When I first started skimming The Republican Party’s 2024 policy platform, a 16-page document titled “Make America Great Again!”, is largely Trumpian, but not surprisingly. With its strange capitalization and unusually high number of exclamation marks, the platform It calls for the largest “deportation program” in American history, to stop “woke” government, and to end “market distortion restrictions” on oil, natural gas, and coal. I never expected that, but the terms “climate change,” “global warming,” and “the environment” were not mentioned.
But there was one passage that stood out to me. In a chapter titled “Bringing Common Sense to Government and Renewing the Pillars of American Civilization,” the plan calls for restoring “the beauty of America.”
The Republican Party will promote the beauty of public architecture and preserve our natural treasures. We will build on our nation’s cherished symbols and restore genuine conservation efforts.
That was all. No explanation. It’s just weird to me. What exactly is “our national treasure”? What does it mean to restore “true” preservation efforts? And what is “beauty” in public architecture? As CNN quipped in a recent commentary on the party platform, “It’s not clear when or how the Republican Party thinks American beauty is over, but they clearly want to restore it.” Of all the things they support, are the Republicans asking for… prettier buildings?
Clues from Trump’s presidency point to this, indeed. In an executive order on December 21, 2020, then-President Donald Trump praised Greek and Roman architecture as being designed to “beautify public spaces and inspire civic pride.” Likewise, classical-style buildings such as the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the White House, “have become iconic symbols of our system of government,” Trump said.
But Trump wrote that government buildings in the 1950s and 1960s had become “undistinguishable” and “unattractive” because of their brutalist design aesthetic. He criticized the federal building in San Francisco as being designed by architects to be admired. When it opened in 2007, San Francisco Chronicle Urban design critic John King praised its eco-friendly design, including natural ventilation, calling it “provocative architecture at its finest.” Trump said residents view it as “one of the ugliest structures in the city.” (I lived in San Francisco. I agree.) To correct this tragedy, Trump has directed his administration to embrace classic, traditional architecture that “enhance and beautify our public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble our country, and command the respect of the general public.” So the Republicans’ call to renew “the pillars of American civilization” could literally mean building more of them.
‘Beauty’ does not exist in a vacuum.
But as some scholars at the time pointed out, the use of classical architecture in America has a troubled history. Reinhold Martin, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, said: The New York Times In 2020, Trump’s order made no real sense, but was an effort to “use culture to send a coded message about white supremacy and political hegemony.” As my former colleague Camille Squires has reported, there is a long and ugly history of pro-slavery Southerners using classical architecture to justify their causes. “Beauty” does not exist in a vacuum.
Meanwhile, “national treasure” can mean all sorts of things. Landmarks? Historic sites? Artifacts? The human delight of Dolly Parton? (Half-joking.) Once again, the Trump administration has provided some clues. In an August 2020 announcement to mark the Great American Outdoors Act, a $9.5 billion law to support national parks, the White House praised America’s national parks as “our most important national treasures.” So while that’s what the Republican platform says, I don’t expect Trump to do anything to protect them. Just months after he signed the Great American Outdoors Act and days after losing the 2020 election, the Trump administration moved to undermine it.
I have no idea what “our country’s precious symbol” and “genuine” preservation efforts are. What the GOP stands for Trump’s Land conservation (generally considered greenwashing), species conservation, or something else? I have been unable to find any mention of these phrases in the Trump administration records, and the Trump campaign has not yet responded to my request for clarification (if it does, I will update this post). Last week, at Trump’s behest, Republican National Convention delegates passed the platform in private, with little editing.
But perhaps the point is the vagueness. By failing to define these terms, whether intentional or not, the Trump campaign effectively silences the concerns of many voters who support clean air and water, land conservation, and wildlife protection, but fails to make any substantive promises. Of course, without aggressive action at the highest levels of government, we risk losing our country’s natural beauty as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification worsen a host of other environmental crises. But at least our buildings will look nice.
