When the city of Centralia dedicates a monument on Tuesday to the 1996 visit of President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their spouses, it will be less about politics than the historical significance of the event.

The city will officially unveil the monument, which is already in place at the corner of Tower Avenue and Pine Street, at 6 p.m. Tuesday during a ceremony that is free and open to the public.

Everyone involved in the project, from politicians to city staff, say the monument is a commemoration of the fact that the country’s two highest executive officials will rarely, if ever, travel together again in the post-Sept. 11 world. It is not, they say, an endorsement of the Clinton administration.

“There will be some criticism, as this is politics, concerning the individual,” said Polo Enriquez, Centralia’s economic development director. “But it wouldn’t matter what president it was, or who the individual was. This is a very unique instance in time and I’ve made it a point to say we’re not talking about personalities here, we’re talking about circumstances.”

The monument itself stands about 4 feet tall, and is fashioned from black granite shipped in from China. Designed by the Centralia Historical Preservation Commission and commissioned by Sticklin Funeral Chapel in Centralia, it features an engraved presidential seal and a bronze plaque with an inscription that alludes to the significance of the visit.

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LaPlaunt, who was in the crowd when the presidential caravan rolled through almost 12 years ago, offered himself as an example of the desired separation of political opinion from historical significance when it came to the monument.

“I had to kind of divorce myself from all of that because I am not necessarily a big fan of the Clintons,” LaPlaunt said. “But that is not what this about.”............................