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ALBANY To these eyes, the federal building across from the Palace Theatre is one of the regions architectural miscues. I'm talking about the building named after Leo O'Brien, the Times Union reporter turned congressman who died in 1982.

There are uglier prominent buildings, certainly. Hello Central Warehouse! But the ugliness of the O'Brien building, which looks like a box made from massive heating grates, is noteworthy because of where it sits: within eyeshot of the Palace and at the northern edge of Albanys downtown.

A better building would connect North Pearl Street to the citys emerging warehouse district. A better building would complement the theater. A better building would show more respect to its surroundings, nodding to Albanys rich architectural history.

Instead, the O'Brien building, with its vehicle entrances along Broadway and its big parking lot to the north, is a dead spot on the cityscape. Its a big, rotten tooth on Albanys smile. Its a wart that detracts from the Palaces grace. It's a toenail in the soup of ... well, you get the point.

Am I being too harsh? Well, hey, its just one mans opinion. What do I know?

And so I called Daniel Sanders, president of Harris A. Sanders Architects in Albany, for a professionals view. Sanders wasn't similarly disparaging, but he offered the building few compliments.

Its a nondescript modernist box, he said. Its not very contextual at all, and it could be anywhere. Its not hideous, but its also not attractive.

The thing is, the O'Brien building is not unusual for government architecture built after World War II. There are dismal federal buildings in just about every city. They do nothing to inspire. They seem built to depress.

And that brings me to an interesting recent move by President Donald Trump, who recently took a break from trying to overturn his election defeat and freeing convicted felons to issue an Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.

Essentially, Trumps order makes classical or traditional architectural styles think the state Education Department Building on Washington Avenue the new default for federal construction, and for a simple reason: With a few notable exceptions, the order says, the Federal Government has largely stopped building beautiful buildings.

The order goes on to say that federal buildings should ennoble the human spirit and command respect of the general public for their beauty and visual embodiment of Americas ideals.

Who could disagree?

Before we go further, lets acknowledge that Trump is an unusual fellow to be mandating a classical architecture or standing up for beauty, given that he spent his career building greed-is-good glass towers with little respect for context or tradition.

I mean, its hard to imagine anyone looked up at the now-demolished Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and declared, Oh, isn't that lovely!

Still, given what we know about the O'Brien building and so many other federal buildings in communities big and small, might Trump be onto something here?

Civic architecture, especially, should raise us up and welcome us in, a standard by which the dismal O'Brien building certainly fails. It shouldn't be cold or make a person feel insignificant, like Empire State Plaza. Government buildings including courts, libraries, police stations and schools should be built to serve the humble citizen and therefore democracy.

The Founding Fathers, the Trump order says, sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.

Wouldn't we feel differently about, say, the Supreme Court if it were housed in a glass box? The timelessness and seriousness of classical architecture is an advantage. It tells us whats happening behind its walls is important.

Plus, the public tends to like classical architecture. Put the state Education Building up for a vote against the O'Brien building and 99 out of 100 people will choose the former.

Critics of Trumps order, though, say the federal government has never had a preferred architectural style and believe it would be a mistake to impose one now. Why should a creative and forward-looking nation only look backward for its inspiration?

As Sanders said when we spoke, there is more than one path to great architecture. There may be times when classical architecture is appropriate and times when it isn't. Greek columns aren't always the answer.

Still, there is something to be said for an executive order that says government buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, command respect from the general public, and, as appropriate, respect the architectural heritage of a region.

With apologies to the reporter who became a congressman, the building carrying his name does none of that.

cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill

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Churchill: Donald Trump the architecture critic? - Times Union

Share This Article:President Trump arrives to speak to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Nov. 24. REUTERS/Hannah McKayBy Barry Jagoda

In a full-page Christmas Day article in The New York Times, President Trumps 2016 presidential victory was explained as directed by the family and the loss in 2020 was also attributed to the family.

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This, as reported in the Times, was the verdict of Brad Parscale, Trumps first 2020 campaign manager.

It was pretty obvious that blame for the loss was due to Trumps trust in his son-in-law Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka, and the other adult children who, in the end, could not or would not give good advice to the candidate. Help from outside the family was ultimately shut out.

As the godfather of this clan, Trump became the ultimate loser because Kushner, Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr., Erik Trump and their wives and girlfriends were all allowed to be campaign decision makers.

The magic of Trumps surprising victory in 2016 could not be recaptured in 2020. Pascale was dumped when Kushner saw defeat on the horizon but needed someone to blame aside from himself and Trumps family.

