For This Old House and Senate, It's Makeover Time

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, photographed in her office last December. She'll soon move into a new one. (By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)

On Election Day, it was curtains for the Republican agenda.

One day later, President Bush joked by invoking draperies and tripped over the tassels.

At his televised news conference Wednesday, Bush acknowledged that Democrats had taken control of the House of Representatives. Then, instead of directly recognizing Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the first Madam Speaker, he quipped that he had sent the woman who would be second in line for the presidency "the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the new drapes in her new offices."

(Aides in Pelosi's office took the remark as simply a partisan punch line, saying Friday that the White House had not sent along any names of decorators.)

Some Washington decorators, however, aren't laughing.

Victor Shargai, who has furnished the interiors of offices in the Capitol and on the Hill, found Bush's joke "demeaning" -- to women and to decorators.

"I think the U.S. as a country is beyond it," Shargai said.

The president could be criticized for making a blatantly sexist remark, but it must be noted that when offices change hands, there is a tradition of altering the decor.

According to the House Committee on Administration's "Guide to Outfitting an Office," members inherit the furnishings of the previous occupant. They can also select furnishings from the House Support Services catalogue at no charge. The online version makes no specific mention of draperies, but there's a basic budget.

"People do things according to their financial stature," said Shargai, who consulted on office decor for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). "Some people pay for what they want, some people use their small budget. There's a lot of red and blue and gold."

And there's no question that spinning the midterm election like an HGTV makeover special seems disparaging to women. It's hard to imagine that the same joke would have been told if the speaker in question were Dennis Hastert.

But history is more complex. Decorating used to be a gender-neutral brand of power politics. Bush might simply have been exercising the Napoleonic imperative.