My morning jog took me past another example of institutional architecture; the headquarters building of the Organisation of American States (picture – built 1910), an organisation (founded 1948, but previous versions had existed since Simon Bolivar had first put forward his vision at the 1826 Congress of Panama) which could be loosely described as a more venerable pan-American equivalent to the Council of Europe (founded 1949). I was interested to see ‘CUBA’ emblazoned on the building. The country indeed always remained, technically-speaking, a member state of the organisation, although its government was suspended between 1962 and 2009. Honduras was similarly ‘suspended’ between 2009 and 2011, following a coup. Just for the record, the OAS’s official languages are Spanish, English, Portugese and French and, yes, the European Union enjoys observer status.

This morning I got up early and, still curious about civic architecture, jogged down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House, then the headquarters of the US Department of the Treasury (a nineteenth century, white stuccoed neo-classical collonaded temple with a statue of Alexander Hamilton outside) the International Monetary Fund (a stodgy 1970s, monolithic concrete block), the World Bank (a light, stylish and modernistic building from the 1990s) and the Federal Reserve (the 1930s, stripped down neo-classical Eccles building – picture) and then back up the Mall. The contrast between the two Bretton Woods’ institutions (concrete stodge versus airy modernity), which face one another, was interesting. Once back at the hotel I read up a little about the Fed and its history. If I knew, I had forgotten that for three periods in its history (1811-1816, 1837-1862 and 1863-1913) the United States had no Central Bank. It was only when a series of panics threw into relief the inadequacies of the 1863-1913 national banks system that the current Federal Reserve System was established and, even then, another and completely distinct entity, the US Department of the Treasury, creates the currency that the Fed issues. Curious, too, is the Fed’s simultaneously public and private structure and the way it works independently from government but from within it. Also fascinating is the system of twelve Federal Reserve Banks, located in cities that manage districts whose size was determined by population sizes when the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 (thus, ‘San Francisco’ is responsible for a vast geographic area encompassing seven states). Not for the first time, I feel that we Europeans could learn from studying American history.

I managed to get hold of a copy of the Financial Times today and so was able to read a thought-provoking op-ed article by Francis Fukuyama, entitled ‘Conservatives must fall back in love with the state’, and which coincidentally covered some of the constitutional ground over which I have been wandering in other readings. In particular, Fukuyama addresses the issue of American exceptionalism, with its key component of distrust of state authority. He argues that American Conservatives should understand that there is a difference between limited government and weak government and calls for a renewal of the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Theodore Roosevelt, ‘that sees the necessity of a strong if limited state, and that uses state power for the purposes of national revival.’ I sometimes wonder whether Europeans are not, in their own sweet way, edging towards such fundamental debates about the role of state power (or whatever one wishes to call it) at con/federal level. To take a timely example, one of the political conclusions that has arisen out of the efforts of the Eurozone and the EU more generally to deal with the economic and financial crisis is that, if it is to be effective, the European Commission needs stronger powers, even if in certain narrowly circumscribed areas. Interesting stuff.

Following what the American media have dubbed the Aurora massacre, the President has declared a state of mourning and all US flags are flying at half mast. There is a palpable sense of a shocked and introspective nation. Newspapers and televisions screens are beginning to fill up with eye witness acounts and descriptions of the unfortunate victims, the lucky survivors and the enigmatic killer himself. It therefore felt a little strange to be going to see the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, tickets to which I had inadvertently bought the previous evening. The film itself was disappointing. The primary villain, Bane, loses credibility as the film and its complicated back story progress. And, despite all of his protestations to the contrary, Director Christopher Nolan has left the door wide open for (yet another) movie in the franchise. What interested me more was the experience. Heavy security measures were in place but the cinema was absolutely full. No costumes or masks were allowed and all bags were searched. I looked around me whenever somebody got up to leave or returned (which is what the Aurora killer did) and saw how people could not hide momentary flashes of anxiety. When Batman spelt out his  ‘No guns, no killing’ moral code to Cat Woman, there was a sense of a surge of collective support from the audience. I myself felt a frisson from time to time whenever somebody walked down the aisle…

Henri Malosse, currently President of the European Economic and Social Committee’s Employers’ Group and Corsican in origin, has reminded me in an e-mail of America’s Corsican connection, in the person of Pasquale Paoli (picture). In November 1755, the people of Corsica ratified a constitution that proclaimed Corsica a sovereign nation, independent from the Republic of Genoa. President of the Executive Council of the General Diet of the People of Corsica, Paoli designed and wrote the new state’s Constitution. The first written under Enlightenment principles, its revolutionary innovations included a vote for all men and women over 25 years of age.  The Diet also made Paoli, who held his office by election and not by appointment, commander-in-chief of the armed forces as well as chief magistrate. A thorough-going modernist, Paoli immediately set about building a Corsican state, including the creation of schools and a university. All of this took place 21 years before the American Revolution and 34 years before the French! A  French invasion put a halt to this pioneering experiment and in 1770 Corsica was incorporated as a French province and Paoli went into exile. The American Sons of Liberty were inspired by Paoli. Ebenezer McIntosh, one of their leaders, named his son Paschal Paoli McIntosh in his honour. In 1768, the editor of the New York Journal described Paoli as “the greatest man on earth”. Places in the United States named after him include: Paoli, Pennsylvania, Paoli, Colorado, Paoli, Indiana, Paoli, Oklahoma and Paoli, Wisconsin.

