By all accounts, President Joe Biden had quite the busy first day in office following his inauguration on January 20.
According to USA Today , he has already signed 15 executive orders and two other directives, with more expected to come within the next 10 days. As my colleague Ryan Ford discussed , many of these served as reversals of his predecessor’s policies regarding climate change, travel and immigration restrictions, and how best to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
But while his first actions in office mark a clear difference between him and Donald Trump, that difference also presents itself in the values and figures that Biden has chosen to represent in the Oval Office.
During Trump’s administration, a portrait of Andrew Jackson was featured prominently next to the Resolute Desk.
As outlined by the National Park Service , the seventh president of the United States remains as controversial as he was at the time.
But while his contemporaries at the time balked at his opposition of a national bank and his desire to expand the powers of the president, his greatest infamy came from his introduction of an act that saw Native Americans forcibly relocated to what is now Oklahoma.
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The Smithsonian Magazine put the number of forcibly removed people at 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation and stated that at least 4,000 died on the way to Oklahoma. It is for this reason that the path those affected by this policy were forced to traverse is now referred to as the “Trail of Tears.”
Nonetheless, Trump has shown his admiration for Jackson to the point that he speculated the man could have prevented the Civil War.
This information comes from CNN, who reported him as saying, “I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War….he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War.”
This is despite the fact that Jackson died 15 years before it broke out and showed no indication that he would have opposed the expansion of slavery.
But as we can tell from this comparison tweet, Biden obviously doesn’t share Trump’s enthusiasm for Jackson since he has replaced his portrait with one of Benjamin Franklin.
And as we’ll soon see in many of Biden’s choices in decoration, there’s a symbolic reason for Franklin’s inclusion.
According to The Washington Post , this portrait is supposed to represent Biden’s commitment to informing his decisions with scientific information, which is also relevant to its placement near a moon rock set on a bookshelf.
A portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt also looms from across his desk, who is likely an inspiration for how he intends to rise to the challenge of facing the similarly overwhelming crises still ravaging the nation.
There’s a similarly specific reason why he opted to pair up portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
As a representative from his office told The Washington Post , decisions like these served as “hallmarks of how differences of opinion, expressed within the guardrails of the Republic, are essential to democracy.”
Thus, their placement is a reference to the ways the two men often disagreed on matters of policy.
In addition to the gallery of portraits that adorn the Oval Office, Biden has also seen fit to feature busts that depict historically significant Americans.
One of the most notable of these inclusions was a bust of Cesar Chavez, whose legacy PBS outlined as a labor organizer who fought for the rights of migrant workers forced by circumstance to pick grapes in California under unfair wages and gruelling conditions.
In addition to organizing worker strikes, he also personally engaged in hunger strikes for this purpose and encouraged literacy among migrant workers so they could more effectively fight for their rights.
As Robert F. Kennedy was a key ally in Chavez’ fight, his bust also stands in the Oval Office.
Two of the nation’s most celebrated civil rights leaders were also among those featured in the Oval Office’s busts.
As The Washington Post reported , these included both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., who each had their own significant role in opposing the “Jim Crow” laws that imposed racial segregation in the southern United States.
Although she wouldn’t live to see much of the Civil Rights Movement unfold, acclaimed former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was also honored with a bust.
Many of the design decisions behind the Oval Office’s current decor were put forth with the intention of making it look “like America.”
We can see that in the diversity of the figures represented, but also in the decision to include a sculpture by Allan Houser, a member of the Chiricahua Apache tribe who also created this piece featured at the Scottsdale Museum of the West.
According to The Washington Post , Houser’s sculpture of a horse and rider that now sits in the Oval Office is doubly significant in this way as it was previously owned by the late Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, who was the first Japanese-American elected to both chambers of Congress.
Most of the remaining changes in the Oval Office were cosmetic, such as the decision to swap out Trump’s bright gold drapes for deeper gold ones and the addition of a dark blue rug Biden happened to like.
However, The Washington Post confirmed that one part of the office stayed exactly as Trump left it: the Resolute Desk that has faithfully stood during the administrations of various presidents throughout the last century.
Even in times of great change, some things will simply stay the same.
H/T: The Washington Post
