From JFK and Pablo Casals to Trump and UFC, the White House guest list has become a revealing measure of presidential taste, national dignity and America’s idea of greatness.

There was a time when the White House knew the difference between a national stage and a television set.

That may sound nostalgic, even unfair. Every generation believes standards have fallen since its own golden age. The past always looks better when viewed through a chandelier. But sometimes the contrast is too sharp to ignore.

I remember when, in November 1961, President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy welcomed Pablo Casals to the White House. Casals was not merely a famous cellist. He was one of the great musicians of the twentieth century, a man whose art was inseparable from conscience. His presence in the East Room carried the dignity of music, exile, politics and moral seriousness.

A year later, Kennedy hosted Nobel Prize winners at the White House and famously observed that it was perhaps the greatest gathering of talent and human knowledge ever assembled there, “with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

It was a clever line, but it was more than that. It revealed a presidential understanding of the White House as a place where the country displayed not only power, but aspiration. America was not merely rich, strong or loud. It was capable of honoring intellect, beauty, science, literature and achievement.

And then came Donald Trump, who looked at the South Lawn — that green ceremonial space of state arrivals, Easter egg rolls, Marine One departures and solemn presidential moments — and apparently thought: this place needs a cage.

The problem is not that........

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