White House Unbuttons Formal Dress Code | Hacker News Reader

White House Unbuttons Formal Dress Code

nytimes.com

51 pointspeter12362 comments

"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."

We try pretty hard at Justin.TV not to do things that aren't worth our time, so this really jumped out at me. The (former) president spent 15 minutes of his valuable time giving someone a lecture on what to wear?!

On a saturday, no less. :)

I think the suit-and-tie thing goes back to the neo-conservative's "Turn Back The Clock 30 years" aspect of their movement. While today most companies don't care if you're in Khakis and a button down unless you're in front of TV cameras and/or clients, and most CEOs are aware that workers in casual dress are productive (or so i've heard).

Bottomline: 30/40 years ago, before women's rights/civil rights/gay rights/gun regulation, you'd wear a suit if you were going to the White house. Period.

Thank goodness we have a much more modern CEO of the US gov, now. He's at put sensibility over tradition in some respect.

You have clearly never had a maid to do all your laundry, ironing, etc ;)

Seriously though as someone who went to a high-school where a shirt, suit and tie was mandatory the theory is it inspires a certain kind of behavior. If you are in formal-ware then it's a sign you are working. You change when you get home.

Personally I don't buy it though and now I work in the internet industry so I don't have to, awesome.

When people dress up every single day, it says to me that they care more about playing business and looking pretty than actually getting shit done.

I understand it for certain ceremonies, funerals, etc, but outside of that, it seems like an utter waste of time.

In the wonderful future I live in, we have non-iron shirts that look fine (thank you M&S) and dry cleaning services pick up.

30 seconds a day to do up a tie is a pretty good investment when you consider how many people there are out there who _do_ think it is important, especially when you consider how many people in that set have money they might be persuaded to give to you.

In the wonderful future I live in, I wear sweatpants and slippers every day, but that's not the point.

When I worked in finance I lived off the Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts and Dockers khakis; it's easy to rationalize it, but it's still unnecessary time & expense.

Dan, you wear sweatpants and slippers every day already!

The president was already pissed at him, and he was coming down to get yelled at. I don't think the 15 minutes were all about his dress.

When was the government ever run with an eye on efficiency?

I never thought I'd say this, but... the President seems kinda cool.

Aside: Happy Birthday, tdavis ;)

Last year, reddit explored just how cool Obama could get: http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/cool_cooler_coolest_and_bey...

Yes, the "Coolest-est" entry has made me laugh countless times. Every time I see it: still awesome!

Heh, the last one has a well-done photoshop effect, even including the reflection on the sunglasses!

I don't know if it is a good idea to relax standards in a heavily partisan atmosphere. It's best to keep everyone's cards on the table as much as possible, in such a case.

As someone from the UK, I really hope that Obama really is "the man" to make change stick. I watched his inauguration speech and I hope that the talk about more sustainable energy really does happen. He does seem a kinda cool guy though and from my perspective it sure looks like the right guy got into office there. Good luck

What change? We have a trillion dollar pork bill getting bludgeoned through congress right now. Essentially the President said to congress "Just make it big, and make sure we have some token expenditures on energy subsidies. Otherwise, here's the checkbook. Yes, there's more than a thousand economists against this, but we're going to ignore them and listen to the ones who are Democrats."

So far, the new boss looks a lot like the old ones, except being black, young, and charismatic. plus ca change...

Also, sustainable energy is an engineering problem (unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't). No amount of Presidential hope-rays is going to make windmills or solar cells more efficient.

Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state.

Yes, I do hope he's marginally better than what came before. But this attitude that "I hope he's the one to make change stick", I just don't understand. There's only so much change you can make atop the world's largest bureaucracy.

> Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state.

Cue the Corn Cartel. Did you know you can use corn syrup to melt snow and ice on roads? No need for salt. No more salt-induced auto body rust. All praise for corn.

But seriously, now. I do hope corn ethanol does not get promoted.

> unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't

Oh wow, stereotyping much?

Most of the green lobby is opposed to nuclear, and the "alternative energy" push is largely a project of the green lobby.

Show me an example of where Obama and the Democrats (excellent name for a rock band) have promised anywhere near as much money for nuclear development as they have for "sexy" and ineffective tech like solar, wind, and biofeuls.

So much for "do what works".

Isn't Steven Chu, Obama's new Secretary of Energy, pro-nuclear?

From: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=reactivating-nuclear-rea...

"Nuclear power, as I said before, is going to be an important part of our energy mix," said physicist Steven Chu, Obama's secretary of energy during his confirmation hearing on January 14. "It's 20 percent of our electricity generation today, but it is 70 percent of the carbon-free portion of electricity today. And it is baseload. So I think it is very important that we push ahead." He added: "There is certainly a changing mood in the country because nuclear is carbon-free, that we should look at it with new eyes."

With the money in the stimulus bill, they could have replaced 20% of the nation's electrical capacity with nuclear (a million megawatts of national capacity, $5 billion for 1,200 megawatts of nuclear power, round down a bit to make the math easier). I doubt the actual bill goes towards anything so useful. I'm not sure what is actually in the slop bucket, but I have heard that some will go towards subsidies for rather useless, but sexy, green tech.

If they believe in nuclear, they could put their money where their mouth is.

>unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't

Yeah, proven to need billions of dollars on a Government subsidy to limit liability to 10 billion dollars, no matter how much the plant makes, and no matter how much damage it does (wipe out a state? that's ok, 10 billion should cover that).

The other day, I saw a photo of the President of France and his wife walking on a beach in their bathing suits. (!) It occurred to me that here in the U.S., we don't show the President with bare arms and legs.

