ago, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and for a generation of American children school nights would never be the same.    

Many school systems had dropped homework in the 1940s, but after the satellite crossed overhead on Oct. 4, 1957, Americans struggled with the idea that the commies had beaten us into space.

One way to help close the education gap with those over-achieving Russian kids was for American boys and girls to concentrate on math and science and take home extra schoolwork.     

The homework pendulum has always swung between pro and con. In the 19^th century, American students spent hours at home memorizing and reciting their lessons. The 20^th century rebelled against rote and repetition.

Homework fell out of favor in the Age of Aquarius along with most things Establishment.

In the 1980s, though, a major government report said “a rising tide of mediocrity” was to blame for the ailing U.S. economy and the nation’s very future was threatened. Homework was back.

But by 1999, a Time magazine cover story -- “The Homework Ate My Family” – painted a bleak picture of the stresses that homework was adding to already overworked and overscheduled families.

Last month, a second-grade teacher became an Internet sensation when she announced she would not assign any homework this year. If children brought work home, she said, it would be because they didn’t finish it at school.

But Brandy Young of Godley, Texas, didn’t stop there. She assigned homework to the parents.

“I ask you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early,” she wrote in a note to parents.

After a happy parent posted the note online, others around the country reposted it, and the news media started calling.

“I’m trying to develop their whole person; it’s not beneficial to go home and do pencil-and-paper work,” Young told CBS News. Students have other things to learn at home, she said.

Young’s homework assignment sounds like old-fashioned good parenting. It also dovetails nicely with recent academic research about rising academic skills of both poor and affluent children.

Between 1998 and 2010, the gap in school readiness skills between students in low-income and upper-income families entering kindergarten narrowed 10 percent in math and 16 percent in reading, a team of academic researchers reported. The improvements lasted at least into fourth grade.

The change, a sharp reversal of decades of trends, reflected improvements in the skills of low-income students, not a drop in upper-income students’ skills, they said.

Why? “It may be changes in children’s homes that have mattered most,” Sean F. Reardon, education professor at Stanford; Jane Waldfogel, social work professor at Columbia; and Daphna Bassok, education professor at the University of Virginia, wrote in an op-ed Aug. 28 in The New York Times.

“Tracking the experiences of young children over time, we found that both rich and poor children today have more books and read with their parents more often than they did in the ‘90s,” they wrote.

“Their parents are more likely to spend time with them, taking them to the library or doing activities at home,” and poorer kids also are more likely to have computers and access to the Internet and computer math games than in the past.

The researchers believe a powerful idea is getting through: “the first few years of a child’s life are the most consequential for cognitive development.”

The researchers warned that it’s by no means certain that narrower skills gaps for fourth graders will translate into higher achievement in high school. Still, this is good news.

It just so happens that September is Library Card Sign-up Month. Libraries across the country are encouraging children and their families to come in and get their library cards.

It’s an excellent opportunity for parents and grandparents to model the reading and study habits that can make a big difference in young lives. And the adults just might find something fascinating to read as well.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.