The latest tone-deaf move by the we love fancy vacations White House: Pres. Obama’s talking rug could use some quotations that are a bit more timely.
Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times:
If we had wanted earth tones in the Oval Office, we would have elected Al Gore.
(Oh, yeah, we did.)
On the night we were reminded that George W. Bush ended up in the White House and heedlessly, needlessly started the war with Iraq, President Obama did his Mission Relinquished address from his redecorated man cave.
The Oval Office was done over by the chichi decorator Michael Smith, who was previously paid $800,000 for his part in refurnishing the lair of the former Merrill Lynch C.E.O. John Thain (a $1.2 million project featuring the notorious $35,000 antique cabinet, or commode).
The Oval Office, the classiest, most powerful place on earth, is now suffused with browns and beiges and leather and resembles an upscale hotel conference room or a ’70s conversation pit with a boxy coffee table that even some Obama aides find ugly.
It almost made me long for the Technicolor Belle Watling swagging and swathing style of the Clintons’ Little Rock decorator, Kaki Hockersmith.
The recession redo, paid for by the nonprofit White House Historical Association, was the latest tone-deaf move by a White House that was supposed to excel at connection and communication. Message: I care, but not enough to stop the fancy vacations and posh renovations.
As Obama himself said in February 2009 when he released his first budget: “There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding the foundation.”
It might have been wise, given America’s slough of despond, to hark back to a time when presidents just went to work and took their office pretty much as they found it, without the need to make a personal statement. As the former White House curator Rex Scouten once told me, in the era from Taft to Truman, the green rug in the president’s office was changed only once, when it wore out, to a new green rug.
The new cream-of-wheat-colored rug is made of 25 percent recycled wool and features 100 percent recycled quotes around the border that have significance for President Obama. (Which means, of course, that the next chief executive will want to carpet copy-edit and put his or her own special quotes on the Oval rug. If the Tea Party triumphs, it might be “Don’t Tread on Me.” If Sarah Palin ascends, it will no doubt be a mama grizzly bear rug, personally bagged by her.)
The quotations chosen by Obama include F.D.R.’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”; Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”; J.F.K.’s “No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings”; and Teddy Roosevelt’s “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.”
Given the cunning tableau created on the Mall over the weekend by Glenn Beck and Palin, in their artful and frightening mix of theology and Tea Party ideology, the president might be better served by a carpet that prompts him to get his groove back.
The first thing the once inspirational orator should embroider around the rug, the maxim that sums up so much of what’s wrong with the administration now, is the immortal line from “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
Sidetracked by the mosque fight and now admirably plunging into brokering a Middle East peace, Obama clearly needs a reminder about what really counts as the Democrats prepare to get their clocks cleaned. The rug should quote James Carville’s famous admonition: “It’s the economy, stupid!”
There should be a special message for John Boehner, the Republican leader who has been strutting around as the Speaker-in-Waiting and who led the Republicans on Tuesday in their inane effort to deny Obama credit for anything by spending the day reminding people that it was W.’s war. The president should emblazon Kathleen Turner’s line from “Body Heat”: “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
Obama needs his rug to remind him to toughen up. When the self-styled Republican “Young Guns” — Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy — pull their wacky ideas out of their policy holsters, they should have to look down and read the warning from Al “Scarface” Pacino about his machine gun: “Say hello to my little friend.”
While he’s at it, the president who naïvely yearned for unanimity when he had a majority might put this legend around the border of his carpet: “Post-partisanship doesn’t work with Mitch McConnell.”
And for all of us who have that sinking feeling that the economic rug is being pulled out from under us, the president might stitch in the famous warning from “Jaws”: “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
If we had wanted earth tones in the Oval Office, we would have elected Al Gore.
(Oh, yeah, we did.)
On the night we were reminded that George W. Bush ended up in the White House and heedlessly, needlessly started the war with Iraq, President Obama did his Mission Relinquished address from his redecorated man cave.
The Oval Office was done over by the chichi decorator Michael Smith, who was previously paid $800,000 for his part in refurnishing the lair of the former Merrill Lynch C.E.O. John Thain (a $1.2 million project featuring the notorious $35,000 antique cabinet, or commode).
The Oval Office, the classiest, most powerful place on earth, is now suffused with browns and beiges and leather and resembles an upscale hotel conference room or a ’70s conversation pit with a boxy coffee table that even some Obama aides find ugly.
It almost made me long for the Technicolor Belle Watling swagging and swathing style of the Clintons’ Little Rock decorator, Kaki Hockersmith.
The recession redo, paid for by the nonprofit White House Historical Association, was the latest tone-deaf move by a White House that was supposed to excel at connection and communication. Message: I care, but not enough to stop the fancy vacations and posh renovations.
As Obama himself said in February 2009 when he released his first budget: “There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding the foundation.”
It might have been wise, given America’s slough of despond, to hark back to a time when presidents just went to work and took their office pretty much as they found it, without the need to make a personal statement. As the former White House curator Rex Scouten once told me, in the era from Taft to Truman, the green rug in the president’s office was changed only once, when it wore out, to a new green rug.
The new cream-of-wheat-colored rug is made of 25 percent recycled wool and features 100 percent recycled quotes around the border that have significance for President Obama. (Which means, of course, that the next chief executive will want to carpet copy-edit and put his or her own special quotes on the Oval rug. If the Tea Party triumphs, it might be “Don’t Tread on Me.” If Sarah Palin ascends, it will no doubt be a mama grizzly bear rug, personally bagged by her.)
The quotations chosen by Obama include F.D.R.’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”; Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”; J.F.K.’s “No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings”; and Teddy Roosevelt’s “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.”
Given the cunning tableau created on the Mall over the weekend by Glenn Beck and Palin, in their artful and frightening mix of theology and Tea Party ideology, the president might be better served by a carpet that prompts him to get his groove back.
The first thing the once inspirational orator should embroider around the rug, the maxim that sums up so much of what’s wrong with the administration now, is the immortal line from “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
Sidetracked by the mosque fight and now admirably plunging into brokering a Middle East peace, Obama clearly needs a reminder about what really counts as the Democrats prepare to get their clocks cleaned. The rug should quote James Carville’s famous admonition: “It’s the economy, stupid!”
There should be a special message for John Boehner, the Republican leader who has been strutting around as the Speaker-in-Waiting and who led the Republicans on Tuesday in their inane effort to deny Obama credit for anything by spending the day reminding people that it was W.’s war. The president should emblazon Kathleen Turner’s line from “Body Heat”: “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
Obama needs his rug to remind him to toughen up. When the self-styled Republican “Young Guns” — Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy — pull their wacky ideas out of their policy holsters, they should have to look down and read the warning from Al “Scarface” Pacino about his machine gun: “Say hello to my little friend.”
While he’s at it, the president who naïvely yearned for unanimity when he had a majority might put this legend around the border of his carpet: “Post-partisanship doesn’t work with Mitch McConnell.”
And for all of us who have that sinking feeling that the economic rug is being pulled out from under us, the president might stitch in the famous warning from “Jaws”: “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
posted by Sid Cottingham | 6:26 AM
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