Plan for the new ballroom relies on a 1964 executive order to skip the review board.

I have been around construction my whole working life. You want to know how a building gets built honest. You apply, you submit drawings, you wait for the boards, you pay the fees, you take the punch list. The process is annoying. The process is also why nobody’s roof falls into the dining room.

The President wants to add a $200 million ballroom to the East Wing of the White House. Fine. The White House has changed many times. Many. Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing. Truman gutted the inside. Jackie Kennedy did the rooms. Each time, federal review, public process, the boards. The board for this is the National Capital Planning Commission. They have been signing off on additions to the White House complex since 1910. Nineteen-ten.

The Washington Post reports today that the administration’s plan is to skip them. They are pointing to a 1964 executive order, written for purposes other than this, and saying it gives the President authority to start digging without the commission’s say-so. The commission would, the explanation goes, look at the plans later. Maybe. After. When it’s already a ballroom.

Buddy. That is not how a permit works. That is not how you put up a deck on your own house in Cherry Hill. The boards exist for a reason. The reason is, when somebody one day says “who approved this,” the answer should not be “nobody, but here is a 1964 paragraph.”

I have ordered fixtures from contractors who tried this on me. The phrase is “we’ll get the inspection on the back end.” The inspection on the back end is the inspection that does not happen, because by the back end the deck is up and the wife is unpacking the planters and the inspector goes home.

The White House is not a backyard deck. The boards exist precisely because the building belongs to the country, not the resident. The 1964 paragraph is a fig leaf. Fig leaves get smaller every year.

I’m arguing with the television.