The classicists behind the draft order hope to address a problem that the architecture establishment does not see as a problem. The nonproblem problem is this: After World War II, the federal government adopted modernism in its many variations as a kind of house architectural style, and as a consequence has managed to build a very large number of unlovely buildings.

Many of these structures now scar the otherwise classically designed streetscape of Washington, D.C. They include such infamous examples as the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building, which is even more obnoxious than its namesake, along with the Hubert H. Humphrey Health and Human Services Building and the former Housing and Urban Development headquarters, which one former employee deathlessly described as "ten floors of basement." The government has extended the reach of its bad taste beyond the capital and into the provinces, with federal courthouses that don't embody the law's majesty but instead express contempt for ordinary taste or, just as often, advertise the architect's cleverness.

Why is this a problem? Willful, preventable ugliness is always a problem to one degree or another. Here the ugliness involves the self-conscious repudiation of commonly accepted notions of proportion, accessibility, appropriateness, and coherence. The problem doubles when the ugliness is created by government agencies spending the public's money while in thrall to a special interest like the architecture establishment--in this case, the architects who design the government's buildings, the critics who praise them, the academics who try to explain them, the trade associations that drape them in awards, and the wealthy civic boosters who like showing up for the ribbon cutting. Everyone wins except for the people who have to visit, work in, pay for, and look at the result.