The Making Sense
State Building
Donald Trump called “Make America Great Again” (“MAGA”) his “whole theme”. He blazoned the slogan in signal white on his red baseball cap and even trademarked it. “Let’s make America great again” had been the election slogan of Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential election campaign. Use of the building metaphor is the standard puff of presidential election campaigns. The reference to building bridges is especially potent metaphorically as a way of combining the virtues of building with the political ideal of connecting people. Hence Bill Clinton’s slogan for his successful 1996 presidential election campaign was “Building a Bridge to the 21st Century”. Indeed, a popular April Fools Day video from 2016 entitled “This Is a Generic Presidential Campaign Ad” contains the line “machines spark in the foreground when I tour the few remaining places where they manufacture things” (YouTube: Dissolve, 1 April 2016, 0’32,). In the hands of property developer Donald Trump, the cliché of building and making had a particularly plausible appeal to his base voters.
Youtube Video “This Is a Generic Presidential Campaign Ad” contains the line “machines spark in the foreground when I tour the few remaining places where they manufacture things” YouTube: Dissolve, 1 April 2016, 0’32 ((View))
Trump trademarked the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ just days after the 2012 election’ (Daily Mail 12 May 2015) (View)
Jon Wilson, ‘The Politics of Creation’, in Ed Wallis and Ania Skrzypek-Claassens (eds), Back to Earth: Reconnecting People and Politics (London: The Fabian Society, 2014), p.1. (Read)
Home Outside Spending Federal Election Spending (Read)
Rebuilding America Now Recipients 2016, Figures at December 07, 2017 (Open Secrets) (Read)
Rebuilding America Now (Read)
Trump: Nobody can build like I can (Read)
Michelle Obama, speech at the Democratic Convention Monday 25 July 2016 (Read)
Rebuilding America Now: America Soaring (Watch)
Compare the map in the article “The silent minority: America’s largest ethnic group has assimilated so well that people barely notice it”(View) (subscription to external site required) and the map of Trump support at state level in the 2016 (View) and 2020 elections (View) (subscription to external site required).
Oberhauser, Ann M., Daniel Krier & Abdi M. Kusow. 2019. ‘Political Moderation and Polarization in the Heartland: Economics, Rurality, and Social Identity in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,’ The Sociological Quarterly, 60 (2): 224-244. (Read) (subscription to external site required)
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2014) 73 (4): 609–611. (Read)
UK Government Press Release, “PM: Build, Build, Build” 30 June 2020) (Read)
Australian PM Scott Morrison builds “Kidabilly House” with his daughter (Read)
Australian PM Kevin Rudd launches Labor campaign for the 2013 Federal election. (Read)
“Permanent Premises of the International Criminal Court (ICC) – April 2013” (Watch)
Resnik J., Curtis D., Tait A. “Constructing Courts: Architecture, the Ideology of Judging, and the Public Sphere” in A. Wagner and R. Sherwin (eds), Law, Culture and Visual Studies (Springer, Dordrecht, 2014) 515-545, at 526 (Read)
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