Whilst on the civic architecture theme, we are all familiar with the images of America’s new Presidents taking the oath high up on the Capitol’s west front, with the crowds and the flags stretching down Capitol Hill and away along the Mall. It hasn’t always been like that. Before Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, the ceremony took place on the Capitol’s other side, in the East Portico. But now the ceremony, together with the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, looks as if it’s always been that way. A German colleague, a very high up in one of the EU’s institutions, once speculated that the place and rue du Luxembourg could one day serve as an equivalent in Brussels to Washington’s Mall. He had his tongue ever so slightly in his cheek, but you can see what he means. The President of such a future European ‘Union’ could address the European peoples from the balcony of the old station building (now there’s a science fiction scenario), though the statue of that early industrial representative of perfidious albion, John Cockerill, would probably have to be moved. Now, that would be the place to put a statue of Jean Monnet! (See this earlier post.)

The political science anorak in me has become increasingly fascinated by Washington DC’s civic architecture. A friend once told me about the symbolism of the positioning of the various federal institutions. This afternoon I went to see about some of that for myself, setting off in the afternoon heat up ‘the Hill’. The Senate is to one side of the Capitol, the Congress to the other. Thus, the twin arms of the legislative authority co-exist physically as well as constitutionally.  Outside the Senate, on the entablature beneath the pediment on the First Street facade of the building, there is the following inscription “THE SENATE IS THE LIVING SYMBOL OF OUR UNION OF STATES” (back in Brussels, the Council has ‘Justus Lipsius’ and ‘Consilium’ – you couldn’t imagine a similar declaration, even leaving aside the tricky language question that resulted in the use of a dead language – Latin – rather than any of Europe’s living languages). Facing the Senate is the Supreme Court (picture – another neo-classical temple-like building), with its stern injunction ‘EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW’. Law and justice therefore face the Senate. Congress, on the other hand, has the Library of Congress. It is no accident that the architecture should be like this; the States may be armed with justice, Washington’s builders are saying, but the people are armed with knowledge. All of these buildings were built intentionally as symbolic unifiers but what they also have in common is the fact that they were built to last. Some might argue that if the European Union truly believes in its future then it should be building for hundreds of years and not just for twenty or thirty…

After the Air and Space Museum, we went to the National Museum of the American Indian. I sense that, all through this ‘grand tour’ that we have embarked upon, the ghosts of America’s original inhabitants will never be very far away. This museum is, in part, a reassertion of that past (and then only since 2004), but since so many of the American Indians’ traditions were oral, it can only hint at what was lost when European diseases laid waste to countless Indian populations throughout the Americas. When not massacred, most of those left were subjugated and forced out of their homelands (I remember first being shocked about all of this, as opposed to the Hollywood ‘Western’ account, through a 1969 school (amateur) production of Arthur Kopit’s play, Indians, later compounded by seeing the 1973 West End production of Savages). In this context, one of the exhibits provides a story of those first encounters, from the earliest – Greenland (+/- AD 1000), Brazil (+/- AD 1500), Mexico (1519), to the most recent – Vancouver Island (1788), Idaho (1805), North Dakota (1833), Montana (1841), Paraguay (the Ayoreo – 2011). It was all so very recent! The strikingly beautiful building was designed by a Blackfoot Indian, Douglas Cardinal, and Indians have been heavily involved in virtually every aspect of the museum’s construction and life. Aware of the oral tradition, I was particularly interested in the exhibits about the  Indians’ philosophy and beliefs; the exhibition explores those of the Anishinaabe, Mapuche, Yup’ik, Hupa, Quechua, Lakota, Kha’p’o, and Q’eq’chi (Mayan) tribes. There are a number of familiar (to European ears) themes, including prophets in the wilderness and resurrection. But the most striking aspect is the close, symbiotic relationship that all Indians enjoyed with their environment, and a sensitivity to the world about them, from the sun, moon, planets and stars through to the seasons and plant and animal life. Where Western man massacred the buffalos that once roamed the Great Plains, the Indian revered the animal, taking from it only what was needed. Here was surely a sustainable alternative – alas, all too vulnerable to the insatiable predations of the Europeans and the early Americans.

As I wrote in the previous post, the Smithsonian is stuffed with historical objects. Perhaps the most historical and certainly the most iconic of them all is the original Wright Flyer which, on 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, flew 852 feet in 59 seconds, thus becoming the first heavier than air powered aircraft to make a sustained, controlled flight with a pilot aboard. It is profoundly moving to gaze upon it in all its flimsy glory. Museum-goers can also visit the cockpit of a Boeing 747 (‘Jumbo Jet’) just like the one that brought us from London to New York. It is a reminder of just far and how fast we have come. Sadly, as many of the exhibits at the museum make clear, much progress has been down to military or ideological conflicts of one sort or another. The museum is good on the First World War, in which planes were active – just eleven years after that first powered flight! In particular, there is a very touching interview with the now deceased Arthur Raymond Brooks, a First World War flying ace whose plane, an improbably flimsy SPAD S.XIII, now has pride of place among the Smithsonian’s exhibits.

This morning our first port of call was the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which is stuffed to the gunnels with fascinating history and historical objects. Our visit included a viewing of the highly entertaining and educational film Journey to the Stars in the IMAX theatre. The film includes an excellent account of how scientists think the universe was created and what that process looked like. By chance, I am currently reading Olaf Stapledon’s great science fiction classic, Starmaker, and realised that I was visualising what Stapledon had imagined with extraordinary accuracy in 1937. Stapledon’s book is not great literature but it is clearly a major work of the human imagination.