Is Obama using Mt. McKinley to troll the gold bugs?

Well, if he wanted to subtly troll the gold-bug wing of the right, renaming Mt. McKinley would be a crafty way of doing so

Barack Obama
(Image credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Ohio Republicans are miffed that President Obama intends to take Alaska's Mt. McKinley, named after our 25th president and Buckeye State native William McKinley, and rebrand it "Denali." It's a state pride thing, we're told. And okay, sure. It's kind of understandable — even if Ohio's "outrage" seems a bit perfunctory.

But Ohioans aren't the only folks on the right peeved about the switcheroo of North America's tallest peak. For some, Obama isn't just trampling the legacy of the man who led the United States to victory in the Spanish-American War — he's also throwing shade at the gold standard.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.