In recent months, Republicans have prioritized naming a great many things in ways they find ideologically satisfying, targeting everything from the Gulf of Mexico to Navy ships, Veterans Day to the Persian Gulf, military bases to sports teams.
Evidently, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is now on the list, too.
Last week, Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho tucked a provision into a spending bill that would name the Kennedy Center’s opera house after first lady Melania Trump. NBC News reported on a related idea about her husband.
The next day, Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., introduced the ‘Make Entertainment Great Again Act’ to rename the whole center the ‘Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.’ The House has not yet taken any action on it.
This isn’t satire. The Missouri congressman introduced an actual legislative proposal, which now has an official bill number (H.R. 4715) and is currently welcoming co-sponsors.
There is no reason whatsoever to think such a proposal will actually become law. In fact, as NBC News’ report noted, efforts to rename the venue would apparently violate the law that created the Kennedy Center in the first place.
But what I continue to care about is the broader partisan pattern: GOP officials have invested a truly bizarre amount of time and energy into pushing sycophantic legislation designed to flatter the incumbent president. The list includes:
- a bill to create a $250 bill that would feature Trump’s face;
- a similar bill that would put Trump’s face on $100 bills;
- a bill to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday;
- a bill to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore;
- a bill to rename Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump;
- a bill to name the Washington, D.C., subway system after Trump and his MAGA slogan;
- and now a bill name the Kennedy Center after Trump.
What’s more, this list doesn’t include related efforts from the president’s sycophantic allies, including measures to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize and to allow Trump to seek a third term.
Rutgers University historian David Greenberg recently told Politico that there have been “huge cults of personality” around former presidents, “but even allowing for that on its own terms, [the spate of Trump-themed legislation is] pretty crazy.”
The point isn’t that any of these proposals are likely to pass; they’re not. The point is that these measures are unlike anything in the American tradition, reinforcing a fundamentally unhealthy trend in Republican politics.
As The New York Times recently summarized, “A competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.” From the article:
The rush of flattering legislation, some of which even the lawmakers concede is unlikely to pass, stands apart from merely carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda. … ‘It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,’ said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘A lot of these people are in really safe districts, but they’re also thinking about what their next step is. And so if they have designs on being in the Senate or running for governor or even a position in the administration, then there’s no better way to get on his good side than to do these over-the-top moves toward him.’
That was published before most of the aforementioned bills were introduced.
I’m reminded anew of something Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said about these efforts: “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.”
That competition, alas, is apparently intensifying.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
