The name of the game: Let’s give Trump more space to show us why we shouldn’t rebrand BNA

I’ve been simultaneously pondering Donald Trump’s fanciful desire to rename the Gulf of Mexico and state Rep. Todd Warner’s fawning crusade to rename Nashville’s airport. Trump wants a Gulf of America, and Warner wants a Trump International Airport. Procedurally these are quite different enterprises: the Gulf thing can’t really happen except as a concocted figment of collective pomposity, while the airport and its identity do operate at the behest of governmental fiat. But they do have one thing in common: on a scale of branding imbecility both score off the charts. 

A single nation’s attempt to rename a body of water that is not contained exclusively within that country is unscrupulous arrogance of the highest order. In other words, classic Trump. And to be honest the part of me that stands always ready to admire cunning political subterfuge silently tips my cap to the brilliance of this geographic gamesmanship. With a quick, single stroke of random pointlessness Trump has managed to light a kinetic flame under his mindless acolytes (“now do Times Square!”) and distract the press down a trifling “can he actually do that?” rabbit hole, all while sustaining the collective blood pressure of blue America at hypertensive levels. Even Google Maps has been taken in by this twaddle. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may say publicly that the Gulf idea is “strange” and “zany,” but privately he should be asking himself “why didn’t we think of this?”

Airports do of course get new names from time to time, sometimes to honor prominent humans, but surprisingly few presidents are represented in current airport branding. Best known are Ronald Reagan in DC, JFK in New York and George Bush in Houston. Abe Lincoln Airport in Springfield, Illinois is a natural, though likely obscure to those of us who don’t actually fly there. We also have Eisenhower in Wichita, Ford in Grand Rapids, Clinton (actually both Clintons) in Little Rock, and Roosevelt Regional (Teddy, that is) in bustling Dickinson, North Dakota, a town with a population about half that of Gallatin, Tennessee.

New Deal aficionados will be happy to know that the other Roosevelt does have his own monikered airport—perhaps the most scenic of all the presidential airports, but that’s because it’s basically an air strip with no control tower at the foot of a volcano on a lightly populated Dutch Caribbean island. Tragically it doesn’t even get to use the FDR airport code since that belongs to a regional airfield in Frederick, Oklahoma. 

The actual text of Rep. Warner’s proposed bill is straightforward. It incorporates no grandiose preamble recounting Trumpian splendor; it simply directs administrative steps involved in renaming BNA—bylaws amendments, contract adjustments, trademark revisions, new signage, and the like. A curious element is the bill’s designation of the airport going forward as “Trump International Airport” without the “Donald J.” part. So which particular member of the first family of public corruption is to be the face of Nashville’s welcome mat to the world? Maybe Warner doesn’t want us to know he really means Tiffany.

This isn’t the first servile attempt to plaster the nom de Trump on an unsuspecting airport. Last spring up in DC a dozen Republicans, including Tennessee’s bright lights of statesmanship Chuck Fleischmann and Andy Ogles, cosponsored a measure in Congress to rename Washington Dulles Airport for their fearless orange leader. The bill went nowhere — not even a committee hearing — but at least that one included the “Donald J.” in “Donald J. Trump International Airport” so we’d know clearly which specific avatar of grift would be aeronautically canonized.

This isn’t the first attempt to Trumpstamp Music City. Who can forget state Rep. Paul Sherrell’s bill two years ago that would have turned Rep. John Lewis Way in downtown Nashville into “President Donald Trump Boulevard”? Sherrell did ultimately withdraw the bill, but not before convening a master class in racist irony with his suggestion while the measure was pending that lynching could be a good option for capital punishment. Honestly you can’t make this stuff up. 

If Nashville’s airport does rebrand I imagine we’ll have to endure an effort to get the International Air Transport Association  to replace BNA with a suitably appropriate new three-letter airport code. Hardcore Trump fans will be disappointed to learn that unavailable codes include BTW (Build The Wall), which designates Batu Licin Airport in Indonesia, and LHU (Lock Her Up), in use by Lianshulu Airport in Namibia. Two that are available: DTS (Drain The Swamp) and my personal favorite HMP (Hang Mike Pence). I am obliged if pained to report that DJT is not presently in use by another airport and so presumably available.

Trump’s Gulf renaming project may qualify as a cleverly sinister bit of political dazzle, but Warner’s airport gambit is merely witless. Sure, it will successfully annoy Nashville for a week or two, but even many Republicans grasp why it’s good practice to wait until prominent figures are dead, or at least permanently retired from active public life, before we start hanging their names on things. (And even then the U.S. has a long history of naming worthy institutions after bad eggs.) 

Trump still has quite a long run of show—three years and 50 weeks—to gin up even more reasons than we already have why we shouldn’t want his name anywhere near significant civic institutions. Let’s by all means give him that chance.