Cries of horror followed the leak of a draft executive order proposing a federal commitment to classical and traditional vocabularies of architecture.
One month later, First Lady Melania Trump posted images of progress on the new White House tennis pavilion. It is, as it turns out, a classical tennis pavilion.
Its many critics seem uncertain as to whether to classify it as Tuscan or Doric; its admirers insist that it is a handsome but otherwise perfectly ordinary example of its kind. But a classical tennis pavilion nonetheless, under construction within the White House grounds—while the world outside surrenders to the terrors of a pandemic.
Insert here comparisons to Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burns, or Marie Antoinette wearing her shepherdess costume at Versailles.
Both of these scenarios, it must be noted, are primarily fictional constructs. One of the dangers of the current political morass is that the general distaste for anything emerging from the White House makes it harder to identify bad arguments. And when it comes to this debate, there are plenty o…