President Obama celebrates after hitting a long chip shot during a round of golf at Mid-Pacific Country Club on Dec. 21, 2015, in Kailua, Hawaii. (Evan Vucci/AP)..Stanley Chang hatched a plan last year to overcome seven years of failed attempts to name something after Hawaii’s most famous native son.
His target: Sandy Beach, a stunning strip of sand and volcanic ash that he hoped to re-christen “Barack Obama Beach.”
Chang had heard from a congressional staffer that Obama often spoke fondly of body surfing there as a teen. And he had read an interview in which the president described his ideal day as one spent at the Oahu beach.
“It was almost a prose poem,” Chang said. Obama imagined a sea turtle swimming in profile, “like a hieroglyph in the water,” the rolling crest of a perfect wave, the sunset “glittering” as the swimsuit-clad commander in chief sipped a soda.
Chang, who recently stepped down from the Honolulu City Council, submitted his bill, insisting that the beach was one of the president’s “favorite places in the world.”
President Obama eats a “Snowbama” shave ice, with a combination of flavors, outside the Island Snow shop in Kailua, Hawaii, in 2010. (Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Like all of the previous Obama naming efforts, however, it has gone nowhere. This week, the first family returned to Hawaii for their eighth straight vacation here since Obama was elected president in 2008. For Hawaiians, the visit will mean traffic snarls and tight restrictions on flying any drones that Santa might have left under the Christmas tree.
Obama’s return to the place of his birth also calls to mind an embarrassing record of legislative stumbles: Since 2009, Hawaii’s politicos have sought to name two schools, an abandoned lot, a scenic overlook and two state holidays after Obama. An effort to put the 1960s-era cinder-block apartment building — where he lived — on the National Historic registry also fell short.
For now, the most famous thing that bears Obama’s name here is the “Snowbama,” a shaved ice that’s a mix of lemon, lime, cherry and passion guava flavors and sells for $4 at Island Snow, one of the president’s favorite vacation haunts.
Other states have had better luck naming things for Obama. Earlier this month, Florida’s Riviera Beach renamed Old Dixie Highway for Obama, and it wasn’t even the first town in Palm Beach County to honor him. Nearby Pahokee had already converted East First Street to Barack Obama Boulevard.
Other presidents have also had more success with namings. The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, led by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, has renamed 109 buildings, roads and schools for the 40th president, including the Washington area’s Reagan National Airport. Its goal is to name one thing for President Reagan in all of America’s counties, which number more than 3,000.
The reasons for the failures in Hawaii are many and varied. Locals, protective of their Polynesian culture, in some cases have balked at abandoning traditional Hawaiian names for places. “People here believe that land has spirit and feeling,” said Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell. “It’s not just dirt.”
Cost has torpedoed at least one attempt. In other instances, critics have complained that naming efforts are premature as long as Obama is still in office, still so young and still among the living. Local laws prohibit politicians from naming parks or public buildings after people until they have devoted at least 50 years of service to the community or are dead.
“Because he’s still president, it felt a little goofy and opportunistic for people to run around trying to honor him as if his public service was already complete,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Sometimes, as in the case of Sandy Beach, it’s hard to identify a single point of failure. A few opponents of Chang’s effort simply liked the old name. Others fretted that naming Sandy Beach after Obama might actually be dangerous. The beach boasts big waves, and a notoriously shallow shore break led to 16 severe spinal cord injuries between 2009 and 2013.
“A lot of people break their necks there,” Chang said. “There was a worry that tourists who are not experienced body surfers would be drawn to it because it was Obama’s favorite place.” Sensing the mounting opposition to his proposal, Chang pulled it.
The long, fruitless struggle to stick Obama’s name on something more substantial than a snow cone hints at an even bigger question: How will Hawaii’s first president will be remembered in his home state when he leaves office?
Obama, who passed on the state’s $75 million offer to host his presidential library in favor of Chicago, regularly cites the island as the source of his steady temperament.
“I feel like it fortified me. There’s a certain element of chill,” he said of his Hawaiian upbringing earlier this year. “You got a little Hawaii in the mind.”