Looming in the ether was the realization by Kushner, a clever Harvard Law School-trained lawyer, that he needed to protect the candidates family from the ignominy suffered a few years earlier when his own father was prosecuted and sent to prison. Scapegoats were required.

How to get blame shifted? Fire the campaign manager and let Trump be Trump. But the magic of the 2016 win could not be duplicated.

Parscale told the New York Times that in 2016 he created an online bullhorn for Trump, so the resonating social media nastiness would circulate state-by-state to build and support a loyal base. That worked and all thought it would be easier in 2020 because there had never before been such a bully with a bully pulpit in the White House.

When the magic of 2016 wore offit may never have been there in the first placethe family got rid of Pascale and all that was left was Trump with his own supposed wisdom and the family.

Conveniently Trumps son-in-law took 2020 off, traveling to the Middle East to build a foreign policy legacy. This was simple enough, even candidate-trusted lawyer Rudi Giuliani knew this. Promise the Arabs anything they wantedparticularly in the form of weaponryand soon there would be a Trump-created peace with Israel.

As candidate Trump flailed around, the clever son-in-law was gone overseas. The other kids just picked up the Trump bullhorn, but the populist message Make America Great Again no longer worked.

Trump became a loser because he was both deserted or mimicked by his family. But he couldnt throw the family under the bus.

Barry Jagoda, a La Jolla resident, was an award-winning journalist at NBC News and CBS News who later served in the White House as an assistant for President Jimmy Carter. His new book about the Carter years isJourneys With Jimmy Carter and Other Adventures in Media.

Opinion: Donald Trump Has Only His Family to Blame for the Election Loss was last modified: December 26th, 2020 by Editor

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Opinion: Donald Trump Has Only His Family to Blame for the Election Loss - Times of San Diego

Given Trumps psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on himin 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeathe would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

Ive been covering Donald Trump for a while, Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. I cant recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.

Even amid the chaos, its worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys general and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And its not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Partys base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is just done with COVID, a source identified as one of Trumps closest advisers told The Washington Post. I think he put it on a timetable and hes done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.

This is where Trumps crippling psychological conditionhis complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathybecame lethal. Trumps negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessorsBarack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 yearshad been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action, said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

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Trump Is Losing His Mind - The Atlantic

Congress approved the Sudan Claims Resolution Act this week, and our only complaint is that it took so long. The Trump Administration produced a transformative deal with Khartoum, but extended haggling on Capitol Hill needlessly endangered the fragile Sudanese government.

Sudans long-time dictator fell last year, and the transitional government is acting boldly to move on. A quarter century after the country hosted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the State Department negotiated an accord to restore the countrys sovereign immunity and lift its state sponsor of terrorism designation. In exchange, the Sudanese government agreed to normalize ties with Israel and pay $335 million to victims of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings.

Americas foes should take note. Sudan was antagonistic for decades and responsible for American deaths. But it agreed to change and negotiated in good faith. It is behaving like a normal country, and its economy will benefit accordingly. Access to international finance, and to multilateral institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, will bring the previously isolated nation new avenues for commerce.

The opportunity to turn a terror-sponsoring state into a productive partner doesnt come often, and the Trump Administration deserves credit for seizing it. So does most of Congress, where the deal received bipartisan support. But Senators Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) delayed passage for months, claiming the deal was bad for 9/11 victims families. One of the offers they called a compromise included an unrelated gift-basket for trial lawyers.

The bill that finally passed restores Sudans sovereign immunity generally but allows 9/11 victims families to pursue litigation in federal court. The cases could put Sudan on the hook for billions, but theyre unlikely to succeed. The law also includes $700 million in aid to the country and more than $200 million in loans.

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Donald Trumps Sudan Progress - The Wall Street Journal

Catherine A. Sanderson, Opinion contributor Published 5:00 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2020

Early intervention against low-level aggression applies in all sorts of situations. Sweating the small stuff works. Republicans should try it sometime.

Only 27 congressional Republicans were willing to acknowledge the results of the November election in a Washington Postsurvey this month.A majority of Republicans in Congress backed a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Texas to overturn President-elect Joe Bidens victory. Multiple news outlets reported that on Friday, President Donald Trump discussed invoking martial law and appointing a conspiracy theorist to investigate voter fraud.On Sunday, he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings on ballots cast there.

