Let’s raise a Golden Ballroom to those who are making us all great again

It’s a balmy Tuesday evening in DC; we’re perched in the rooftop bar of the Hotel Washington, which directly overlooks the White House. As we sip our drinks we watch huge tower cranes swing out over the construction site that is, or will be, the 47th president’s grandiose new ballroom, and we can see flatbed trucks carrying diggers past the security cordon of the executive mansion.

As it happens, that same day US district judge Richard Leon had called a halt to the $400m project: “Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” Leon declared – in an opinion that uses a surprising number of exclamation marks. The judge allowed a grace period of two weeks, not least for safety, for everything to come to a complete stop, but the ongoing work seemed a symbol of how the US government is operating these days.

We could have ordered a Golden Ballroom, made with Hennessy VS, SirDavis whisky, sweet vermouth and orange bitters. “All of the shine, none of the politics – that stays next door,” winks the cocktail menu. A steal at $39.

We had spent the morning at the National Air and Space Museum, which would have been fitting in any case as the following day Artemis II was due to launch, sending the first people towards the moon in over 50 years – but if anyone could design a place where I would find my bliss, it is this museum. My son took a picture of me in front of the lunar module that has pride of place in the entrance hall – LM-2 was used for ground testing prior to the first successful moon-landing mission: Theo noted that in the photograph I look proud, as if I myself have accomplished something. But you know what? I am.

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins told Kevin Fong – in a podcast – that on their return to Earth in July 1969, everywhere the astronauts went, in every country they visited, people told them: We did it. We went to the moon. Not “You Americans”. One could argue that the late 1960s and the early 1970s were as troubled a time as we – we humans, all over the world – find ourselves in now, but the great journey to space was a source of hope. Godspeed, Artemis II. See you on the other side.

I was a little unnerved by 47’s giant scowling face louring over me from a two-storey-high banner as I walked past the Department of Justice: MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN. Indeed. And yet it’s still possible to feel your soul stirred in Washington DC. Late one night we walked down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. Daniel Chester French’s monumental sculpture of the 16th president, spotlit against the velvety darkness, is awe-inspiring, and if that’s a cliche, well, as I used to tell my students, cliches are cliches because they are true.

There are signs asking visitors to respect the space in silence, yet I found the throngs of noisy young people (it was the Easter break) offered another kind of respect, one of ease and familiarity. On one wall is carved the Gettysburg address, but on the other is Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered when the civil war had not yet ended. Lincoln himself would be assassinated six weeks later.

He asked his audience “to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”. We stood in the darkness, in the crowd, finding peace all the same in those enduring and necessary words.

Photograph by AP Photo/Tom Brenner