White House drapes tarps while completing Trump’s newest construction project

Trompe l'oeil tarps over the North Portico columns. You have to admit, whatever else you think of this White House, somebody over there has a sense of theater. Instead of just draping the columns in plain construction cloth while the work gets done, they printed the finished design onto the tarps so the public gets a preview of what's coming. It's a small thing, but it tells you something about how this administration thinks about presentation. They don't hide the mess, they stage it.

Every White House does renovation work. Reagan redid the roof. Obama put in a putting green. Nobody remembers those projects because nobody bothered to make them a visual event. Trump's team clearly understands that a building America associates with permanence and dignity is also, in a strange way, content. People are going to look at those columns whether they want to or not, so why not control the image instead of letting scaffolding and blue tarps tell an ugly story for months.

The critics will find something to grumble about no matter what goes up on that portico, whether it's the cost, the taste, or just the fact that Trump is the one doing it. That's fine, that's their job. But there's a difference between substantive criticism of how public money gets spent on the people's house and reflexive sniping at a construction tarp because you don't like who ordered it hung. Save the outrage for something that actually matters.

If the final columns look sharp, this will be a footnote. If they don't, the tarps will be the most tasteful part of the whole project. Either way, it's a reminder that even a construction wrap can become a small test of whether people are reacting to the thing itself or just to the name attached to it.