Celebrity branding is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. I’m just barely old enough (46) to remember O.J. Simpson as the pitchman for Hertz Rent-a-Car. When O.J. was the star running back dashing through the airport to get to the rental counter, all the positive feelings about his great sports career and backstory were transferred to Hertz. Today, I still am reminded of Simpson whenever I see a Hertz rental counter – Run, Juice! Run! – but instead of a positive emotion, my brain associates Hertz with the horrific murder of Simpson’s wife and all the cultural drama that accompanied the trial.

This is what makes celebrity branding so tricky. All humans are flawed, some more than others and many in (often unknown) ways no brand would want to associate with. When embarking on a celebrity endorsement, stewards of a brand will generally weigh the potential downside risks as much, potentially more, than the possible gains. Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and Martha Stewart are all spectacular warning signs that threats sometimes lurk even in calm waters.

An Executive Order on Architectural Style

Last week, a draft executive order from the White House was circulating throughout the media. The order – titled Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again (sigh) -- establishes classical architecture as the “preferred styles for applicable public buildings.” I first was alerted to it through a statement of opposition tweeted by the America Institute of Architects. Media coverage has been similarly hostile.

And I knew at least one of these publications would go Godwin’s law, resorting to the ultimate smear. Here’s from Wired:

Neoclassicism was fundamentally inauthentic, a facadism that pretended to represent glory and truth. That might be why, in the 1930s and 1940s, it became the house style for Albert Speer, official architect of the Nazi government.

It's the kind of association that usually turns people off—but not the Trump administration’s would-be aesthetic guardians. Their neo-neoclassicism gets to pretend to recall the glory of Greece and Rome in the service of symbolizing a hegemonic world power. It also winks even harder at an America before women and people of color could vote.

Yes, the Nazis liked classical architecture. So do the millions of non-Nazis who have walked up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, stopping at the place where Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech, before proceeding to a reading of the Gettysburg Address, all while pondering in reverent silence the humble sacrifices and many implications for humanity.

Let me put forth a supposition: Very few lovers of classical architecture want their brand spokesman to be President Donald Trump. That’s not a partisan comment; you can support or oppose the president and still reach that conclusion. It’s more an observation that, if I were picking a celebrity spokesman for a brand I loved, I would want someone non-controversial, widely embraced, and easy to admire. In general, politicians make terrible brand representatives. This is especially true in a time of extreme political polarization.

I have no training in architecture. I was first exposed to the debate over classical versus other modern styles of design through the Congress for the New Urbanism, where a (dare I say) small but vocal minority of people are wildly passionate about it (incidentally, with plenty of disagreement and diversity of opinion). If you would have asked me whether I thought classical architectural styles should be the default for federal buildings, I would not have had a strong opinion.

I do now, although I wish I didn’t have the burden of having to defend it under these circumstances.

Classical versus Modern

While I would not have had an opinion a decade ago regarding the terms “classical” and “modern” as applied to architecture, I would have had a strong opinion had you shown me the buildings. Here are the ones listed in the draft executive order. If the federal government is going to spend more than $50 million (the threshold for where this order would take effect), what would you like the default to be?

Team Classical versus Team Modernism