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You go to the Vietnam Memorial and you see one name, two names, people who have died in the Vietnam War.

During a stop at a Vietnam memorial to honor Veterans Day, reporters asked her about protests around the country over the civilian deaths in Gaza.

Because the park service feared that a protracted public process like the one for the Vietnam memorial would yield another divisive mess, the law required that the office of the Secretary of Defense decide on and issue the list of names, all at once with no outside input.

It’d be like the Vietnam Memorial, except instead of a powerful minimalist tribute to the lives of thousands of lost soldiers, it’d be a bunch of creepy little clown heads on sticks.

Philip Kennicott’s Nov. 20 Arts & Style Critic’s Notebook column, “The Vietnam memorial blazed a path that no one followed,” got much right, from the memorial’s architectural novelty to its apolitical approach.