Chris Trotter notes that vast edifices, paid for by wealthy aristocrats to secure favours, have historically been the special preserve of kings and emperors, not democratically-elected and democratically-accountable presidents

By Chris Trotter*

Its image graced a national bestseller. Indeed, the Edmonds family’s Christchurch factory could lay credible claim to being one of New Zealand’s most iconic buildings.

Standing amidst lovingly maintained gardens in the midst of Woolston’s industrial sprawl, the factory’s façade was an architectural oddity – as if a cottage had taken too many steroids. To top it off, the Edmonds family had placed their company’s slogan on the façade’s roof in letters three metres high.

“Sure to rise” was a reference to the company’s baking powder but, over time, New Zealanders would invest it with meanings of their own.

How does a building become iconic? Truthfully, the answer has very little to do with architecture. A building becomes iconic by virtue of being seen. It was the family’s decision to put the façade of its Woolston factory on the cover of the Edmonds Cookery Book – a publication whose 4 million sales meant that it could be found in just about every New Zealand kitchen – that transformed the building into a national icon.

It is, therefore, entirely understandable that when the building was demolished New Zealanders were crushed. No amount of submitting, or protesting, or last-minute appeals, made the slightest difference.

Edmonds had fallen victim to the quintessential corporate raider, Ron Brierly, in the 1980s. The century-old family company was very far from being the first to be asset-stripped and reduced to rubble, but the unique place it occupied in the national imagination meant that its destruction could not avoid making headlines.

Also unavoidable was the way in which the building (bowled-over and its gardens bulldozed flat in a matter of hours as local residents scrambled to rescue what they could of its contents) came to symbolise the way pre-1984 New Zealand had been flattened to make way for Roger Douglas’s free-market future. When those three-metre-high letters came crashing to the ground in 1990, everybody understood that “old” New Zealand would not rise again.

What stirred these thirty-five-year-old memories? It was the ruthless destruction of another iconic building – the East-wing of the White House in Washington DC. Somehow, heavy demolition equipment had made its way onto President’s Park – a supposedly federally-controlled National Park – and in a matter of hours reduced this 1942 addition to the White House complex to a pile of rubble.

Now, bowling-over an edifice that had stood beside the Executive Residence for a mere 83 years may not seem all that important. After all, the White House (so called for the white coat of paint applied to mask the extensive charring caused by British soldiers during the War of 1812, is an impressive 233 years old.

But that, surely, is the point. Every president since George Washington’s immediate successor, John Adams, has occupied the Executive Residence for the duration of his presidency. It has become an integral aspect of the office of president – alongside the Oath of Office and the Inaugural Address. So much so that the words themselves, “the White House”, have achieved synecdochical status. When a journalist declares “the White House said today”, they are referencing the president and his staff.

Prior to the present incumbent, no American president has remodelled and/or added to the Executive Residence and its attached edifices without first securing the active participation and explicit consent of Congress. The White House belongs to the American republic and its citizens, meaning the presidents who inhabit the residence do so ex officio – by virtue of their office – they do not own it, and they cannot, or, at least, they should not, change it without first consulting both the government and the people of the United States.

What, then, does it mean that the East Wing of the White House has been demolished in the absence of formal public consultation, and without congressional approval?

The actions of the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, can be construed in only one way. That he believes himself to be the effectual owner of the Executive Residence, and that he is, by virtue of that ownership, perfectly entitled to knock down anything he goddamn pleases. Trump does not believe himself to be a tenant of the American people, but the sole executor of their estate.

As legal cover for this latest – and all the other – assertions of Executive Authority, Trump will doubtless refer his critics to Article Two of the US Constitution. This is the article setting forth the powers and responsibilities of the President of the United States. It’s first sentence is unequivocal:

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Proving that “executive Power” does not encompass knocking down parts of the Executive Residence might prove unexpectedly difficult. That all previous administrations have interpreted those words in the light of the customs and practices of their predecessors, and according to the general expectations of the American voter, in no way binds the incumbent to do likewise.

Executive power may yet turn out to mean: wanting to knock down the East Wing of the White House, and having the authority to do exactly that.

If that is what the Supreme Court of the United States affirms the first sentence of Article Two to mean, then in every circumstance what the President of the United States wants, the government of the United States is bound to give him. To “execute” is, after all, to “put into effect”. Historically, the Supreme Court has taken that to mean putting into effect the laws, regulations, and declarations of Congress. But today’s Supremes may yet choose to make history, rather than follow it.

The ballroom Trump intends to erect on the site of the now demolished East Wing will be huge. Judging by the preliminary drawings that Trump’s staff have made available, the structure will dwarf the rest of the White House complex. Indeed, it will rival the ballrooms of Versailles, and glitter with even more gold. According to the President, this gargantuan edifice will be funded by America’s tech billionaires and, when completed, will accommodate 999 guests.

During his in/famous “Checkers” speech of 1952, Richard Nixon, then Dwight Eisenhower’s running-mate, told the American people that his wife “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat”.

Those words were not just the words of a Republican vice-presidential candidate, they were also, and more importantly, the words of a republican.

Vast edifices, paid for by fabulously wealthy aristocrats, to secure the favour of the man who ordered their construction – on the not unreasonable grounds that if he has the power to build things, then he must also have the power to much, much more – have historically been the special preserve of kings and emperors, not democratically-elected and democratically-accountable presidents.

No less than the ruins of the Edmonds factory, the ruins of the East Wing of the White House are symbolic of the passing of an old order, and the arrival of a new one. But if Trump’s imperial ballroom is sure to rise, then equally the American republic and American democracy, as the world has come to know them, are sure to fall.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.