Rico's rants: Denying Denali

Jennifer Steinhauer has an article in The New York Times about a disputed name for a mountain:

To be clear, President William McKinley has one of the largest grave sites of any former American president, so perhaps a mountaintop was a bit superfluous.
But this has not stopped the political outrage— manufactured, deeply felt, and otherwise convenient, flowing from the state of Ohio, birthplace of the 25th president, on the heels of President Obama’s announcement that he was changing or, in the view of many Alaskans, restoring, the name of Mount McKinley to Denali (photo).
The announcement has created rare unity between Republican and Democratic Buckeyes against Obama under the well-worn complaint about excessive executive power, and even rarer agreement from members of both parties in Alaska praising the president.
“I’m deeply disappointed in this decision,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in a news release, echoed by Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio, who also felt the deep sting of McKinley being dissed. McKinley had never visited Alaska, perhaps in no small part because it was not even a state until 1959, in addition to his preference for staying close to home and campaigning from his front porch in Canton.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, has been working on this change legislatively for years, and applauded it, as did the junior Republican senator from her state, Dan Sullivan. “The naming rights already went to ancestors of the Alaskan native people, like those of my wife’s family,” Sullivan said. “For decades, Alaskans and members of our congressional delegation have been fighting for Denali to be recognized by the Federal government by its true name. I’m glad that the president respected this.”
Splitting the difference is Karl Rove. Having just written a book about McKinley, whose presidency he has long praised, Rove sees the publicity benefits of this dust-up: “Maybe the late president was doing me a favor.” But he also thinks “it would say something about the president if he found a gracious way to honor his forebear.”
There are also a lot of Americans, all due respect both to the 49th state and to the birthplace of Cincinnati chili, who find this and the debate over whether Denali means the “great one” or “high one” subjects of minimal importance and are far more concerned about the pope’s coming visit to the United States.
“We have no problem whatsoever with Alaskans,” said Kimberly Kenney, the curator of McKinley’s museum and library in Canton, Ohio, which is also home to his large grave site. “We are happy for them. It’s their mountain. It’s just a little bit sad.”
In Anchorage, as Air Force One made its way toward Alaska, residents seemed decidedly unconcerned with the feelings of Ohioans. A chalkboard outside the entrance to Darkhorse Coffee, a bustling cafe next to the convention center in downtown Anchorage, declared: “It’s Denali. Thank you, Mr. President.”
“McKinley was never even here,” said Chery Lelis, a hotel receptionist in Anchorage. She noted that this change reflected the reality that most people referred to the mountain as Denali anyway, as they did the park and the area surrounding it.
While McKinley may not have walked along the snowbanks of Alaska, he was a consequential president and the pride of Ohio. “The 1896 election was one of the most profound realignments in our nation,” Rove said, referring to a coalition of new Republican voters that McKinley’s election put into place, including working-class newcomers to the nation’s teeming cities. Rove also cited McKinley’s service in the Civil War, his stature as an abolitionist, his ability to work with Democrats at a time of partisan acrimony, and the grief that engulfed Ohio at the time of his assassination in 1901, six months into his second term. Americans surrounded a train carrying his widow, Rove said, and sang a patriotic song.
David Greenberg, a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, said that “McKinley was also a pioneer in forging the modern presidency.
“Teddy Roosevelt overshadowed him pretty quickly, but McKinley did a lot to make the presidency ‘modern,’ including shooting the first campaign film, which, when shown, had New York City audiences on their feet, convinced they were seeing the man himself,” Greenberg said.
The controversy surrounding the mountain’s name has been longstanding. After a gold prospector who had emerged from exploring the Alaska Range heard that McKinley had won the Republican presidential nomination, he said the tallest peak in North America, at more than twenty thousand feet, should be named in the nominee’s honor. It was formally recognized as Mount McKinley in 1917, but efforts to reverse it to Denali were started in 1975, when some in Alaska began to clamor for it.
The dispute long pitted former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska against former Representative Ralph Regula, a Republican whose district included Canton, and who worked with the Ohio congressional delegation to oppose any changes. In 1980, the national park surrounding it was named Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain maintained the name Mount McKinley.
Obama, in keeping with both his efforts to please Native Americans as of late and his zeal for second-term executive authority moves, gave the nod before his trip to Alaska.
“I don’t think he has that power to change it,” said Regula, who is ninety. “What’s he going to do next, change the Ohio River to the U.S. Freeway?”
Representative Michael R. Turner, a Republican from Ohio, also chafed at what he saw as a presidential power grab, vowed to soldier on in the name of Ohio’s pride. “The president’s recent actions to remove his name and undermine a prior act of Congress is disrespectful, and I will continue to fight for proper recognition of President McKinley’s legacy,” Turner said in a news release.
Kenney, of the William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum, chose to find a silver lining of sorts: Perhaps all the chitchat would draw Americans to Canton, not simply to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but also to revisit the president’s legacy, including his grave site. “He is our most significant artifact,” she said. “Some people are saying, ‘What did President McKinley do anyway?’ ” she added. “We would be happy to have them visit us in Canton.”

Slate has an article by Rachel E. Gross, a Slate editorial assistant, about the same renaming:

President William McKinley never traveled to Alaska. Bu,t in 1896, a gold prospector named William Dickey heard that McKinley had just won the Republican presidential nomination, and decided to dub North America’s tallest mountain peak in his honor. McKinley would go on to become our 25th president, and the mountain would thenceforth be known throughout the land as Mount McKinley.
The problem was that this particular peak already had a name. Long before it became Mount McKinley, members of the Native American Koyukon tribe had dubbed the twenty-tousand-foot mountain Denali, which fittingly means “the high one” in the tribe’s Athabascan language. And on the heels of his historic trip to highlight climate change in the Arctic, President Obama announced that he was changing it back: “With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska,” Obama’s Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.
Not everyone is pleased, including House Speaker John Boehner, who issued this statement:
There is a reason President McKinley’s name has served atop the highest peak in North America for more than a hundred years, and that is because it is a testament to his great legacy. McKinley served our country with distinction during the Civil War as a member of the Army. He made a difference for his constituents and his state as a member of the House of Representatives and as Governor of the great state of Ohio. And he led this nation to prosperity and victory in the Spanish-American War as the 25th President of the United States. I’m deeply disappointed in this decision.
The mountain’s name has been a source of tension between Alaskans and lawmakers in McKinley’s (and Boehner’s) home state of Ohio, who have clung tightly to the name ever since it was formally passed in 1917. Alaskans continue to refer to the peak as Denali, and have had a standing request to officially change the name back since 1975, when the state’s legislature passed a resolution but saw its efforts thwarted by an Ohio congressman.
So it’s no surprise that Ohio lawmakers are angry today. But some Native American leaders aren’t all that pleased with the President, either. That’s because, even as he preaches a respect for natural resources, and has finally made this name change a reality, Obama just this month gave the okay for more oil and gas drilling offshore. Now The New York Times reports that Native leaders, along with conservationists and climate activists, are gathering to protest Arctic drilling as Obama arrives in Anchorage.