Supreme Court Allows Construction on Trump's White House Ballroom to Proceed
A $300 Million Ballroom and the Vile Maxim of the Masters of Mankind
When public money builds private splendour, the price is paid not only in dollars but in the quiet corruption of our standards of justice and government.
That a court of last resort should busy itself with ballrooms might, at first glance, seem a comic detail in the annals of jurisprudence. Yet we are told that the highest tribunal has allowed the demolition of a wing of the chief magistrate’s residence and the construction of a grand hall to proceed, not by pronouncing it lawful, but by declaring that a society charged with preserving historic buildings has suffered no injury sufficiently concrete to complain. The stones may fall, the scaffolds may rise, but the question who is wronged, and how, remains delicately set aside. When magnificence advances under the shelter of procedure, prudence requires us to look more closely at the bill.
We are further told that this new splendour is projected to cost taxpayers at least three hundred million dollars, even as the project’s chief beneficiary has assured those very taxpayers that they should expect no such burden. In the small village I once inhabited, a man who loudly promised to bear an expense himself, while quietly shifting it to his neighbours, would not be reckoned a benefactor, but a very artful lodger. In The Wealth of Nations I urged that we trace every public measure to its effects upon prices and payments, for the benefit is visible and concentrated, while the cost is diffuse and easily forgotten. A ballroom shines in the eye; a slightly higher tax or a slightly meaner public service passes in a mist.
The case is not altered because the splendour adorns the dwelling of the state’s first officer. Government, as I argued in that same work, has certain proper duties: the defence of the realm; the impartial administration of justice; and public works and institutions which, though of great value to society, could never repay a private undertaker. Roads, bridges, harbours, and basic education for the common people are of this sort. A private hall for receptions and entertainments, designed chiefly to augment the lustre and convenience of a single circle, is not. To confound the necessary expense of the state with the ornamental whims of its temporary occupants is to mistake a public work for a very sumptuous parlour.
Whenever a project is urged with great zeal by those who stand to enjoy its peculiar fruits, the impartial spectator should be on his guard. In my own time I remarked that people of the same trade seldom meet, even for merriment, without the conversation ending in some contrivance against the public. Here we have not so much a trade as a courtly circle; not so much an industry as a theatre of prestige. Yet the structure of the temptation is the same. To command a hall that rivals any in the land is to command a scarce stage for glory, influence, and patronage. It narrows the competition in splendour even as it widens the circle of contributors, and this narrowing wears the familiar dress of a conspiracy against the public.
Some will answer that if the project survives legal scrutiny, no further question need be asked; that what the law permits, virtue may applaud. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments I tried to show how shallow such reasoning is. We desire not only to be praised, but to be praise-worthy; not only to escape punishment, but to deserve no blame from a well-informed and disinterested observer. Imagine such a spectator, acquainted with the uncertain legality, with the protests of preservationists, with the vast sum drawn from a populace already divided by fortunes and fears. Would he view with complacency the raising of a glittering ballroom while many of the labouring poor must count every dollar on their table? Legality may protect the walls; it cannot silence that inward judge.
Nor does the court’s narrow ruling dispel the wider danger. By pronouncing only upon standing, the judges have neither blessed nor condemned the substance of the undertaking; they have merely declared that this particular complainant is not the proper sentinel. Such restraint is, in its own way, commendable, for the magistrate who attempts to direct every detail of architecture will soon imagine he can arrange society itself as upon a chess-board. Yet what the law leaves untouched may still offend prudence and equity. The invisible hand, by which private pursuits sometimes redound to the public benefit, does not operate where power spends other people’s money upon its own diversions.
The most odious spirit in political economy is what I once called the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: all for ourselves, and nothing for other people. A state that habitually confounds its necessary expenses with the private luxury of its leaders instructs its citizens in that very maxim, until they begin to think that public office is but a more splendid species of private estate. If the construction of this ballroom proceeds as reported, it will stand less as a monument of national greatness than as a very costly mirror, in which the public may contemplate what it has permitted to be done in its name and at its expense.
From the works cited
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — Trace every policy to its effect on the price system and ask who bears the unseen cost: benefits are visible and concentrated, costs are diffuse and quiet.
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — The state has real duties — defence, exact administration of justice, and public works and institutions that profit society but could never repay a private undertaker — and they must be paid for.
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Judge conduct by the impartial spectator: what would a well-informed, disinterested observer feel about this action? Praise-worthiness matters more than praise; to be loved without being lovely is worth nothing, and to be blamed unjustly stings less than to deserve blame.