Geopix/Alamy “Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered,” said Mr. Erskine. “I myself would say that it had merely been detected.” —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray[1] Prior to the arrival within its storied circumference of the effulgent portfolio of pathologies bound up in the decreasingly resilient skin of Donald Trump, the symbolic power of the postwar Oval Office relied in part on an oppositional quality. Existing at once inside of and walled off from the America it guided, the Oval Office in the age of postwar televised politics had served to signify an essence, to throw into stark relief the contrast between the monastic meditations required to keep America on its course and the ephemeral din
BY 
Dan MonacoMarch 22, 2026