White House: Getting Priorities Straight

With all the troops home from Iraq, Osama bin Laden executed, and New Orleans rebuilt -- the White House has turned its attention to something really important: enforcing a dress code!

You may remember the huge flap when the Northwestern University Women's Lacrosse team showed up wearing flip flops to pose for a picture with the President (pictured at right). That was back in 2005. A tragedy the White House still simply refers to as "7/12."

Signs have gone up warning people about their clothing choices. It's been accompanied by an e-mail. Al Kamen in the Washington Post reports:

"The e-mail reminder was all in capital letters. It advised that there would be no jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops and -- with boldface added -- 'NO FLIP FLOPS.' (Which, of course, is good advice, if rarely followed in this town.)"

And in typical Bush administration tradition -- the blame for imposing the dress code falls squarely on -- wait for it -- Bill Clinton:

"When the Clintons came in, all hell broke loose" in terms of dress code -- and perhaps other things? -- one current aide said. "We're just trying to get things back on track."

Old hands from the Reagan administration were taken aback -- since the "Gipper" was a fan of jeans from his western movies days.

Mr. Kamen quotes one Reagan aide as saying "Do they have nothing else to do?" (WaPo)