NAMING OF AIRPORT IS FITTING TRIBUTE

The naming of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport -- a move approved by Congress last week -- is a fitting tribute to a former American president who managed to do more for the positive undergirding of this nation than any other president in the final half of the century.

Naysayers point out that it was President Reagan who, as one of the first actions of his first term, slapped down a strike of air-traffic controllers by firing them. Naming an airport after the president who took such an action is like rubbing salt in a wound, they say.

Not so. It is more than appropriate to use the airport symbolism for a president who immediately set the tone of his eight years in office by taking swift action and exhibiting strong leadership at a time when the direction of the nation had been drifting aimlessly, slipping all the while into a morass of Big Government and failing social spending.

Was it politically correct to fire air-traffic controllers? No. Would a Democratic president or even a Republican with less backbone have taken such firm action? Not likely.

But none of that mattered to Reagan. On behalf of the American people, he set the nation of a course of recovery that has led to the current economic climate that has to be rated as about as good as it gets. That is Reagan's legacy, and that is why the airport has been renamed.