Bumped.
An update:
Too bad Obama had to wait so long to get his portrait officially unveiled. I hope we don’t enter an era where each president has to wait for a successor of his own party to have an unveiling ceremony.
We had a delay in portraits of the PMs some years ago, but not because of prime ministerial pettiness, but a bureaucratic snafu.
There are apparently two rules for the PM portraits in Parliament:
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the PM portraits go up in chronological order;
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they won’t hang a portrait of a former PM who is still involved in politics.
Normally that’s not a problem, because most defeated PMs get out of politics, but there was an exception with Joe Clark.
PM Clark was in office in 1979-80, but continued in electoral politics until the early 2000s. That meant that none of his successors’ portraits would go up.
Clark apparently didn’t realise he was holding up the queue, and finally the officials in charge of the parliamentary portraits contacted him and explained what was happening. He apparently said “Ooops - I had no idea that’s how it worked!” and graciously waived his place in the queue so that subsequent PMs could have their portraits put up.
Well, the story notes that the process for Trump’s portrait is ongoing. I expect Biden will put it up in due course.
The real question will be, will he invite Trump? We could make up a rule that we can’t invite a former president who is currently running for office, or some such thing.
If Trump wins in 2024, of course, he’ll refuse to post Biden’s portrait, since he’s the one that started this nonsense in the first place. If Trump loses, things may get back to normal with the next Republican President, perhaps.
I also wonder what Trump’s portrait will look like. Will he go for the classic generalissimo look, like this:
Or perhaps something like this:
Or maybe, he’ll just have Jon McNaughton paint something.
Which one is cheapest? That one.
Unflattering is more important to me than cheap.
A toddler could do that.
Oh…
Despite the graphic, this is an updated story from the earlier CNN link:
Bumped.
Lots more Obama portrait swag here:
https://saamnpgstore.si.edu/shop-by-collection/obama-portraits
For those who really like Michelle Obama’s portrait (sorry I didn’t see this in time for Christmas): Hand Felted Michelle Obama Ornament – Craftspring