There are moments in a hard-fought campaign when a catchy cluster of words can suddenly bubble up from the depths and become like a shiny new lily pad. “Drain the swamp” worked on many levels—it was active, it was funny, and it sounded like something a man in the real-estate business would actually say. It offered no details—another plus—and held a folksy charm.
It was also historically accurate. Indeed, the candidate had landed on a point the Founders had gone to some trouble to conceal—that the foundation upon which they built their capital included a great deal of water, sand, and mud. [...]
A scrap of paper in the Library of Congress, from around March, 1791, shows the earliest appearance of the plan. With a few quick strokes of his pen, Thomas Jefferson outlined a master vision: the single word “President” above the future location of the White House, and another word, “Capitol,” to the east. In between, there would be “public walks,” which was an accurate description of the Mall to come.
Jefferson was channelling the ancients as he daydreamed of the future. Over a small stream, he sketched the word “Tyber,” after Rome’s river. A nearby elevation called Jenkins Hill would soon be renamed Capitol Hill, after Rome’s Capitoline. Soon, elaborate street plans, with parks, grids, and slashing diagonals resembling those of Versailles, would be traced over a terrain that still housed more bears than people. [...]
Sometimes the waters demand attention more urgently. In 2006, the long-forgotten Tiber Creek reasserted itself, by rising up from its underground bed, where it still courses below Constitution Avenue, and threatening the actual Constitution of the United States. That document is preserved in a secure vault in the National Archives, along with the Declaration of Independence. After a severe rainstorm, the underground waters rose rapidly, stopping, fortunately, well short of the documents, but reaching alarming levels, coursing through the Archive’s basement and a theatre, where visitors could find an unwelcome reflecting pool the next day, lapping their feet.
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