Editorial: Obama restyles the Oval Office

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When President Barack Obama introduced the first budget of his presidency last February, he piously observed: "There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and then there are times when you need to focus on rebuilding your foundation."

He probably wishes he had never said that.

While he and the family were vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, a small army of decorators and craftsmen gave the Oval Office a makeover, erasing the last vestiges of George W. Bush just as Bush erased the remaining signs of Bill Clinton's presence.

While Obama's aides repeatedly stressed that the makeover was done at no cost to the American taxpayers -- it was paid for by the privately funded White House Historical Foundation -- the redecoration of a perfectly good office reinforced the Obamas' reputation for relishing the good things in life a little too much -- luxury vacation destinations, quick getaways to Manhattan, expensive private schools.

And there's a voter demographic that Obama has been chasing -- blue-collar, gun-owning, beer-drinking white male Pennsylvanians and their equivalents -- who think any interest in interior design beyond a recliner and a wide-screen TV is effeminate.

George W. Bush got around this problem by subcontracting his redo of the Oval Office to his wife, Laura. We are still awaiting intelligence about whether this president spent evenings curled up with swatches of fabric and paint samples and wallpaper samples or left it in Michelle's hands and hit the links.

This particular demographic does not differentiate among taupe, beige, wheat, caramel and buff; it is all brown. Having wallpaper, like the Oval Office now has, with hand-painted, 3-inch "cafe-au-lait and buff" stripes is dangerously close to being French.

Like most of his predecessors, Obama sits at a desk made from the timbers of the British warship Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes, president from 1877 to 1881 is a salutary presidential example of things going wrong in spite of best efforts -- the spread of Jim Crow laws, federal troops firing on striking railroad workers and West Coast xenophobia that ultimately led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Hayes, not surprisingly, opted to serve only one term.

The centerpiece of the room is a wheat and cream-colored rug -- made of 25 percent recycled wool, we're told -- with a presidential seal in the middle and quotes from Kennedy, Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Martin Luther King Jr. around the border. From the photos it looks like you would bump into a lot of furniture trying to read, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The company that made the rug donated it, but The Washington Post says the last four presidential rugs ranged in cost from $28,550 to $61,000. (Bo the presidential dog may be getting only limited access to the Oval Office.) Facing each other on the rug are two couches covered in light brown cotton, evoking, in the words of one observer, "the feel of a den."

The portraits of Washington and Lincoln and the grandfather clock stayed. The shelves, which held antique porcelain when the Bushes were in residence, now hold books. It also looks like Obama opted to retain Bush's choice of a Frederic Remington bronze, "The Bronco Buster," although it appears to have been moved to another side table across the office.

Obama will inevitably take a beating from the right over his choice of decor. But in answering them he should keep one thing in mind: It's all brown.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

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