No. of Recommendations: 6
Russ Douthat has an piece on the ballroom, arguing why it's a perfect illustration of part of Trump's appeal:
Put more simply, progressives and urban institutions are good at protecting architectural beauty where it already exists, lousy at making sure that new development happens on a reasonable timeline and consistently terrible at encouraging loveliness in the developments that do get built.
The case for Trump’s ballroom is connected to these failures. First, it is simply good to build a White House ballroom, the presidency has needed one for a long time, and it’s absurd that the leader of a superpower has to host state dinners inside temporary tents.
No doubt there was a more careful and sensitive way to pursue the project. But exquisite care and sensitivity are part of the reason that, in so many liberal-leaning jurisdictions, apartment towers, power plants and high-speed rail lines vanish into developmental limbo. It’s just a small example of why Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach appeals; the president’s eagerness to pre-empt objections and just do something that seems necessary is part of why voters find him attractive.https://archive.is/CD3et#selection-735.0-787.64I happen to think Douthat's right. Americans across the political spectrum are frustrated that it takes so long for government to do anything. A "normal" effort to create a large space for the Executive to have big functions (so that they don't have to be in tents) would take
years just to get through the federal decision-making process, to say nothing of the inevitable litigation that would follow - and wouldn't necessarily work any better. Yes, it would have certainly been
smaller - so it wouldn't "dwarf" the other two parts of the WH. But it probably would end up being far less useful for the intended purpose, a 'kludge' trying to accommodate the ideas of countless groups that all have very strong opinions about what the WH should look like.
Used to be that the federal government could go from deciding to do a project to starting it in a matter of months - the TVA, for example, was approved in May and construction on the first project began in October of 1933. Those days are long behind us...and sometimes it seems that Democrats are fetishizing the red tape, veto points, and years- or decades-long review processes that make it very difficult for the government to respond to current needs. Witness the failure of Biden's signature spending packages (the BIL and the IRA) to actually get things built in the scant
two full years between being passed in 2022 and the election in 2024.
I very much hope that the Democrats kind of let this go without focusing too much energy on it, because I don't think it's as helpful to the cause as some members of the coalition think it is....
