COMING SOON: Sequoia II, Potomac Boogaloo? Trump’s East Wing Renovation and the Case for Recommissioning the USS Sequoia.
From her berth in the Navy Yard, Sequoia was a beauty gracing the Washington landscape. She was smaller but no less august than the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials. She sat low and graceful in the water, the slender 104-foot porcelain hull contrasting starkly against the gray-green Potomac. Her decks were a patchwork of honeyed teak and varnished mahogany. It was said that the warm wood seemed to hold the afternoon sun inside it. She was not a large ship, but a dignified one. Her bow lines swept forward with a muted authority, and the gentle rake of her stern lent her a graceful poise. Her mere presence was a statement and representation of the skill and master craftsmanship of American shipbuilders.
Below the deck, twin six-cylinder Winston diesel engines hummed Sequoia along the Potomac at about twelve knots. She was not built for speed, but rather conversation and reflection. She was where Truman played poker, Kennedy celebrated his birthday, and where Nixon brooded over her wooden gunwales. It was an antiquated presidential command post, tidy and ceremonial. Her history bears repeating, as history so often does. She was where Roosevelt plotted naval strategy, Eisenhower received foreign guests, and Johnson built domestic coalitions. I make melancholy references to the Sequoia in the past tense, as she no longer serves the public in such a splendid manner, but there are hopeful plans and some resources available for her restoration as a museum ship.
It was, unsurprisingly, Jimmy Carter who killed the Sequoia. His Christian humility, which mandated a less ostentatious presidency, did her in. It was not a vile or sinister decision by Carter, but rather a simple mistake. He perhaps overestimated the public’s hunger for grand, but ultimately empty, populist gestures. Voters, with much bigger fish to fry, ended Carter’s presidency after one term.
It was a sad end to a noble vessel. The Congressional Record later reflected, “the Sequoia was the setting for Presidential meetings, negotiations and decisions of extraordinary significance and effect on the history of the United States and the course of world events,” and noted that “many Americans have visited the Sequoia and demonstrated support for her preservation and return to service.”
If anybody can resurrect the Sequoia, it’s Trump. But do we really want to see him morph from Al Czervik to Judge Elihu Smails?