There must be some sort of grand behavior modification/revenue enhancement experiment going on here in Washington, D.C. in preparation for next month’s inaugural events. See, the theory is if you can drive enough local residents out of the city by the third week of January, more people from elsewhere can travel here and spend money much more liberally.

How else to explain the growing multitude of out-of-service escalators in the Metro? Arriving at the Van Ness/UDC Metro earlier than normal Wednesday morning, all the main escalators up-and-down were kaput. This morning at Cleveland Park, no functioning down escalators to the station proper. It’s been getting worse for weeks, now.

Normally you just shrug your shoulders and chalk the deescalation up to urban decrepitude and incompetence and the failure of the federal government to provide the billions of dollars the system needs, a new Manhattan Project of infrastructure investment (except it would be D.C., not Manhattan).

But we spot other indications of efforts to shape the behavior of the autochthonous public…

• Washington Post, “Inaugural Nudge: Leave the Little Guys at Home“: “Officials are banning all strollers and backpacks and make a point of saying on their Web site that ‘there are no childcare facilities provided to attendees.’ If that hint isn’t enough, they suggest that ‘extra consideration’ be taken by those planning to bring children, noting that “a vast majority of attendees will be in standing room sections and should be prepared to be on their feet for several hours.”
• Washington Post, “Inauguration-Bound? Just Walk, Metro Says.”: “Here’s the latest from Metro on attending the inauguration festivities for President-elect Barack Obama: If you live or are staying within two miles of the Capitol, walk. “
• Washington Post, “Metro Officials Expect 10,000 Charter Buses“: “Metro officials said they are expecting 10,000 charter buses, carrying an estimated 500,000 people, to arrive in the Washington area for President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20. But the transit agency will only be able to handle parking for about one-third of the charter buses. The remaining buses will have to be routed to parking lots throughout the region, and those passengers will have to be ferried downtown by shuttle bus or will have to walk.”

Who’s reading these accounts? Folks in Philadelphia, Peoria, Petaluma?

Before we get to the reviews of the new Capitol Visitor Center, a few positive word about the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Va.: What a great museum! Much larger and comprehensive than one would anticipate from its being just a bit off the beaten path, at least as far as surface transportation goes.

The museum is home to an excellent and voluminous exhibition of the history of the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (formerly Merrimack), the two ships that participated in the first battle between ironclads, the March 1862 encounter off Hampton Roads. Included is extensive detail about the engineering involved in both ships, and one learns that the Monitor was designed by the great Swedish-American John Ericsson. Quite a life of accomplishments he had.

In 1987, NOAA designated the museum as the custodian of the artifacts and archives of the USS Monitor Center opened in March 2007. You can see the room where preservation of the Monitor’s turret and other artifacts is now under way, learn about the discovery and rescue of the sunken ship from the waters off North Carolina, and walk the deck of a Monitor replica. (Thanks to Northrup Grumman.)

The museum hosts many other fascinating collections and exhibits, and manufacturers and engineers will find much to enjoy, including this just-opened exhibit, “Building Better Ships,” which depicts the Newport News shipyards in the 1930s. Having read all the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin novels, it was also a great pleasure (and surprise) to see the excellent exhibition dedicated to Admiral Horatio Nelson. (Paltry web description, though.)

So what a find.

As for the Capitol Visitor Center, the Washington Post had a fine piece of architectural criticism Tuesday, “The Capitol Addition That Takes Too Much Away,” by Philip Kennicott. He remarks on the assault on the landscaping by Frederick Olmstead and observes,

[Unless] you’re lucky enough to break out of the well-designed visitor holding tanks, your experience of the Capitol will be almost indistinguishable from a trip to the Newseum, Mount Vernon or many other of our increasingly homogenized historical sites. The Rolodex of contractors for these kinds of facilities has grown far too small. Ralph Appelbaum Associates has designed the exhibitions — “they’re considered the rock stars of the museum world,” said Visitor Center spokesman Tom Fontana — which includes interactive touch screens and a “Wall of Aspirations,” by now a familiar and kitschy tic from this New York-based firm, which also did similar exhibitions for the Newseum.

So, again, just a nice piece of architecture criticism.

Meanwhile, despite its problems, the Post’s perceptive columnist Marc Fisher opines,

But as a station on the Washington tourist circuit, as a museum of American civics, and as a demonstration of how to blend education and entertainment without insulting the intelligence of the citizenry, the Visitor Center is a smash hit — the best addition to the District’s tourism portfolio since the 1990s, which gave us the FDR Memorial and the Holocaust museum.

