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Who is currently in charge in the US? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris? President-on-paper Joe Biden? Or is it in fact president-elect Donald Trump? Many signs point to the latter, not least the undeniable reality that the centre of American political power has already shifted about 1,000 miles to the south: from the grand neoclassical designs of the White House and the Capitol to the gilded-age-meets-Louis-XIV shrine of Mar-a-Lago.
When Marjorie Merriweather Post — the breakfast cereals heiress who commissioned the Florida resort a century ago — left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government upon her death in 1973, the then administration decided it wasn’t worth the hassle or the expense. The estate was given back to the Post Foundation, which sold it to Trump in 1985. He converted it into a private members’ club in 1994. But Post’s idea that it should become a “Winter White House” was finally made a reality during the 45th president’s first term in office. And despite the fact he is not yet the 47th, the description now seems more fitting than ever.
In recent weeks, a constant flow of billionaires, politicians and other forms of power broker and sycophant has passed through the Palm Beach palace. Elon Musk seems to have decamped there semi-permanently. Techno-romantic venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says he is — how altruistic — spending half his time in the club to “help out”. The Reform UK party’s leader Nigel Farage and treasurer Nick Candy have been pictured there, grinning alongside Musk.
And why wouldn’t they? I have been inside Mar-a-Lago a few times and, contrary to popular belief, it is for the most part very tasteful. Trump is praised by members and local residents for preserving original features. One sees no ketchup dripping down the walls. The only signs that you are on his property — rather than any other glitzy private club — are the “TRUMP” WI-FI network; the TRUMP coat of arms (changed from INTEGRITAS when he took the place over) emblazoned on everything from napkins to doormats; the framed magazine covers on the walls of the entrance hall; and, yes, that rather flattering portrait in the bar.
Trump understands instinctively what other politicians struggle to get their heads around, including the power of how things look. And a beautiful private members’ club on an immaculate, sunny, palm-tree-dotted strip of land is an appealing invitation — even to the already very wealthy (and even if the menu and music selection haven’t changed for about two decades, as members tell me).
He understands that having a glitzy backdrop for announcements and interviews makes him appear presidential when he’s not even in power. Indeed, you only have to glance at the soaring Trump Tower in Manhattan, with its 34-inch-high brass capital lettering above the entrance, to see how powerfully the former property developer uses architecture as propaganda.
This thought occurred to me while watching a screening of Stardust, a delightful 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’d go for soap.”
The question of what exactly the American right is trying to sell in its crusade against modern architecture over the past few years is intriguing. Earlier this year, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson went on a Roger Scruton-esque rant about how “postmodern” architecture is “designed to demoralise and . . . destroy your spirit.”
And in 2020 Trump himself, a man who made his fortune building tower blocks, signed an executive order decreeing that all new federal buildings must be “beautiful”. The order (later rescinded by Biden) also decried the “discordant mixture of classical and modernist designs” seen in many federal buildings — a strange complaint, perhaps, from a man who has a Versailles-style apartment in the penthouse of a skyscraper, but then Trump never worries too much about consistency.
It 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 have sympathy with the idea that buildings should be beautiful, though I don’t believe Trump’s promised “golden age of America” will materialise. With his gilded Winter White House, though, he gets to pretend to the influence peddlers and oligarchs who swirl greedily around him that it can. For them, indeed, it has already.