President Obama is famously reversing many policies of the Bush administration; closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and funding global reproductive health programs, among others.
But he quietly changed something else within the first week of his Presidency which affects the people who work for him and in a broader sense, the rest of us in some way. He relaxed the White House dress code, which to me says less about clothing and more about the hypocrisy of Number 43.
I read about the dress code adjustment in the New York Times, which also recently offered a fascinating item about the former White House photographers. Three of them had been invited to show their favorite photographs from the Bush years and one photo in particular stuck with me.
Aware that President Bush once scolded a White House staffer for reporting for work on a Saturday in khakis and a button down shirt, the photo in question made me angry.
It was taken at the end of a long dirt road outside the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. There had been a summit of some sort and against the backdrop of a flat and scorched Texas landscape, stood the President, Secretary of State Condoleezaa Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and two others whom I do not recall. There was Rice, all buttoned up in a navy blue jacket, navy blue skirt and navy blue pumps. Cheney of course, was equally formal in suit and tie as were the other two gentlemen in the photo. Front and center, there was our President, the one who insisted every one of his worn out staffers wear a jacket and tie on a weekend, standing among suits in blue jeans, cowboy boots and a wrinkled shirt. Had you not known he was the President, you would assume he was the guy hired to drive the group up the road.
I don’t need another excuse to criticize the former President, and I’m looking forward to the hopeful administration of Barack Obama. But that photo got under my skin. Farewell George Bush, the President, and the hypocritical demands of others.
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