The California legislature is about to do something pathetic: Naming a stretch of the 134 Freeway between Pasadena and Glendale for President Obama.
I understand the historic rationale. That stretch of freeway sits above the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, home to Occidental College, where Obama spent his first two years of college.
And I also get the impulse. Obama looks like Lincoln compared to his traitorous, racist, California-slandering successor, Donald Trump. Obama’s presidency was historic. So why not name something for him?
Still, it’s a bad idea, at least for now.
Three reasons stand out. First, Obama’s ties to California are weak, and so is the case for naming that stretch of freeway for him. He left Occidental College without graduating – to go to Columbia, in New York City. Second, Obama never was a particularly strong president for California. He came here mostly to raise money (yes, others do that, but President Clinton, for example, was far more devoted to California), and didn’t do much to help the state during its Great Recession-era budget crisis. And the traffic jams he, his advance team and the Secret Service created in Southern California were profoundly disruptive (I speak from too much personal experience)
Third, Obama is very much alive. And there’s always a danger when you name something significant for a living person that he or she will make some awful mistake that turns public opinion against him. Obama is still in his 50s, and while he seems like such a careful and high-character person, who knows if he might curdle into something ugly in retirement?
Or maybe the politics change. Given the rise of the Sandersista left within the Democratic party, might Democratic California leaders in a much leftier future want to strip his name off? You don’t have to look far to find examples of such shifts. Our former governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, saw his name taken off the soccer stadium in Graz, Austria, after a political turn to the left there.
With presidents, it’s safer to wait at least 12 years after a person has left office (that’s the amount of time that their papers stay closed under federal law) and preferably until after death to do any naming.
But if California’s legislature can’t wait, and insists on naming some important section of road, let me make an alternative suggestion. No intersection in Southern California was more impacted by presidential traffic jams than the six-way intersection where Fairfax, San Vicente, and Olympic meet at the edge of the Miracle Mile. I once experienced a four-hour traffic jam there because of Obama-related street closures.
The intersection is jam-packed at normal times as well. So why not, before a more serious honor, start by renaming that intersection “Obama-Jam?” Someone could commission a statue in front of the Starbucks on the southeast corner.