George Washington could have had a palace. The first plans for the president’s house in the new capital were enormous, closer to something a European king might build than the White House we know today. One of Washington’s own commissioners complained that it was “much too extensive” for the head of a democratic society and more suited to a “despotic government.”¹ So America built something smaller: impressive, dignified, but still a house. The White House Historical Association calls it “an august house, yet a house and not a palace.”²
That distinction mattered because the country had just gotten rid of a king and was trying rather hard not to invent another one. There was even a fight over what to call the new chief executive. John Adams and much of the Senate liked “His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.” The House rejected that bit of royal upholstery, and we eventually got the magnificently boring President of the United States.³
Donald Trump seems to think we have been underdoing it.
The Oval Office now glitters with gold, the Rose Garden has been paved, and the East Wing has been torn down for a 90,000-square-foot, $400 million ballroom. On August 21, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed construction to continue while litigation proceeds over whether a president can make that kind of permanent change without Congress.⁴ Trump has also been personally showing off the work, talking granite, landscaping and construction details like the real-estate developer he has always been.⁵
Trump owns Mar-a-Lago. If he wants gold cherubs in every bathroom, that is between him and the decorator. The White House is different. He gets the keys for four years, but he does not get the deed, and that simple distinction gets harder to see every time another permanent Trump flourish is added to a place that belongs to everybody else.