I work in a large Federal Building, home to many different agencies and administered by the General Services Administration (GSA).  I have daily arrived and departed through the entrance beneath the benevolent gaze of Vice President Cheney & President Bush, from their poster-sized portraits on the walls on each side of the doors.

For a couple of months now, I had my desire to obtain those portraits made known to our agency’s facility manager.  I would remind him from time to time, and last week I was present when he made the call to the GSA rep to obtain them.  The guy on the other end of the line was assured that I had no nefarious purpose in mind, so he would see to it.  I don’t know how many of the portraits were in the building, but at least they were at each public entrance to the building.

Yesterday morning I was informed that I could not have the portraits, because the message from GSA HQ was that they were to be shredded.   I asked if destruction documents were required (as for destruction of classified documents) to prove that it had been done, but the guy didn’t know.

Now, you can decide for yourself the reason for the GSA policy.  I will choose to chalk it up to bureaucracy: the “we don’t have enough to give out to everybody, so nobody will get them” mentality.  Yeah, Lord knows the government wouldn’t want to be seen showing favoritism to anybody, or giving away through misappropriation the peoples property.

The cynical among us will say that it’s just another example of Democrats within the government bureaucracy getting in one last jab at President George Bush.  At least it’s not as extreme as the pharaoh’s policy of defacing the hieroglyphs of his predecessors, but I’ll bet we see a more refined version of that.  We have heard snatches of it in the inauguration speech, and can see it on the new White House website.

 As I left work yesterday I wondered if the portraits had been replaced.  Upon arrival at the first floor, I found they had not, only bare wall was in their places.  This morning the portraits of the new administration had still not been emplaced.  In my active duty days, when a portrait was unavailable for the chain of command wall, a statement in the frame would say “photo not available”.  I guess we won’t be doing that here.  I’ll be counting the days until the deficiency is corrected, as an indication of the efficiency of the new administration