Jonna Carter: A Very, Very, Very Fine House

I’ve held my tongue on a matter I find incredibly disturbing, and now I fear I’ll be unleashing a diatribe. Blame my fellow columnist George Epstein, who this week commented on the matter, succinctly framing the offense in words that had heretofore eluded me. He begins, “There’s nothing wrong with building an exciting, impressive edifice designed to wow the world.” Indeed, we’ve all been awed by architectural grandeur and structures of significance. “Trouble is that the ballroom and the gold-leafed Oval Office look more like 19th century mining town bordellos than paragons of stately beauty.” George, you nailed it.

It's not merely that this president razed an entire wing of the White House without the authority to do so, putting on full display his contempt for regulations, precedent and the American people in general. It’s that the plans as rendered are … well, ghastly! Trump fancies himself an aesthete, but any sense of balance and proportion eludes him, as does discernment. Okay, taste in general. His is a melding of styles: over-compensation overlapping with gilded white supremacy.