There was an Apt headline by the Daily Caller News Foundation the other day: “Leftists Completely Losing Their Minds Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Construction.” Of course, this latest eruption of Trump Derangement Syndrome is predictable—because some people are triggered whenever President Donald Trump does anything.
Yet if there’s any activity on-brand for Trump, it’s building things, including public things. As far back as the 1980s, Trump helped New York City by taking over the revamping of Wollman Rink in Manhattan’s Central Park; he brought the project to completion ahead of schedule, under budget and made a profit for the city.
But of course, construction often implies destruction—something has to be torn down first. In other words, “creative destruction.” That’s a phrase, as we shall see, that speaks not only to Trump, but to Trump’s America.
As for the current activity at the White House East Wing, various right-wing wiseguys have pointed out that Trump critics never objected to a Democratic president’s massive renovations. Nor did they complain when historic statues were knocked down—not just of Confederates, but of a former U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was not only a Yankee, but, in his time, a liberal on civil rights.
Still other wisenheimers noted that some Trump-phobes should, in fact, be taking lessons from Trump on rebuilding fire damage in their own back yards.
In fact, every hundred years or so, some big project happens at the White House. In 1801, the third president, Thomas Jefferson, moved into the new building in the new capital of Washington, D.C. In 1902, the sixteenth president, the same Teddy Roosevelt, built the West Wing, including the Oval Office. He also built the East Wing, although it was much smaller, merely an anteroom for visitors. Maybe someone protested that construction back then, but if so, nobody remembers or cares.
The major construction of the East Wing occurred in 1942, during the presidency of the other Roosevelt, Franklin.Those were the days of World War Two, when big government was really big.
And if we can think back to those days, we visualize all those typists and their typewriters, clacking out documents in duplicate and triplicate, using carbon paper. Younger Americans, of course, have never seen any of this first hand, but they can google steno pool, and if they’re still interested, they can learn about a whole subculture.
Yet if secretaries and selectrics seem long ago and far away, that’s because they are. The world, and all its wants and needs, has changed that much.
Coincidentally, even poetically, the year 1942 brought a masterful way of thinking about these phenomena. The Austrian-turned-American economist Joseph Schumpeter published Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy; in that landmark work, Schumpeter wrote that capitalism “incessantly revolutionizes . . . incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Then came the famous phrase, which Schumpeter helpfully capitalized: “This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.”
Schumpeter was on the right, and yet as a conservative, he was mindful that capitalist economic development, vital as it is, comes at a cost. As they say, to make an omelette, you have to break eggs.
Indeed, the constant churn of capitalism unsettles many. Green fields are built up, familiar structures are torn down, we have to deal with sometimes intimidating technologies and always multiplying choices. Without a doubt, the new can be shocking, and yet as they say, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Trump knows this to be true of nations as a whole, and that’s why he’s turned on the economic juice, cutting taxes, deregulating business and opening up new lands for development. And the same go-go vision applies to public buildings and public spaces.
Yes, creative destruction is an oxymoron. But only morons think we can flourish without it.
James P. Pinkerton served in the White House domestic policy offices of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the author of The Secret of Directional Investing: Making Money Amidst the Red-Blue Rumble.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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