Trigger warning. Some readers may find this disturbing. Not everything Donald Trump says is mad and a lie. Not all of it is about money. Some of it is even worth saying. When he came to office, one of Trump’s first actions was extraordinary. He directed his fire at what he saw as the ugliness of American architecture. He demanded that at least federal buildings should be “visually identifiable as civic buildings, and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States”. All plans had to be submitted to Washington for his approval.
There was more than an element of psychological obsession in such bureaucracy. American classicism – born of an admiration for France’s republicans – was a cult throughout the 19th century. The White House was based on a Dublin mansion. This week it was announced that it is to get what it has always lacked, a sumptuous new ballroom in which to receive and entertain foreign dignitaries. It is to be classical, with no nonsense about trying to make it look modern. That a president should seek to revive both regional and European style in the face of America’s relentless modernism is a breath of fresh air.
That aesthetic interest extends to landscape. Trump left Scotland this week clearly still seething over the wind turbines waving over his coastal Turnberry and Aberdeen golf courses. At Turnberry eight tower over a hill inland. The president cannot avoid the sight of wind turbines. “Ugly as hell”, “monstrosities”, “so noisy and so dangerous”, and a threat to “Scotland’s tourism industry”, he has described them.
Turnberry has lost Trump tens of millions of pounds over the decade since he bought it, but he loves golf and his mother’s home country of Scotland. The course also has the most exquisite view over an old lighthouse to the prominent island of Ailsa Craig across the water. There is no question: the turbines spoil the setting.
Whatever Trump says about wind power killing birds and driving whales mad – most of it rubbish – there is no denying that about 4,000 giant turbines are now desecrating Scotland’s in-shore waters. There is no sign of any Scottish politician showing the slightest concern for their visual impact. The chief consideration is a turbine’s proximity to the grid, in other words profit. The price has been a real loss of wildness in Scotland’s once-glorious islands.
Trump may be wrong to deride the value of renewable energy, and he may talk nonsense about other evils of turbines. But he is not wrong to demand that we should consider how and where to locate them. He pleads that in the US they are “killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains”, and he is right. From what I have seen in California, turbines are located without a thought for their scenic impact.
The reality is that I cannot recall a single British minister who would these days mention scenic beauty as a consideration in any area of policy, be it energy or planning or transportation. A generation ago, few in Britain would likewise have dared to complain about the building of ugly petrol stations in open country, where most now lie empty and derelict. So now no one – other than Trump – dares complain about turbines. Generally sent well offshore by the Cameron government in the 2010s, they are now to return onshore, enticed by the energy secretary Ed Miliband’s crazy subsidies.
In spring came Trump’s most remarkable initiative. He announced he would take over from New York’s transport authority the future of its notoriously grim Penn Station, the original having been demolished in 1963. An adventurous plan had been hatched during his first term by his president of the Commission of Fine Arts, Justin Shubow. It was for a return to the station’s neoclassical forerunner, widely regarded as the US’s finest terminus and partner to the majestic Grand Central up the road.
In April Trump duly appointed the federal rail operator Amtrak to revive Shubow’s project with a price tag of $7.5bn. Its majesty is to rise again on the initiative of a president eager to demonstrate stylistic taste in the American public sector. Eat your heart out Liverpool Street; get lost Euston.
Clearly there is a limit to what Trump can change in just four years in office. Much of what he does is psychodrama and playacting. The president with whom he is becoming comparable is Teddy Roosevelt after 1900. He too tested the limits of presidential power. He too was frantic to lead the daily news agenda. But he too seemed to care about America’s natural environment, its forests and deserts, and a role for Washington in their custodianship.
To show aesthetic sensitivity is today regarded as a weakness in a politician. Breathe the words art, conservation or natural beauty in the presence of Keir Starmer and you are dismissed as a nimby.
Where Trump ends up leading his country and the western world may well prove alarming. It is certainly impossible to predict. But I find it refreshing to have a leader unashamed to talk of beauty and ugliness. I like him being ready to debate style. Above all, I welcome him calling out a scenic abomination when he sees one.
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