FDR, JFK, MLK in the Oval Office

[one_voice]

While President Obama enjoyed his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, the Oval Office wasn’t completely empty – a design team was at work, replacing the wallpaper, the rug, the chairs and the coffee table.

The new rug – in wheat, cream and blue – has the presidential seal in the middle and five historical quotes “of meaning to President Obama” on the edge, the White House said in a statement. The quotes are:

- “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice” – Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Government of the People, By the People, For the People” – President Abraham Lincoln
- “No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings” – President John F. Kennedy
- “The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” – President Theodore Roosevelt

The White House mentioned that former Presidents Bush and Clinton undertook a “comparable level of redesign” with money from their inaugural committees and the White House Historical Association. The Obama administration says the cost of its redesign was “in line with the amount spent by Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush” when they redesigned the Oval Office.

“Some very modest changes not paid for at taxpayer expense,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told ABC News. “As many presidents want to put their own little stamp on the office they spend so much time in, the president has done that in his own very modest way.”


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http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0810/shaping_the_oval_11552601-cde6-4309-a98c-2728f5a70ef0.html


Edited to add picture.