President Donald Trump’s bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House reveals him to have the aesthetic taste of a mildly successful professional con artist. The Oval Office already lacks only the requirement that all who enter the sanctum must wear grills and large jewel-encrusted chains around their neck with perhaps a clock hanging from it, or a crucifix.
Never has there been a more important man in the world with less class.
A 90,000-square-foot ballroom will be built in place of the demolished East Wing, a ballroom. Did we need a ballroom? It is certain to be grotesque, out of character, out of place, out of this world. Early betting favors the opening-night performance of either Kid Rock or maybe a full card of greased wrestling.
The Rose Garden is gone, replaced by a concrete slab and a forest of flag poles. The new Air Force One will struggle to get off the ground with the burden of all that extra weight in gold bathroom fixtures.
You can tell a lot about a guy by his place. You often see Trump-like conversions happen in Minnesota’s lake country. Somebody buys a traditional old cabin with a screened porch and those heavy canvas awnings and a winding old moss-grown footpath down to the dock, and the next thing you know, there sits a mansion loaded with framed centaurs done in purple velvet, life-size Elvis statues and probably a pontoon boat out front with a radar dish and three 200-horsepower outboards hanging off the stern. That misses the point of a pontoon boat, not to mention living on a nice piece of lakeshore. There is no accounting for taste and to each his own, but you look stupid, pal, like you got lucky with a hedge fund and you didn’t have a clue what to do with the money.
There’s a difference, though. We don’t own that guy’s lakeshore. But we do own the White House. And everything Trump does to it he does without permission or consultation and without a note of grace. He apparently knew a guy with a bulldozer and here we go.
Well, yes, but FDR built a swimming pool, to which it might be countered that pools make good palliative care for polio sufferers.
OK, but Richard Nixon built a bowling alley. Wouldn’t you rather have had Nixon go down to the basement and roll a few frames and not be seen by the public walking around talking to portraits? Jacqueline Kennedy installed art and artifacts of history, saying that it would be a sacrilege to merely redecorate. She said there must be a purpose served by the White House.
For Donald, the purpose of the White House is him.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Trump got elected. He was the antidote to the insane ideology of progressives who are systematically ruining cities and universities. Here came a fellow who didn’t buy the DEI nonsense, didn’t believe men should compete against women in sports, wasn’t falling for the ridiculous affectation of multiple pronouns, liked the police and didn’t believe cities should burn at the hands of rioters, and he didn’t hold the military in contempt.
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Trump’s problem is that he takes great liberties with his possession of the antidote. He over-corrects everything. If Trump were to insist, for example, that the Christopher Columbus statue be reinstalled on the Minnesota Capitol grounds, he would also insist that the Capitol should be called the Columbus Building. If he deemed a DEI hire not suitable for a particular job, he would find the same person not suitable for any job. Other presidents have managed to deport illegal immigrants without a display of military strength.
Donald is The Great Over Corrector, even with ballrooms.
They could have knocked down a wall or two in the White House and created a quaint new banquet hall, but The Great Over Corrector doesn’t do quaint. He knew a guy with a bulldozer and there goes the entire East Wing.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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