Portrait of a President

There's been a whole lot of rushing in the Obama era. A rush to get the stimulus package in shape. A rush to end the ban on federal funds to groups performing abortions overseas. A rush to permit states to set their own auto-emissions standards. A rush to begin the process of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. A rush to reach out to the Muslim world. With all this going on, who has time to think about changing the furnishings in the Oval Office?

President Obama has indicated that he likes the decor of his new office just fine; President Bush had a nice sense of taste, so there's no need to rip out the carpet or repaint the walls. The drapes can probably stay, too. And for the time being, the paintings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are remaining right where Bush put them. Talk about continuity in office.

But before long Obama is likely going to want to make some changes in the most famous office in the world. Indeed, a top White House official said in an e-mail exchange last week that the president isn't going to stick with the portraits Bush selected.

Nobody much cared whose picture was on the White House walls until Ronald Reagan hung a portrait of Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room in 1981. The 30th president hadn't been a model for anyone outside New England since he left office in 1929, though his virtues of thrift (in spending and speaking) and integrity (personal and political) have become more prized in an era of verbosity and vulgarity. Plus, no other president had been sworn into office by a notary public (his father) by the light of a kerosene lamp in the early hours of the morning in a remote Vermont town with a population of 29. You can imagine what Coolidge might have recounted if he, rather than Obama, had written a book called "Dreams From My Father."

Now, the selection of presidential portraits for the Oval Office has immense symbolic importance. A brash, nationalistic president might want an Andrew Jackson portrait, or maybe one of Theodore Roosevelt. A quiet, contemplative president might select Woodrow Wilson, a onetime professor and college president. A president with rural roots would inevitably be drawn to Thomas Jefferson.

And every president wants a little bit of Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday is less than two weeks away. That's because Lincoln appeals to Republicans' sense of their heritage, to Democrats' sense of justice and to all Americans' sense of possibility and destiny. Like Lincoln, Obama found a home in Illinois after years of wandering in wildernesses real and metaphorical, and as the first black president he naturally feels a kinship with a man who once said that if slavery was not wrong, nothing was wrong.

Nine months ago, when he was campaigning in the Pennsylvania primary, I asked Obama whose portrait would rest on his presidential walls, and he immediately answered: "The last Illinois president," apparently not in reference to Ulysses S. Grant (who lived in Galena) or Ronald Reagan (who grew up in Dixon).

"The reason that he's, in my mind, the first among equals," Obama said of Lincoln, "is not only did he guide the country through our biggest crisis, but he never lost sight of what Americans had in common and didn't demonize the other side. I think better than anybody (he) appealed to the better angels of our nature."

George Washington -- already hanging over the Oval Office mantel, in the form of a celebrated Rembrandt Peale portrait -- also has a claim on the new president's affections. He was the only president other than Bush whom Obama cited by name in his inaugural address, quoting Gen. Washington's determination to prevail "in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive."

Now we again are in such a winter, with hope and virtue in short supply, but with historical lessons for the new president in ample supply. So when Obama gets the itch to redecorate, he has many portraits from which to choose.

For the ability to identify with an embattled and fearful people there is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For the ability to set difficult goals and to leave office having achieved every one of them there is James K. Polk. For the ability to give voice to a nation's idealism at a time of national challenge there is John F. Kennedy. For the ability to feel a nation's pain and to redeem a nation's promise to the striving and the forgotten there is Lyndon B. Johnson. For the ability to remember a nation's greatness at a time of diminished expectations there is Ronald Reagan.

Those are easy choices. Obama attracted enormous criticism from Democrats when he even dared acknowledge Reagan's gifts, now widely recognized by historians. He might prompt bewilderment if he selected Polk, whom some Americans might consider a grasping imperialist, though a forthcoming biography by Robert W. Merry may well change the nation's view.

John Adams -- another federal reclamation project, this one undertaken by the historian David McCullough -- might appeal to Obama for his courage, simplicity and honesty. James Madison -- sometimes known as the father of the Constitution -- might appeal to the legal side of Obama's personality. Dwight Eisenhower -- who inherited a difficult war and soothed the nation's anxiety -- might be a good match with the president's sense of serenity.

Two recent presidents are unlikely but possible choices. One is Harry Truman, a potentially appealing symbol of independence for a president who almost inevitably will have to disappoint his allies on Capitol Hill. The other is George H.W. Bush, who reminded Americans that a strong nation need not fear reaching out to its allies for help and advice.

The process of making this selection can be sobering for an introspective man mindful of history and humbled by his own position in light of the problems he faces. Perhaps it might help him to remember that, as hard as it was to be selected by the people for the desk in the Oval Office, it will be harder still to be selected by one of his successors for the wall of the Oval Office.