So could Mount Washington be next?
Is there no end to the history that President Obama will choose to rewrite?
Yesterday the president traveled to Alaska after announcing yet another executive order, this one renaming Mount McKinley, America’s tallest peak — which for more than a century has borne the name of the nation’s 25th president.
Obama, who has truly entered the bread and circuses portion of his presidency, is touring Alaska to call attention to “climate change.” So in the wake of his decision to allow drilling for oil and gas by Royal Dutch Shell in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, an intelligent one but one that angered die-hard environmentalists, Obama will throw them the bone of some presidential photo-ops in the Arctic — in addition to appealing to Native Americans by erasing the name of an American president from a mountain.
Henceforth, Obama declared — actually the deed was officially done by the secretary of the interior — the mountain will be known as Denali, meaning “the high one” in Athabascan.
The peak was appropriately named for McKinley, a veteran of the Civil War, who as president led this nation to victory in the Spanish-American War. Six months into his second term he was assassinated. So just imagine for a moment an executive order renaming things named for President Kennedy.
That McKinley was an Ohio Republican likely made this an easier choice, although Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican, is quite OK with the move.
But U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), not so much. He called it a “political stunt” and vowed to work with the House Committee on Natural Resources to see if it can be reversed.
Meanwhile, let’s hope that in the 17 months remaining in his term Obama doesn’t decide that some of New Hampshire’s White Mountains — Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, and dare we say, Eisenhower, need renaming too.
