The Irish Times view on Donald Trump’s buildings: monumental megalomania

Donald Trump’s first public reaction to heavy Republican losses in the midterms was not to try to chart a new route forward for policy. Nor was it to offer a considered analysis of the defeat. Instead, he invited reporters to visit the work underway on the new White House ballroom. It was, he reflected proudly in a 20-minute speech, a structure “the likes of which has never been seen anywhere.”

The next day he signed an executive order designating the Oval Office, the Outer Oval Office and the Cabinet Room as a national monument and federal landmark, a move purporting to prevent future presidents from altering them. These rooms have been redecorated in various shades of gold by Trump. “It won’t be able to be taken down, destroyed, touched or anything else,” he told reporters.

Presumably the next president could just sign another order indicating they wanted to tear the whole thing down. But legacy is clearly on Trump’s mind. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which had gone green with algae, was recently cleaned up and a 250 ft “triumphal arch” is planned. The interior of the White House has been transformed. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory (a garishly-decorated US chain) Just gold everywhere,” said Barack Obama.

Leaders seeking to leave an architectural legacy are nothing new, even if Trump has taken it to another level. In France, Georges Pompidou left the Centre Pompidou, while François Mitterrand reshaped the Paris skyline. The former president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, created a new capital city, Astana. Closer to home, former taoiseach Charles Haughey redeveloped Government Buildings in the 1980s at a cost – then seen as extravagant – of £17 million. Like Trump, he installed a helipad (Haughey’s was on the roof). It was rarely used and later decommissioned.

Trump can console himself with the knowledge that, while Mitterrand’s Louvre pyramid was quickly revered, his Bastille Opera was at the time likened to both “a hospital” and “an elephant”.