Combine an all-but-abandoned zombie highway project with South Carolina legislators’ hearty appetite for naming public property for living politicians, and what do you get? The President Donald J. Trump Highway, of course.

In one sense, putting this president’s name on a highway would be no different than naming one after Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, or whoever the next Democratic president turns out to be: It’d be a bad idea, just as naming it after any other living politician (or political donor) would be a bad idea. It reeks of political payola.

We wouldn’t even be crazy about naming a road after a dead president because, really, don’t we have all sorts of S.C. related dead people and living places we could name them after?

But this latest effort is special, because it’s an unbuilt road — a road that needs to remain unbuilt but that Horry County officials and a handful of politicians in other parts of the state just can’t give up on. No matter that our state has much more pressing highway needs and that there are far less expensive, faster and less problematic options for getting people easily into and quickly (in case of a storm) out of the Grand Strand.

Legislation in the S.C. House directs the Transportation Department to take down signs that say “Future I-73” and replace them with signs that say “President Donald J. Trump Highway.”

Buying a whole new set of signs for a highway that might never be built is fitting for this particular boondoggle. Interstate 73 is a mostly imaginary route from Michigan to South Carolina, dreamed up by local officials in a tiny West Virginia town and sold to similarly situated places along the route as a way to detour traffic to their towns. The federal government never wanted or needed it to facilitate interstate travel; if the Myrtle Beach spur is built, it likely would end at Interstate 95, well inside of South Carolina. Interstate indeed.

It’s refreshing, at least, that instead of pretending that they’re trying to “thank” the president for his support of the highway, Horry County Councilman Tom Anderson said the quiet part out loud: “He seems to like his name on things.” In doing so, he unmasked the very thinly veiled ploy to praise the president into intervening to bring the rejected dream back to life.

Hey Mr. President: We think you’re so self-centered — and shallow and stupid — that you’d commit billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to a highway that even the state of South Carolina doesn’t think is important enough to fund.

How insulting.

Of course, what have they got to lose? It’s not like the highway is going to get built on the merits. That’s why it wasn’t funded even during all those years it was backed by the powerful Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman. That’s why it hasn’t been funded even since Gov. Henry McMaster took over as a chief backer.

The Legislature needs to reject this road-to-be renaming scheme. More importantly, it needs to make it clear once and for all that if Horry County wants this highway, it’s going to have to find all the funding itself — without a penny from the state, and without the state helping to secure federal funding. Then lawmakers need to get moving on a plan to upgrade and widen existing highways to help move people quickly and safely in and out of the Grand Strand.

And while they don’t do as many of these naming things as they used to, our lawmakers need to finally pass that law that prohibits naming public property after living politicians. Maybe they’d never come to regret having Mr. Trump’s name affixed to an unbuilt highway. But there’s a lot to regret about the naming of actual roads after S.C. politicians who turned out to be crooked.