Many have been shocked by the silence and even support of so many elected members of the GOP in response to Trumps increasingly outlandish claims. But their behavior isnt at all surprising to social psychologists: Its a perfect demonstration of how toxic environments grow gradually, as problematic behavior starts with something small that then continues and expands.

Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman at the Harvard Business School designed a series of studies to test whether people would be less likely to report bad behavior if it built up gradually. They asked participants to serve as auditors and to accept or reject estimates of the number of pennies in a jar. In some cases the estimators gradually inflated their numbers over time increasing by just 40cents a round. In others they made more abrupt changes,jumping by $4.Over half (52%) of the gradual change auditors approved the estimates, compared with only 24%of those in the abrupt change group.The authors attribute this difference to the boiling frog effect.

And this slippery slope isnt unique to the political world.It happens in all types of environments, from fraternity houses to corporate boards.

In the fall of 2018,the psychological community was stunned when they heard that current and former students of Dartmouth Colleges Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences had filed a lawsuit accusing three well-known faculty members of engaging in inappropriate behavior including sexual harassment and assault over more than 16years.(In August 2019, Dartmouth settled the lawsuit for $14million, although the college did not admit liability.)

As Leah Somerville, director of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Laboratory at Harvard University, wrote abouther own experience as a graduate student at Dartmouth: If you are steeped in an environment with toxic norms, it is likely that you cant even see it for yourself. For example, while I was there it was common for certain faculty members to joke about details of trainees sex lives in the lab and public settings. At first, this made me very uncomfortable. But as those types of exchanges happened regularly and became more egregious, they seemed less and less scandalous.

U.S. Capitol building on Dec. 20, 2020, in Washington, D.C.(Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Real-world cases of corporate fraud provide similar evidence of the slippery slope of problematic behavior. Interviews with financial executives indicted for accounting fraud reveal that their conductin virtually all cases escalated gradually. Heres how one former chief financial officer described it: Crime starts small, it progresses very slowly. First you work off the books. Some people say its not a crime, OK, well rationalize it and say its not a crime. And once you start down this path, its really hard to pull yourself out.

What can we do to avoid following in the footsteps of so many in the Republican Party in our own personal and professional lives?

Strangers to me: I used to cover Republicans who are cowering to Trump. I don't recognize them now.

First, increase self-awareness.We all like to think of ourselves as good peoplewho do the right thing.Subtle reminders of our own behavior can therefore push us toward more ethical behavior.A study by researchers at Harvard Business School found that 37%of students who sign an honor code before completing a financial form ultimately cheat but that number climbs to 79%when students sign their name only after completing the form.

And it's not just college students who show greater honesty when first asked to affirm a commitment to ethical behavior.Car insurance customers who are asked to sign a statement verifying the information they provide is true before completing the form report higher car mileage (and thus greater premiums) than those who sign only at the end of the form. These small cues that increase self-awareness like signing your name can push people toward more ethical behavior. Its precisely why I make all students in my classes sign a pledge at the start of each exam I give.

Another subtle strategy for pushing people toward ethical behavior is to ask people to reflect on a time when they did not behave honorably and which they now regret. Research by Ayelet Fishbach at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Oliver Sheldon at Rutgers Business School demonstrates that asking people to reflect on their own bad behavior in the past reduces their willingness to do so again. Why? This step at least pushes us to think about the choice we are making, before we head down that slippery slope.

Former NH GOP chair: Texas lawsuit was the last straw. I'm leavingRepublicans.

Finally, when we find ourselves in a tricky situation, its really important to take a single step in the right direction.For example, the anti-bullying program Steps to Respect trains teachers and students to call out subtle forms of aggression like name-calling and ostracism, instead of waiting for behavior to escalate to physical violence. Responding to low-level types of bullying helps people gain skills that make it easier to respond more effectively to more overt acts of bullying. But more important, stopping low-level aggression mightchange the school climate to one where fewer students feel ostracized and there is less bullying later on.

This same process of early intervention applies in all sorts of daily situations, from calling out a friend for making a racist joke, reporting hazing on an athletic teamto confronting a colleague who falsifies expense reports.This is precisely the approach used in the most effective programs shown to prevent bullying in schools, harassment in the workplace, and police misconduct.In other words, do sweat the small stuff. Republicans should think about trying it.

Catherine A. Sanderson,the Poler Family Professor and Chair of Psychology at Amherst College, isthe author of "Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels."Follow her on Twitter:@SandersonSpeaks

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Slippery slopes and the boiling-frog effect: How the Republican Party succumbed to Trump - USA TODAY