Bill Clinton was big on outdoor jogging, and started out his presidency jogging in gym shorts and a tee-shirt or sweat jacket. But pretty soon, pressure from the press or a staff person made sure he always wore a spiffy jogging suit, i.e., no bare arms or legs.

There are pictures of Obama at the beach while he was still president-elect. The dude is ripped.

This isn't on the beach, but it's the first I came across: http://www.tmz.com/2008/12/22/barack-hard-abs/

Upmod for RuPaul link farther down that page. Now, that's Change!

You can bypass the registration and view the article directly here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29whitehouse.h...

We had a pretty big change with JFK, who made hats seem stodgy. What's next to fall? Jackets? Ties?

What's the point of a tie?

Ties and suits are quite literally costumes, costumes for theater.

And can be very expensive costumes.

I read somewhere that ties cover up the buttons on a shirt. So while uncomfortable, silly-looking, and a tool for strangulation, they serve a purpose. Jackets, on the other hand, are completely absurd. With the lapels turned outside by the cut, they provide zero warmth in cold weather since they do not cover the chest area. They also are hot in warm weather. Impractical and silly-looking, the worst of all worlds.

Still less silly than sweatpants and slippers.

Glad to know you only wear a potato sack. Do you spend the absolute minimum on clothes, or do you replace your t-shirt when it gets a permanent mustard stain on it?

If attire evolution proceeds linearly, jackets and ties will probably be totally out of fashion in ten to twenty years. Hats seem to have already been in general cultural decline before JFK took office, as with jackets before BHO.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp

They became down-right uncool when he didn't wear one to his inauguration.

A good jacket can make a person look good but modern necties...i dunno, they just look silly on an everyday basis. I'd much like to see the return of flowing Cravats. In the film Nixon you can see Anthony Hopkin's lead charachter wear one for Nixon's wedding.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp

I upmodded you for correcting me. :) I guess it was a sign of the times, then, sort of like Obama's BB.

Obama during the campaign: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

Obama now: (from Axelrod) "He's from Hawaii, O.K.?" said Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."

Jimmy Carter at least wore sweaters when he demanded lower thermostats.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022681.php

From another Obama speech: "If you want to change the world, the change has to happen with you first. I ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done. in America for two hundred and twenty-one years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

Wow, I never knew GW was such a stickler for formal dress and punctuality. That kind of goes against his cowboy persona. Interesting though, I love reading about stories like this. All presidents have interesting quirks.

> "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."

> Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time. In the Obama White House, meetings start on time and often finish late.

meetings start on time and often finish late

Er. This is an impossibility, right? I mean, if your meeting finishes late, that means your next meeting must start late too, right?

Sorry to be so picky. Just the logic of that sentence was worrisome. It would work with only one or two meetings a day, but as president that obviously couldn't be the case either. If your meetings are ending late, they're also starting late.

It's possible that meetings aren't scheduled back-to-back. If there's a 15+ minute gap between meetings it's possible to end one late and still start the next one on time.

I've seen a lot of different configurations just to address this issue.

In the end, in the real world, if your meetings run late, they start late. 15 minutes doesn't matter that much.

It's kind of like the guy who only smokes at certain times each day -- makes him feel better that he's doing something about his smoking, but it's just a mask and has face value only.

Reality is reality. Screwing around with artificial end-times for meetings rarely ever prevents late meeting people from continuing to run over into the next meeting.

The "cowboy persona" is a myth, completely fabricated. He bought the ranch in the early stages of planning his presidency bid, following the advice (probably) of people such as Karl Rove. Now that the ranch has served its purpose, it's up for sale.

Being a stickler for formal dress and punctuality - I see that more as an indication of insecurity.

These NYT articles requiring registration that have been popping up on here every day are getting annoying.

bugmenot

Bugmenot Firefox plugin, so on any login form on the web you can right-click and select "Login with Bugmenot": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6349

I just use the bookmarklet to open a new window displaying the login information.

Just search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration.

metafilter.com gets around this by just telling all of its members to use the "metafilter46/metafilter" account.

> Just search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration.

No, that's not guaranteed to work. It's a cookie issue.

I have have never registered at nytimes and have seldom been able to read its articles, no matter how I approach the site. Until a few experiments today, that is.

I reject all cookies by default. NYTimes confronts me with the registration page when I have cookies disabled. I discovered today that if I go ahead and allow cookies from www.nytimes.com, I can read the article without registering. Allowing for session does the trick; don't store the cookie indefinitely. And accepting cookies from wt.o.nytimes.com and up.nytimes.com is not necessary to read the article.

Honestly, NYT is one of the few places where I was happy to sign up. They make a ton of content available online, and if they want me to jump through their one small hoop to read it, that's not a huge deal to me.

Plus, you only login when your cookies expire, it's pretty infrequent.

What was the old login.. It used to be pretty standard fare on websites with free registration.

cyberpunk/cyberpunk ? cypherpunk/cypherpunk ?

maybe plural?

Full text so you don't have to register:

http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=bca86

"Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat."

So much for the environment and reducing waste...

Unless, like carter, he orders solar panels for heating/cooling on the white house, which seems likely.

On the plus side he doesn't drive to work.

My college roommate was from Hawaii, too. Same thing; our room was closer to a sauna than a freezer in the winter. Just a bit of a cultural thing...

Probably as close to a startup White House we will ever see.

What about Washington? :-)

(Ok, technically Washington didn't live in the White House, but you get my drift)

Until staffers can use IM in the white house, it is still a ways to go.

Bush versus Obama.

Appearance versus substance.

Let's make it seem ok, versus let's actually move things forward.

Holy crap it sounds like he really wants to get things done around there!

I hope that's a good thing.

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