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Your guide to what the 2024 US elections mean for Washington and the world
Who is currently in charge in the US? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris? The president in the role Joe Biden? Or is it actually President-elect Donald Trump? Many signs point to the latter, among them the undeniable reality that the center of American political power has already shifted some 1,000 miles to the south: from the grand neoclassical designs of the White House and the Capitol to the Gilded Age and Louis – XIV sanctuary of Mar-a-Lago.
When Marjorie Merriweather Post, the breakfast cereal heiress who commissioned the Florida resort a century ago, left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government after her death in 1973, the then-management decided it wasn’t worth the expense. . The property was returned to the Post Foundation, which sold it to Trump in 1985. He turned it into a private members’ club in 1994. But Post’s idea that it should become a “Winter White House” was eventually realized. reality during the first term of the 45th president. And even though it’s not number 47 yet, the description now seems more apt than ever.
In recent weeks, a steady stream of billionaires, politicians and other forms of the powerful and sycophants have passed through the Palm Beach palace. Elon Musk appears to have moved there semi-permanently. Technoromantic Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says he is (how altruistic) and spends half his time at the club. “help”. Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage and treasurer Nick Candy have been In the photo, smiling next to Musk..
And why wouldn’t they? I have been Inside Mar-a-Lago a few times and, contrary to popular belief, for the most part it is in very good taste. Trump is praised by members and local residents for preserving original features. one does not see ketchup dripping down the walls. The only signs that you’re on their property, rather than some other glitzy private club, are the “TRUMP” WI-FI network; TRUMP’s coat of arms (changed from INTEGRITAS when he took office) emblazoned on everything from napkins to doormats; the framed magazine covers on the walls of the entrance hall; and yes, that quite flattering portrait at the bar
Trump instinctively understands what other politicians have trouble understanding, including the power of like things look. And a beautiful private members’ club on a pristine, sunny, palm-dotted stretch of land is an attractive invitation, even for the already very wealthy (and even if the menu and music selection haven’t changed in about two decades , as the members tell me).
He understands that having a flashy backdrop for ads and interviews makes him look presidential when he’s not even in power. In fact, you only have to look at the towering Trump Tower in Manhattan, with its 34-inch-high brass letters above the entrance, to see how powerfully the former real estate developer uses architecture as propaganda.
This thought occurred to me while watching a screening of star dust, a delight new documentary about the postmodernist architectural power couple Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (I was moderating a discussion at the Barbican with the directors, one of whom is Venturi and Scott Brown’s son). “It’s all propaganda,” Scott Brown says in the film, mischievously comparing ancient Greek temples to Las Vegas billboards. “Would you rather be sold religion or soap? I would go for soap.”
The question of what exactly the American right is trying to sell in its crusade against modern architecture in recent years is an intriguing one. Earlier this year, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson held a Roger Scruton style rant about how “postmodern” architecture is “designed to demoralize and… . . “Destroy your spirit.”
And in 2020 Trump himself, a man who made his fortune building towers, signed an executive order decreeing that all new federal buildings must be “beautiful.” The order (later rescinded by Biden) also decried the “discordant mix of classical and modernist designs” seen in many federal buildings, an odd complaint, perhaps, from a man who has a Versailles style apartment in the attic of a skyscraper, but then Trump you never worry too much about coherence.
It all comes down to selling the idea that traditional conservative values are the only thing that can save America and nostalgia for a country that no longer exists. I sympathize with the idea that buildings must be beautifulalthough I do not believe that the “golden age of America” promised by Trump will materialize. Yet with his gilded Winter White House, he can pretend to the influence peddlers and oligarchs who hungrily revolve around him that he can do it. For them, in fact, it already has.