REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
When President Barack Obama delivers his Iraq address, viewers will notice some new furnishings around his formal workspace.
As the first family soaked in its vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, the AP notes that the White House was at work to ramp up the aesthetics of the Oval Office. Among the additions on display: new sofas, fresh wallpaper and a new coffee table.
Also making its debut is a honey-colored carpet, decked with the presidential seal and words of some of America’s most famous voices. The following five excerpts were handpicked by Obama to be stitched on the perimeter of the rug:
“Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”
— Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863)
“No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings”
— John F. Kennedy’s American University speech (June 10, 1963)
“The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally on the welfare of all of us”
— Theodore Roosevelt’s state-fair speech in Syracuse, N.Y. (Sept. 7, 1903)
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech (March 4, 1933)
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”
— Martin Luther King’s address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Aug. 16, 1967)