It's Not Yet Curtains for A Moth-Eaten Metaphor

Leno recycled the gag in 2005: "Hey, you see who visited President Bush in the White House last week? Hillary Clinton. Hillary -- actually, she was just there measuring for drapes."

In a swipe against President Bush for restoring anti-abortion funding rules right after his 2001 inauguration, Ann Stone, national chairman of Republicans for Choice, lamented: "He's supposed to be measuring for drapes on his first day, not interfering with women's rights."

But what solon of lore first coined the phrase, or is it newly minted?

Jan R. Van Meter, author of the just-published "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Famous Slogans and Catchphrases in American History," doesn't mention drape-baiting in his book. "But like a bad smell in the drain, it just lingers, and nobody knows how it got there," he said.

"Every time they haul out 'measuring for the drapes,' it just makes me crazy. Don't their speechwriters have any sense of trying something new? It's just lazy."

Others might let sleeping dogs lie, but we soldiered on, searching newspaper databases back to the 1870s. That didn't pull back the curtain, either, although The Post did report in 1937 that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had ordered a change of drapery. (Subhead: "He Selects Red Hangings for East Room of White House, But Accepts Fine Arts Commission's Preference as to Shade.")

Perhaps this account of presidential prerogative laid the foundation for later slights, such as this one in 1980 in the Times: "Obviously, it's much too soon for Mr. [John] Anderson to start measuring for drapes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

But as for earlier origins, we came up as empty as an October campaign promise. Like politicians everywhere, we counted our chickens before they hatched; before they could provide a chicken in every pot.