The FDR Memorial? That ahistoric builderdash? It’s awful.

Finally, the Heritage Foundation detects ahistory abundant at the visitor’s center, “Morning Bell: A Capitol Travesty.”

Like far too many legislative proposals that pass through its chambers, Congress could not help but add its own priorities. Even though not included in the original design, the structure now features new offices for lawmakers, a theater, media studios and even a tunnel to the Library of Congress. This all-too-familiar runaway Washington spending is not even the worst part of the final product. That honor goes to the violence the center’s “educational” exhibits do to the Constitution.

You know what’s a good museum, true to the Constitution? The Mariner’s Museum in Newport News. Although it’s the USS Constitution you learn about.

From Lawrence, Kansas.

Courtesy the Prelinger Archives. For other formats, click here.

UPDATE (12:40 p.m.): That’s 1951 in Lawrence, Kansas. In a time of tight budgets, no turkey for Thanksgiving. Reading The Virginian-Pilot today, we see that tough times calls for careful shopping, “The feasts will go on, with side order of bargain hunting“:

Turkey. Roast beef. Candied yams. Macaroni and cheese. Sweet potato pie. Potato salad. Peas. Cranberry sauce.

Laverne Johnson’s family will be eating well today. And don’t worry about dessert: Her sister will be bringing her highly rated chocolate cake. Like many Thanksgiving shoppers interviewed this week, Johnson said she wasn’t trimming back on her menu, despite the contracting economy. It’s a holiday, after all.

Echoing a common theme, though, she hunted a bit more ferociously for bargains this year.

What a prosperous age we live in. From AP, “Farmers work to preserve ancient turkey breeds“:

UPPERVILLE, Va. (AP) — At Ayrshire Farm, hundreds of Midget White and Bourbon Red turkeys move in a feathered, gobbling mass on a wind-swept pasture overlooking Virginia’s horse country.

These birds have longer legs and narrower breasts than the beachball-shaped turkey that will end up on many Thanksgiving Day tables. What they lack in heft, however, these heritage birds make up for in flavor, proponents say.

They also make it up in price: a 20-pound certified organic turkey from Ayrshire Farm costs $180.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a book-signing event at Politics & Prose, a bookstore in Washington, where my friend Bob Samuelson was selling and signing his new work, “The Great Inflation and its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence.”All of us who read Bob’s columns in The Washington Post and Newsweek know him to be a prescient observer of the economic scene, and rarely if ever have his prescient observations been more needed than today. Bob took us on a journey back in time to the 60s and 70s when inflation ran riot, undermining everyone’s faith in the future. There really was something creepy about watching your money lose value year after year, but most of us have forgotten those times.

It was a deadly cycle fostered by big labor in concert with big business with their open-ended contracts that guaranteed steadily rising wages for labor and prices for products. The political class was committed to full employment and thus resisted efforts to squeeze inflation out of the system. Public opinion polls showed people were more concerned about inflation than the Vietnam War or the Iranian hostage crisis.

Along came Fed Chairman Paul Volcker determined to squeeze inflation out of the system and President Ronald Reagan who, Samuelson contends, was the only political leader of either party with the fortitude to support the Fed through that tough passage. Inflation, unemployment and interest rates were in double digits. The people were in distress and the politicians were beside themselves.

But we saw it through and got inflation under control, setting off a generation of steady economic growth interrupted by a few brief, shallow recessions. Until now, that is. Now we’re into truly unfamiliar territory.

Bob says he does not foresee another Great Depression, but he does see two similarities between the 1930s and today. One, no one knew what was going on back then and no one knows now. Two, there was no single nation willing and able to assume the leadership then or now to needed to wring order out of chaos.

It’s a good book. I recommend it.

(Editor’s note: Samuelson wrote a Washington Post column touching on the book’s themes in June, “Return of Inflation?“)

President Bush gave remarks yesterday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which officially reopens tomorrow after a two-year renovation project. The President’s remarks are here.

The Washington Post put the reopening on page one today, “America’s Attic Is Ready for Its Public,” with second deck of the headline, “With Orders to Get Organized and More Relevant, The American History Museum Reinvents Itself.”

Relevant? Oh boy. But perhaps it’s just a platitude as opposed to a full embrace of the superficially entertaining and politically correct. 

Any museum that’s gone through such an effort to house and pay tribute to the history of the Star Spangled Banner is on the right track.

