America Needs an Edifice Complex Prevention Act

Last week, the State Department announced it was preparing a limited series of commemorative passports. The passports celebrate not only America’s 250^th anniversary, but also Donald Trump. The president’s visage, accompanied by his signature in gold-colored ink, will replace the portrait of Francis Scott Key that previously occupied each passport’s inside front cover.

President Trump will be the first living American to be featured on the document. These special-edition passports will only be available at the Washington, D.C., passport agency, but they are part of a broader program: They embody the Trump administration’s latest attempt to put the president at the center of the nation’s 250^th anniversary. Indeed, as compared to any other presidency, the Trump administration has been inordinately focused on plastering the president’s name and likeness on all manner of government buildings, projects, and documents.

If you think there’s something unappetizing about this practice, you’re not alone. I grew up in Arkansas, where it was common practice for politicians to engineer the naming of buildings and other public structures after themselves—a practice I felt was more than a little unseemly. Twenty years ago, just after I was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives, I proposed my first bill: a ban on naming state government buildings after living, elected politicians.

Many of my fellow legislators did not like this bill. Perhaps some of them didn’t like it because it was subtly critical of them. (Perhaps the criticism was not so subtle.) Perhaps some of them didn’t like the title of the first draft of my bill, “The Edifice Complex Prevention Act.” And perhaps some of them harbored dreams of a namesake building for themselves.

One of my legislative colleagues, Daryl Pace, evidently found my proposal puzzling. Shortly after I filed the bill, he approached me and began to speak to me sorrowfully, as one might address a slower-than-average child. “Wouldn’t you like to have a building named after yourself?” he asked me. It was as if he thought I had overlooked a crucial perquisite of elected office.

Government officials’ desire to use public facilities as billboards for themselves has a long pedigree. The practice of placing public officials’ names and likenesses on Treasury securities hit a high point during the Civil War: Images of Abraham Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase frequently appeared on U.S. government money and bonds.

Other Civil War personalities also appeared on these notes—including the less well-known Spencer M. Clark, who headed the federal office that would become the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. In 1864, when Clark emblazoned his own portrait on a 5‑cent fractional currency note, Congress apparently decided that the practice of featuring government officials on U.S. currency and securities had gone far enough. In 1866, Congress declared it illegal for any living person to appear on government money or bonds of any kind.

The man in the Oval Office today does not share those 19^th-century scruples. The Trump administration has already brought us the Trump Kennedy Center; the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace; gigantic banners with the president’s visage hung on the exterior of the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice; smaller Trump portraits on national park passes and White House press passes; tax-advantaged children’s savings plans, designated in the tax code as Trump Accounts; the TrumpRx website; Trump’s name printed on millions of stimulus checks issued during the COVID pandemic; and (pending) Trump’s personal signature on the nation’s paper currency alongside that of the Secretary of the Treasury.

The magnitude of this cosmetic exploitation of government programs by a sitting president is unprecedented. And the list above will no doubt grow longer, as the administration and its allies craft yet more proposals to further publicize Trump’s name and likeness with public resources and thus curry favor with the president. It is reasonable to assume that the 24-karat gold commemorative coin that celebrates the nation’s 250^th birthday—and features Trump’s image—is only the beginning.

With respect to Arkansas, it took a few years, but the state legislature finally wrote my bill into law. A few other southern states enacted similar prohibitions. It seems awfully unlikely that the current Congress will follow suit.

That is a pity. Of course, the spectacle of politicians maneuvering to get their names and images inscribed in all manner of public places and entities is grotesque. But the sheer ugliness of the practice should not overshadow our awareness of its very real moral and political dangers. Those include the encouragement of self-dealing, the problem of taxpayer funding of buildings that double as political advertisements, and the difficulties that arise when honorees later become embroiled in scandal.

Consider the Robert W. Ney Center, an Ohio University building named after state lawmaker Robert Ney in 1997. Ney secured $7 million in funding for the state-of-the-art facility while he was planning to run for Congress. A decade later, Rep. Ney became entangled in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, ultimately pleading guilty to several bribery-related felonies and resigning his congressional seat. And 10 years after that, Ohio University finally succeeded in changing the building’s name.

Ultimately, however, the real problem is not so much one of public choice theory than it is one of the health of small‑r republican culture. Public service, like virtue, is supposed to be its own reward rather than a path to self-glorification. Stamping a politician’s name on some government enterprise is a kind of synthetic, taxpayer-funded manufacture of honor that is more associated with monarchies and autocracies, where public works are understood as personal gifts from a ruler to his subjects. In our republic, the use of government resources is supposed to serve a public purpose. These resources belong to the people; they aren’t supposed to convey personal ownership or credit.

When I was a public official, I came to know a good number of politicians who were a bit mystified by the Edifice Complex Prevention Act. (Perhaps they only pretended to be mystified.) But, for the most part, when I talked about my bill with people who weren’t elected officials, they got it immediately. Indeed, there are even a few politicians today who recognize that matters in this realm have gone too far.

American culture, at its best, rejects badges of royalism. Mixing politicians’ names and likenesses into government enterprises debases public service and the public trust. When we wash our hands of that mixture, it underscores the distinction between the rule of law and the rule of men. Perhaps someday a future Congress and a future administration will appreciate that.