Rome on the Potomac

Those who visit Washington don’t go just to see the cherry blossoms. They also go to reconfirm the belief that their country is still the [world’s] most powerful.

This year the cherry trees in Washington, D.C., bloomed especially early, at the end of one of the warmest winters in recent memory. There are still two weeks before the official Japanese delegation arrives to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the first planting of the trees, a gift from the city of Tokyo. What a pity. The blossoms are fleeting — they only remain that light pink for 14 days — and when they burst forth, as they did this past weekend, they turn into a most celebrated national event: They announce the coming of spring, this year more summery than ever.

I’m not exaggerating when I say national. Easily one million people, many from outside of the capital and the country, flock to the avenue that borders the reflecting pool at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial to stroll in quiet wonderment. They take their pictures and examine the branches and buds, taking it all in: From here, they also gaze at the panoramic views in all four cardinal directions. The monument is a rotunda of the purest marble, with an axis perfectly aligned with the White House. From his office, also an oval, Obama is eye-to-eye, without any intervening obstacles, with Jefferson’s statue (5.8 meters in height), just over a kilometer away. The men who designed the city (L’Enfant and Washington) were surveyors, and they knew something about poetic meter; the spatial design couldn’t be more sleek, rhythmic or rational.

Or, of course, more artificial. The historical center of this city is impressive, but in the way that an 18th century stage set could be — utopian, unlike any that even the European 18th century produced, one that it only imagined. Its main buildings, the majority of them government offices and museums, date back to the 19th and 20th centuries, and regardless they evoke with their grandeur and neoclassical elegance a Rome that is, for its part, also imaginary. Overall, they evoke a “vision” of what the U.S. should be and what some groups, in favor of a federal or imperial goal, have continued to promote. Washington was aiming for a magnificent city, while Jefferson was contemplating a small southern hamlet in order not to supersede local power (the rights of the confederate states), centralizing as little as possible. Certainly, Washington ended up getting his way, and that’s why the city carries his name.

The effect that a city like this produces is classical; it provokes thoughts of decadence. But curiously, it doesn’t produce the sorts of thoughts that occurred to Gibbon or Bolívar as they contemplated Rome melancholily from its hills. One is not confronted with an extinct civilization. One enters the National Gallery of Art or the Library of Congress and immediately becomes conscious that these institutions are safeguarding Western culture. One walks through the parks, museums and monuments, and civic pride never fails to inspire. And this is not only because of the intentions of the politicians and architects behind such a skilled and purposeful design; it’s also because of the citizens on foot who show up en masse and make their pilgrimages to this civic-republican mecca. They not only glimpse the cherry trees in bloom, but also capture something less fleeting: They reaffirm the belief that their country is still the most powerful in the world. This gives rise, perhaps, to the country’s high maintenance costs and pending problems, but also to its indisputable power.