Superficially, President-elect Trump’s attendance at the opening ceremony to celebrate the restoration of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral five years after it was severely destroyed by fire makes perfect sense.

After all, Trump is supposed to be a builder and the leader of the “free world.” What could be more fitting than to visit France at a moment of fragility for both freedom (because of the return of anti-democratic, exclusionary right-wing populism throughout Europe and elsewhere) and the world (because of threats resulting from man-made climate change)?

However, anyone who paid attention to Trump’s first term, how it ended, and to his behavior since Jan. 6, 2021, knows that Donald J. Trump has been more of a wrecking ball and arsonist than a builder since his leading role in the “birther movement” against President Obama and then his hostile takeover of the Republican Party.

The latest proof of his destructive streak has been the announcement of his cabinet picks to head important agencies and departments; in other words, the individuals who are supposed to act as the beams and weight-bearing pillars of the whole edifice of American government and society.

As Yale historian Timothy Snyder has noted, the people Trump has chosen are not just unqualified, they are anti-qualified. They are each the antithesis of a competent steward and respectful leader of these complex and imperfect but also indispensable bureaucracies.

Trump’s picks are being advertised as reformers who will bring much-needed constructive criticism and greater “efficiency” to their posts. But how believable is that if the people in question have little or zero experience (just as Trump had zero knowledge of the military and government before his election in 2016)? How constructive can one be if one does not know the first thing about how governments are built and run? Or if one has never read the nation’s founding documents? Or if one has been fraternizing with those who are openly disdainful of America and the whole democracy operating system?

At the start of the Christmas season, President-elect Trump will be among the gawkers who will hear speeches, in a language he does not understand, about the significance of the restoration of an 800-year-old place of worship of a religion that has endured for more than 2,000 years.

But what does this unserious man really know about building? What does he know about the math, the teamwork and the craftsmanship that was necessary for hundreds of artisans and engineers to pull off the reconstruction of this massive and beautiful edifice in record time? Does he “get” that this achievement represents the best of French ingenuity and dedication, and of France’s merit-based, competency-and-accountability-based democracy of laws, rights and individual and collective responsibilities? Does he know anything about worship and respect for something higher and more lasting than the momentary satisfactions of exercising force?

A first impulse, and completely understandable, would be to tell Mr. Trump that he is not welcome to participate in this inauguration ceremony; it could be legitimately argued that he and his attack dogs – Miller, Patel, Stefanik and the rest – are the loathsome opposite of all that the ceremony means and celebrates.

But that would be wrong, just as it would be wrong to not invite the American president to the annual June 6 commemoration of the Normandy landings. Why? Because both of those ceremonies are about something bigger and better than the poor players who happen to strut and fret for an hour or two upon the stage. And of course, there’s always the chance (small, it’s true) that even an envious and resentful old man could learn a thing or two in Paris – the city of light – about true building and love.