Nice short read over at the NYT on the changing culture of the White House under Obama. He eats cheeseburgers! He roams the halls, ducking into offices unannounced! And Honest Tea is about to see a spike in sales; it's apparently POTUS' drink of choice.
But this is the real gem:
When Mr. Bush moved in, he exercised his presidential decorating prerogatives and asked his wife, Laura, to supervise the design of a new rug. Mr. Bush loved to regale visitors with the story of the rug, whose sunburst design, he liked to say, was intended to evoke a feeling of optimism.
The rug is still there, as are the presidential portraits Mr. Bush selected — one of Washington, one of Lincoln — and a collection of decorative green and white plates. During a meeting last week with retired military officials, before he signed an executive order shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama surveyed his new environs with a critical eye.
“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I've got to do something about these plates. I'm not really a plates kind of guy.' ”
--Phoebe Connelly
