Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Quiet grace and dignity: the President disses The White House as apologists cry, "But what about Obama!?"

"Mister we could use a man/like Hoibert Hoover again..." Dignity is fly fishing in a three-piece suit.

In January 2009, the former White House chief of staff and secretary of transportation, Andrew Card, laid into the new president, Barack Obama, in The New York Times:
I found that Ronald Reagan and both President Bushes treated the Oval Office with tremendous respect. They treated the Office of the Presidency with tremendous respect. And some of that respect was reflected in how they expected people to behave, how they expected them to dress when they walked into the symbol of freedom for the world, the Oval Office. And yes, I’m disappointed to see the casual, laissez faire, short sleeves, no shirt and tie, no jacket, kind of locker room experience that seems to be taking place in this White House and the Oval Office.
Ken Langone, a founder of Home Depot, repeated the claim in 2011.

In 2013 formerly-respected journalist Lou Dobbs fretted over the President's feet.


In 2014 Ron Christie blew some fuses over photos of Obama talking to Vladimir Putin in jeans:
“Talking with the President of Russia about an invasion in a button-down shirt and jeans is not up to the task,” Ron Christie, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, told the Daily News. 
While it “irks” him to see the casual wear that passes through the door of the Oval Office these days, he says Obama’s wardrobe choice for the Putin call was particularly bad for failing to send the “right message” given the seriousness of the issue.
Donald Trump fussed that the President gave an interview about the '14 Super Bowl without a tie:
Donald Trump did not like President Barack Obama’s casual look in his pre-game interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly before Sunday’s Super Bowl. 
On Fox & Friends on Monday, Trump said Obama was “sloppy” and “not presidential” for not wearing a tie during the interview. 
When co-host Steve Doocy suggested that Trump could send Obama some ties from his collection, Trump said that was a “great idea.” 
“You just gave me a great idea- right out of Macy’s,” he enthusiastically said. “I’ll send them immediately.”
He promulgated the Major Interviews Rule shortly after:


New York Congressman Peter King found evidence of moral meltdown in the Oval Office over a tan suit the summer of 2014:
“There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said of President Obama on NewsMaxTV. “When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out – I’m not trying to be trivial here – in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he’s trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy.”
In February 2017, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway complained- to Lou Dobbs, no less, on Fox- about "the venom of the left" after this video emerged:




In April 2017 the President entertained the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, a foul-mouthed rock star well past his sell-by (his recent conversion to civil public discourse lasted 38 days), and a Republican candidate for the US Senate in Michigan to dinner and a White House tour:


One former staffer from another administration called the trio of guests "a white trash Mount Rushmore."

In July 2017 the President told an Ohio crowd he should be on the real one.

In the current issue of Golf Digest, Americans learned that the President has a ten-plot cemetery for his family overlooking the first hole at Bedminster, his New Jersey golf club and that he repairs there many a weekend because he despises living in public housing:
He has his own cottage adjacent to the pool; it was recently given a secure perimeter by the Secret Service, leading to the inevitable joke that it's the only wall Trump has successfully built. Chatting with some members before a recent round of golf, he explained his frequent appearances: "That White House is a real dump." (A White House spokesperson denies this occurred.) 
Since the days of Mrs. John F. Kennedy, The White House has been maintained as a museum and has been under a constant program of maintenance and repair  ($750,000 to $1.6 million a year) since the building was gutted and rebuilt in 1949-52. 

The President's design taste is widely known as Dictator Chic.
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)