🪞 Why is this controversial?

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is clean for the first time in years. 

That might sound like a small thing, but if you’ve seen photos from the last few years — green water, algae everywhere — you know how bad it got. One of the most recognizable landmarks in the world looked more like a dystopian swamp than a symbol of American pride. 

What’s new: We just fixed that. As America approaches its 250th birthday next month, thousands of Iowans are going to visit our nation’s capital. And now, they’ll see the reflecting pool the way generations before us remember it — the same backdrop that stood behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. That’s what these landmarks are for — reminding every American who visits them what this country is capable of.

Yet somehow, it’s controversial. Washington has allowed so much to slide for so long that fixing something basic gets treated with suspicion instead of pride. I understand the instinct — because trust is broken, and it wasn’t broken overnight. But if we dismiss every step forward, nothing ever changes.

Why it matters: In Iowa, we don’t let things fall apart. My grandpa didn’t let the equipment rust on the farm, and my mom didn’t let the house get messy, because when you take care of something, you’re saying it matters. When we clean up the iconic monuments that make our nation’s capital special, we’re saying America matters — and that the country every generation before us built and fought for is worth handing forward better than we found it.

Bottom Line: Cleaning up the reflecting pool won’t fix Washington overnight, but fixing what people stopped believing would get fixed is a good place to start. Trust doesn’t come back with words — it comes back one kept promise at a time.