Raises eyebrows again. Unpopular? Maybe in the circles you travel in, but it's hardly universal. It would be like someone complaining about Obama's basketball court and calling him "unpopular" because all his or hers friends dislike him. And I don't recall a press conference when Nixon closed FDR's pool or when Ford built a new one. Any outrage I might have felt over presidential changes to the White House ended after Nixon did away with the swimming pool, and with that it was because just because he didn't use it didn't mean another president wouldn't.
The one thing I'm 99.99% sure of is that other presidents will use that ballroom. Maybe some of them are critics of the project. Just like Carter was critical of Camp David until he started using it. Such is the way of things. I'm also 99.99% sure that Americans a generation from now will look at that ballroom as though it's always been there. That's the way of things, too.
I wonder if Nixon's bowling alley is still there. If it's not, are we obliged to complain?
Raises eyebrows further, blows nose, eats a pancake. Yes, he is objectively unpopular. Even websites and pollsters friendly to him and prone to exaggeration in his favor put his approval in the
low 40s and his disapproval in the low 50s. On the world stage,
34% of those polled say they have a lot or some confidence in him, while 62% have little-to-no confidence. In that first statistic, if you remove "some confidence" as the poll option, only 7% say they have a lot of confidence in him. If you're looking for everybody on the planet to hate him so you can say "well you're right, he's universally unpopular," of course that will never happen. Given it's apparently not even universal thought that Hitler was a bad person anymore, it seems unlikely a universal hate for somebody who's not as egregious as Hitler will ever be forthcoming.
Obama has never been as disliked as Trump is during his presidency. At a few points, Obama's disapproval rating was 12%, whereas the lowest Trump has ever gotten is 45%. Obama peaked at a 69% approval rating. Trump has never gotten higher than 49%.
Donald Trump has the lowest peak approval rating (by a significant margin) across all presidents since Truman (which is when they started tracking approval ratings).
As for the basketball court, Obama didn't unilaterally build one. He converted a space that was only tennis courts to a space that was mixed use, including basketball courts. He did so with his own money, through proper channels and oversight, and it cost $100,000 of his own money. In fact, money was offered to him by the government to do it, and he declined. Nothing was demolished to make it.
When Nixon closed the pool (the press conference where it was announced he would was done by staffers in October 1969), he did so in order to invite more media to the White House. He felt given the instability of the nation and lack of faith people had in government, inviting more press, more people, and allowing more face-time with leaders on a day-to-day basis would help restore stability and confidence. Also, he didn't destroy the pool; he covered it over specifically so if they wanted to use it again, they could. It's still there, maintained and preserved, accessed regularly because that's where storage for computer equipment is. Nothing was demolished to make it.
Ford built a pool, but its construction with being built to preserve the integrity of the White House and grounds was overseen by bipartisan government and civilian groups, cost $67,000, and was funded by private donations. Ford was so committed to integrity and transparency, the list of people who donated is still available, no one person or organization was allowed to donate more than $1,000 so as to ensure fairness, equity, and prevent the president from being beholden to any one group, and every, single dime was accounted for during the building process. The accounting of the project is actually studied by economists because of how exact it was. Nothing was demolished to make it.
The ball room is not yet fully funded, all the people who are funding it are not being disclosed, it's cost was initially $100,000,000 then it was $200,000,000 now it's being said it's $300,000,000, it is being done without transparency or oversight, resulted in the destruction of an entire wing of the White House (a segment Obama said in his book he was particularly fond of which I'm sure in no way influenced Trump at all) and it's not being used to increase media access or give the people more access to the government and representatives, nor is it being built for daily, frequent use. It's being used for parties, specifically, state dinners and dining events. Obama and Bush Jr. had 13 with no problems. Despite COVID, Biden had 6, and he had them at a pace closer together than any president since Reagan. Clinton had 29. You know how many Trump had? Two. Just two. That's it. And the two he had, he did under duress and protest. So even Trump himself only had need of this room twice in four years.
The president is a tenant at the White House. We are the landlords. Levelling an entire wing of a building you don't own in order to build a vanity project of limited use would make you a bad renter. Trump is a bad renter and this whole thing is just a reminder of how little he cares about anybody but himself.
November 4th, more than half of the country will lose funding to food, but an unpopular president will leverage the White House to private donors in order to get his opulent ballroom where he can host both of his state dinners.
But by all means, if you want to be mad about Nixon converting an unused part of the basement for $16k more than 50 years ago, go for it. Seems a bit odd to be mad about that when you have a Caesars Palace banquet hall that costs 18,750 times more than that being built today, but whatever.
Personally, I think this is just a testament to how bad a real estate mogul he really is. It was $100,000,000 which is already expensive, but to find out that it's 3x more than that as a surprise? Either he's awful at picking contractors, bad at estimating cost, bad at sticking to a budget, or surrounded by deeply ineffective people... None of which happens to people who are masters of their industry. Having done house repairs before, you find out about maybe an extra thousand here, an extra couple thousand there, uncover problems that need more work than you guessed... But 3x the original cost? That kind of stuff happens to people like me, who has no relationship with builders, no building experience, is working solo, isn't contracting with the best people available, has no means to leverage or negotiate prices, and lives in a house older than the White House. It doesn't happen to adept, networked, influential tycoons who use the best of the best in the industry, (in theory) pay all their bills and have major influence in the sphere in which they operate.
Like, he can't look at a blueprint and say "geez, this looks like it has really significantly been low-balled?" Me, a 44-year-old ametur carpenter who has no experience reading building blueprints or building or renovating homes can look at a submitted plan by my contractor and say "I'm sorry, I don't think buying all appliances, replacing the counters, cabinets, fixtures, and surface remodelling/painting in my kitchen will realistically only cost $5k... Are you sure that's right? What's the line-by-line and overage potential?" but Trump can't look at plans for a ballroom and know it's under-budgeted by more than double? Is this a "It's one banana, Micheal, what could it cost? $10?" scenario where he just has zero concept of real life?
www.theguardian.com
