Whitmire: Why can’t Donald Trump stop painting stuff gold?

NewsIf there were more gold in here, he'd have to open a pawn shop. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)AP Photo/Mark SchiefelbeinBy Kyle Whitmire | kwhitmire@al.comThis is an opinion column. Donald Trump is leaving his mark on Washington, and that mark is gold.The Oval Office looks like the showroom of the local pawnshop, the walkway between the White House and the West Wing like the buffet line at a casino.This week, the National Park Service unveiled half of the latest gilded makeover — two of four newly regilded statues across the street from the Lincoln Memorial. The Arts of War and the Arts of Peace have stood watch by the Potomac since Italy gave them to America in the 1950s, a thank-you for helping rebuild after WWII. Harry Truman accepted them himself. Italy sent them over wearing gold leaf, and seventy years of weather had worn them down to something quieter.They’re blinding again now, thanks to $5 million of American taxpayer money.Did I mention it was a no-bid contract?Grocery prices continue to climb. Job numbers have stalled. Gas is still $4 a gallon, and our own senator, Tommy Tuberville, has warned again that Social Security is going broke.But none of that has slowed the New Gilded Age decorator. Donald Trump couldn’t make America great again. Instead, he’s going to paint it gold.The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who has covered Trump more closely than almost anyone, recently said 70 percent of the president’s mind-share is spent on his renovation projects, not the war he started that he can’t seem to end. Redecorating Washington to look like Mar-a-Lago is his priority.But all that glitters in Donald Trump’s Washington isn’t always gold.Sometimes, it’s green.Not far from where the Park Service unveiled those golden horses, the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool remains behind a temporary fence. It’s not yet clear when it will be open again.This week, the U.S. Justice Department admitted it falsely accused David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, of vandalizing the pool. When it indicted him on July 2, the department said park employees had watched him rip up the pool liner with his bare hands.In a court filing this week, prosecutors admitted the culprit was faulty contractor work all along — something just about anyone with common sense could have inferred from the start.They say you can indict a ham sandwich, and the cold cuts at the local deli are beginning to sweat.The pool project was another no-bid contract, by the way. But who’s going to pay for Hearn’s defense lawyers, or for those of the other defendants who saw their charges dropped?The contract to refinish that pool went to a company that had never done federal construction work before. Trump vouched for the firm himself, noting it had worked on the pools at his golf club. Then the paint peeled, the water went green, and the government’s own lawyers wrote that the installation was rushed and flawed.The president hasn’t accepted his own Justice Department’s conclusion, blasting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, saying she “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” He posted that he disagrees “100%” with his own U.S. attorney, that this was “a pure case of VANDALISM.”Here’s the thing. He’s right. Somebody did vandalize that pool. They just got the wrong guy.Tearing up America’s front lawn with shoddy rush jobs. Razing the East Wing of the White House — another no-bid contract — to make way for a presidential party room nobody asked for, trying to bolt his own name onto a dead president’s memorial until a federal judge made him pry the letters off …And he isn’t finished. The planning process is underway for a “Triumphal Arch” — taller than its French inspiration, taller than the Lincoln Memorial itself.A reporter asked who the arch would honor.“Me,” he said. A monument to President Bone Spurs, at the front door of Arlington National Cemetery, where the people buried in the ground went when they were called.A few hundred feet from those golden horses sits a man carved out of plain white stone. He made America whole again, and he got killed for it. Nobody gilded him, because he never needed it.And that’s the difference between a legacy and a paint job.One of them lasts.The other one just flakes.The National Mall memorializes soldiers, sailors and airmen, but only a handful of presidents — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Grant. It’s the most exclusive club in America, and nobody gets in by nominating himself.And that’s driving a certain somebody mad — enough to scrawl his own mark in gold.D.J.T. wuz here.Kyle Whitmire is a columnist for AL.com where he skewers corruption, cruelty, incompetence and hypocrisy while also searching for those righteous folks who stubbornly adhere to their principles and make their...