The ballroom that ends democracy?

When Harry Truman and his family moved into the White House after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in the Spring of 1945, the 33rd president found a building in serious need of repair. The New York Times described the conditions:

The ceiling of the East Room, elaborately done in the frescoes of fruits and reclining women and weighing seventy pounds to the square foot, was found to be sagging six inches on Oct. 26, and now is being held in place by scaffolding and supports.

One report, commissioned by Congress, discovered falling brick and a disintegrating staircase, not to mention a very feeble substructure. Truman, writing to his wife who had travelled back to Missouri, complained, “The ... place is haunted, sure as shootin. ... You and Margie had better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off.” The austerity of the World War II era had made White House renovations politically impossible for FDR, and now it was on his successor to repair this historical home.

Between 1948-1952, The White House underwent the most significant renovation in its history, surpassing even the reconstruction after the British burned it in 1812. Today, with a few exceptions, the White House we see is the one remodeled three quarters of a century ago, including the famed Truman balcony.

Since George Washington selected the site for the White House in 1791, a residence inhabited first by his successor John Adams (with sparse accommodations and unfinished construction), every president has personalized the place with his own modifications, some big and some small.

Today, of course, President Trump is building a 90,000 square foot ballroom, near, but not attached to the current East Wing. And it has his critics, unsurprising, loudly protesting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who fancies himself as the next resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, posted on X that Trump is “literally destroying the White House.” Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Trump kept from inhabiting the place in her own right, posted, “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” The left-wing editor of East Wing Magazine even accused Trump of destroying women’s rights because Eleanor Roosevelt once officed in the East Wing.

The hyperbolic reaction is, of course, in keeping with the spirit of our age, where everything Donald Trump does is the end of democracy. But this recent pearl-clutching is especially ridiculous considering that his predecessors made their own improvements. Richard Nixon turned a pool into a press room and installed a bowling alley. Gerald Ford added an outdoor pool. George Bush improved the press briefing room while completely gutting and redoing the famed Situation Room. President Obama added a basketball court. Every red-blooded American who has an inkling of desire dreams about what kind of innovations they’d make at the White House.

The arguments for the ballroom are straight forward: The White House doesn’t have sufficient room to host large events, often resorting to setting up large tents on the lawn. The Washinton Post, no sycophant to Trump, spells out this need: “Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.”

President Trump is a developer by trade and, in comporting with his style, does everything big and with much fanfare. And, of course, he attracts outsized criticism for even sensible things, like ensuring White House parties aren’t hosted like a cheaply catered wedding. There is room, of course, for criticism of the style or aesthetic. I’m sure most of us would prefer fewer gold trimmings, but we weren’t elected president and Trump was.

Yet the trembling over remodeling the White House is both ignorant of history and performative. Most Americans, in a few years, will not even remember it happened. Future presidents will gladly use the space for their events. And democracy in America will go on, the present bulldozers and scaffolding notwithstanding.

Remodeling the White House is not the actions of an out-of-control king. It’s not the sign of dictatorship. It’s not “creeping fascism.” As the editors of National Review said, “Trump is replacing a handful of office buildings with a ballroom. That’s it. No more, and no less.”