The Monument's Shadow Succession: NPS Proposes 'Presidential Legitimacy Quotient' Based on How Long Each President's Shadow Falls on Washington Obelisk During State Funerals
The National Park Service has announced what it calls the “Presidential Legitimacy Quotient,” a controversial new metric that will determine how a president is remembered by measuring the duration of their shadow on the Washington Monument during a state funeral.
“This is the culmination of three decades of data collection,” said Dr. Evelyn Halloway, director of Monument Shadowology, a newly created division within the National Park Service’s Office of Geopolitical Symbolism. “We found that presidents whose shadows intersected the monument’s base for more than 14 minutes during the eulogy phase demonstrated greater public sympathy in exit polls.”