Trump's New 'More American' Air Force One Is A Disgrace To The Name [View all]

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"Modernism," you say.

PLANELOPNIK

Trump's New 'More American' Air Force One Is A Disgrace To The Name

Max Finkel
Yesterday 5:35PM

Since the Kennedy Administration, the light-blue and white jet carrying the president has been more than just transportation for American leadership. It has been a symbol of what that leadership was meant to represent. An internationally-minded, forward-thinking ethos steeped in Modernism and Internationalism. Now, though, the White House is more America First than American Century and Air Force One is getting a new look to match.

An Air Force procurement publication revealed yesterday as part of the Department of Defense’s 2021 budget has confirmed what we had been fearing for months. The next plane to serve as Air Force One, which the Department of Defense hopes to have in service by 2024, will have a new livery supposedly designed by President Trump himself to look “more American.” The new paint will mean the Air Force is doing away with the classic Modernist scheme we’ve known for decades. And frankly, I think the new one looks awful.

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You see, back when the first Loewy-liveried planes (the 707-based VC-137s) came into presidential use during President Kennedy’s tenure in office, the State Department and the office of the presidency were already working together to cultivate an image of America as a leader in all fields. It was the American Century, after all, and if the United States was going to make good on its reshaping of the world order after World War II, it was going to need to make sure everyone knew it.

The idea was to use the avant-garde as a way to demonstrate what American freedoms and values could offer on the world stage. A really excellent book called Cold War Modernists by historian Greg Barnhisel lays out the whole story: The State Department was working with world-famous Modernist architects to bring impressive, occasionally even challenging design to capital cities around the world. These embassies would hold reading rooms filled with books that critics adored as the best America had on offer but some Congressmen (Joe McCarthy among them) wanted to ban. The State Department brought modern dancer Martha Graham and jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong on tour to demonstrate that American tastes were as sophisticated as any, and they even surreptitiously published high-brow magazines for European audiences, asserting the legitimacy of American voices in left-leaning intellectual circles to tilt Western Europe away from the Iron Curtain. If America was going to face off against a comprehensive ideology like communism, it needed its own philosophical and aesthetic ethos to rally the West behind. It found one in Modernism.

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