And the Gettysburg Address is on display through January. Along with the document, there’s a recording you can listen to, as the Post explains:

Also new is a gallery dedicated to documents, where a copy of the Gettysburg Address, in Lincoln’s hand and lent by the White House, will be displayed until Jan. 4. A touch screen brings up the voice of actor Liam Neeson reading the address.

Liam Neeson? The Irishman?

Speaking of the superficially entertaining but somehow apt, there’s a “Family Guy” spoof of Neeson playing a cowboy. The bonnetted woman cries, “But, Montana, when will you be back?” Neeson replies:

That’s none of your concern. You got to take care of the offspring.
Gonna take a fortnight at least to get this herd down to St. Louis on Mississippi.
This glen’s gonna be tough to traverse,
and that river’s got to be 50, 60 meters wide.
And God knows how many fathoms.
To hell with parliamentary procedure. We’ve got to wrangle up some cattles.

Has got to be Stephan Pastis, creator of Pearls Before Swine. The mockery of Cathy or Family Circus is fun, but we really appreciate his satirizing American litigiousness (and, oh, business arrogance?).

And workers comp!

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History reopens on Friday after a two-year renovation project, a ribbon-cutting and entertainment kicking off a weekend of events.

The museum is known for housing the Star Spangled Banner, the giant United States flag that hung over Fort McHenry the night of the British attack on Baltimore when Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the later national anthem.

The museum also maintains an impressive Industry and Manufacturing Collection:

The Museum’s collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

And many other related collections, including…

• Energy & Power
• Engineering, Building, and Architecture
• Health & Medicine
• Measuring & Mapping
• Natural Resources
• Science & Mathematics
• Textiles
• Transportation
• Work
   

Plus, the Bakelizer!

For anyone involved in the U.S. manufacturing economy, the museum is a must stop on a trip to Washington, D.C.

Heard the first Christmas carol of the year at a commercial establishment this morning at Caribou Coffee near NAM-HQ, ”Have yourself a very, merry Christmas.”

It’s November 13th. Used to be that the piped in Christmas songs would start after Thanksgiving, now it’s Veterans Day. Seems like they’re missing a good 10 days at the start of November.

Can we at least update the lyrics for this particular season?

Well, the economy outside is frightful

And credit markets, tightful

But as long as we bitch and moan

Let it loan, let it loan, let it loan!

Oh, c’mon. That’s better than, “GSEs, disorient are.”

In any case, the change of seasons allows us to link to our favorite journalistic cliche, “X got an early Christmas present…”

Being handed out at the Metro Center station today in Washington, D.C.

Elsewhere in the world of secondary markets and unintended consequences:

• CQ Politics, “New Crib-Safety Law Presents Possible Problem for eBay, Other Sites“
• AHN News, “California Senator To Write eBay To Stop Sales Of Obama Inaugural Tickets“
• Times of London, “Barack Obama inauguration tickets touted for $40,000“

So I ordered this crib online and it cost $40,000! But on the plus side, two free inaugural event tickets were included.

Anyway, D.C. is going nuts over the inaugural, which is still more than two months away.

We’ll be interested in whether the media play up the theme that it’s too, too lavish in a time of war and economic dislocation. Remember that critique? Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) wrote President a Bush a letter in January, 2005, arguing for restraint in Bush’s second inaugural:

The festivities surrounding your inauguration later this month are slated to cost $40 million – making this the most expensive inauguration in history. I urge you to re-direct those funds towards a use more fitting to these sober times – bonuses or equipment for our troops.

Our view: Inaugural spending will stimulate the economy. Go for it.

From President Bush’s remarks at the rededication today of the USS Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum:

The great ship’s keel was laid on December 1, 1941. Less than a week later, Pearl Harbor was attacked — and America entered World War II. In the years to come, as the United States Navy defended the freedom in the Pacific, the men of “the Fighting I” would be in the thick of the battle. The Intrepid participated in the invasion of the Marshall Islands. She played a key role in the amphibious assault on Okinawa. She was part of one of the greatest sea battles in history: the Battles of Leyte Gulf.

In that massive engagement, American forces faced some of the most formidable elements of the Japanese Navy. The Japanese fleet included the Yamamato [sic] and the Musashi — these were the heaviest and the largest battleships ever constructed. The Imperial Navy approached the coast of the Philippines from three different directions, and it was a fearsome challenge — but the men of this ship were ready. The Intrepid’s Air Group fought courageously and without rest. By the time the battle ended three days later, the United States Navy had sunk the Musashi to the ocean floor, and lifted hopes for victory in the Pacific.

Even before its refurbishing, it was a fascinating museum you could spend days at.