Andy Card: still a tool

February 6, 2009 by lestro

by lestro

In an interview Wednesday, former White House chief of staff Andy Card had something to say about the less formal approach to things the new president is taking at his old place of employment:

In an interview scheduled to run Wednesday night, Andrew H. Card Jr. told the syndicated news show Inside Edition that “there should be a dress code of respect” in the White House and that he wished Mr. Obama “would wear a suit coat and tie.”

But wait, there’s more!

According to Inside Edition’s Web site, Mr. Card also said: “The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”

Once again, Card touches on the great fallacy of the Bush years: The president spent so much time asking himself “what would a president do?” that he forgot to do the business of the country.

Bush didn’t know what he was doing as president, so he was just trying to do what he thought the president would do. Obama realizes he is the president. Therefore, what he does is what the president would do:

Mr. Obama has also brought a more relaxed sensibility to his public appearances. David Gergen, an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents, said Mr. Obama seemed to exude an “Aloha Zen,” a kind of comfortable calm that, Mr. Gergen said, reflects a man who “seems easygoing, not so full of himself.”

America, traditionally, is a meritocracy. You get ahead by earning it, by rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work.

Which, ironically, is what President Obama was doing when all this hoopla started. George W. Bush, meanwhile, failed up his entire career, running business after business after baseball team into the ground before using his famous last name to vault him into an office he didn’t understand and couldn’t handle. But he sure looked the part, didn’t he?

This whole dress code thing is another look at the Orwellian style over substance debate. Card claims that we should respect the presidency by looking the part, but how about making sure we respect American values, like honesty and openness?

Like the Healthy Forest Initiative that allows new roads and new logging contracts.

Or the Blue Skies Act that allows mass polluters like coal plants to find new and exciting loopholes to go on polluting well after the law would normally allow.

Or the PATRIOT Act, which shreds liberties and is not really all that patriotic.

Or No Child Left Behind, which instead of leaving kids behind, leaves whole schools behind by identifying the struggling schools and then taking money AWAY from them.

Frankly, I don’t care what my president wears in his office as long as he’s in there trying to clean up the fucking mess Andy Card and his boss made while they were in the office. Maybe of Bush had paid a little more respect to the laws he was breaking and abusing than to whether he was dressed appropriately we wouldn’t be in nearly the mess we are now.

Let’s focus more results instead of what someone is wearing.

And maybe Card hasn’t noticed yet, but there’s a new generation in charge now and we’re bringing something called “change” to the party. We’re more concerned with results than looks. We learned that during the internet era, when our guys in t-shirts and jeans made your guys in suits look silly…

And Andy, if the Oval Office really represents the Constitution and Democracy then a) I should have access to ANYTHING that goes on in there (none of this “executive privilege” bullshit) and b) what the fuck was the prior administration doing signing warrantless wiretapping and torture memos in there? I don’t give a fuck if the president was wearing a tie when he did it, respecting the Constitution is not about being properly dressed.

No wonder you idiots failed so badly.

Besides, despite the claims that it was a long eight years of a jacket and tie required in the Oval Office no matter what…

“I’ll never forget going to work on a Saturday morning, getting called down to the Oval Office because there was something he was mad about,” said Dan Bartlett, who was counselor to Mr. Bush. “I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold.”

it didn’t take long to uncover photos contradicting yet another Bush Administration claim:

President Obama showed up in the Oval Office in shirtsleeves the day after inauguration. So did President Bush, pictured here in 2001 with Harriet Miers

especially since a quick Google search turns up pictures like this:

and this: