Unless you live under a rock, you are most likely well aware of our lame-duck Congress and have seen how “political” things have become in our society. It is true that politics are useful, but in the act of paying tribute to our great politicians, I would like to see the politics kept to a minimum.

Last week plans to move forward with the construction of a monument dedicated to our country’s 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, were objected to by the family.

This project is 14 years in the making, but the family claims that the design is too extravagant and is not designed to last. The family has protested various designs of the monuments because they claimed that they did not do the former president justice for his achievements.

Eisenhower’s achievements include orchestrating D-Day, winning the war against the Nazis, keeping the United States at peace during the Cold War, ending the Korean War, signing the bill that created the interstate highway system and balancing the budget three times. A monument would be a great way to pay tribute to this great man who spent a lot of his time serving our country.

After the congressional hearing last week, the design was criticized by some for not fitting in with the other monuments, such as the Lincoln, Jefferson or Washington monuments. The design does have support of some Congress members, but there is proposed legislation to start the whole process over with a new design contest and not allow any money for the project until a new design is selected. The project is allowed $142 million in total.

Considering President Eisenhower died in 1969, some progress — any progress — should be moving along. To me, (disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about architecture) the architect and the family should work together to create a design that best captures the late president. Both parties have the same goal in mind, so it appears as though there is some form of communication gap.

If you paid any attention to the Harkin Institute controversy in February some of this may sound familiar.

Here’s a quick recap for those of you who didn’t pay attention: The Harkin Institute at Iowa State provides interdisciplinary research and teaching on public policy issues. The idea was that Harkin would give a collection of his congressional works to the institute, along with funding. When he found out that the institute was barred from studying agriculture (his area of specialty) he withdrew his donations claiming that the academic freedom of the institution was a hinderance.

In both cases there are people who have the good intentions of paying tribute to a great politician who has served our country well, but our politics have greatly complicated both of these projects. In our overly political world this is not surprising, but that does not make it acceptable.

I do not understand why a design being “too innovative” or a research institution not being allowed to study certain topics are problems that arise. I believe these things should be kept simple and should be able to be implemented or constructed without too many issues. I believe that these issues hinder the amount of respect that is attempting to be paid to the recipient.

There are obstacles to every goal, but everybody involved in the process should have the same end goal. These obstacles would not be created by people working together. That is in an ideal situation, which does not always happen, but in these situations, it should not be happening. All it should take is some teamwork to get the job done — and done well. Maybe this is a concept that our country is losing its understanding of.

When all is said and done, hopefully all parties involved are happy with the results of their work and the targeted people feel appreciated and respected for all of the work they have done.

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Hannah Dankbar is a senior in political science and spanish from Johnston, Iowa.