IT IS a perplexing rite of passage that the United States’ most cherished memorials must almost always endure public outcry in their infancy. Following the tradition that includes Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the estimated $142 million tribute to Dwight D. Eisenhower has been bombarded with rhetorical chaff and calls to begin the 15-year planning process all over again. Architects have lambasted the scheme of Frank Gehry, considered by some to be the nation’s most distinguished architect, to build a four-acre park near Capitol Hill with modernist metal tapestries and statues of Mr. Eisenhower as a child and leader.

Congress has jumped on this bandwagon. It has refused to release construction funds since 2013 and severely cut operational expenses. Last month, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who sits on the House Natural Resources Committee, proposed a bill to dismiss the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission and its staff.

This bill was accompanied by a 56-page staff report that attacks the selection process and the commission’s management of the project. But while the report, sensationally titled “A Five-Star Folly,” raises worthwhile questions, the hype surrounding it is overblown and unhelpful to charting a course forward. The report unfairly criticizes the design’s incompatibility with the so-called “seven design principles.” In reality, these principles are subjectively interpreted, and Mr. Gehry has been open to input. Tapestries have been re-positioned, statues of Mr. Eisenhower added and columns tinkered with. Any presidential memorial, involving bureaucratic processes and aiming to whittle down a presidency into metal and stone, will inevitably go through numerous revisions....Continue Reading