TRANSITION : There’s a New Face Hanging Around All Over the Capital

Thousands of portraits of President Clinton are still going up in the lobbies of buildings all over the capital. About 150 now hang just in the offices of the General Services Administration.

Pentagon pictorial specialist Betty Sprigg says the tradition has been around since George Washington. The military likes to decorate offices with pictures of the President and the other top members of the chain of command, she says, in case those leaders happen to drop by. She has produced 50,000 glossies for various Defense Department agencies so far, at a cost to taxpayers of about 25 cents for each 8-by-10-inch print.

There are thousands of other government offices to be supplied. The GSA has ordered 18,000 presidential portraits, varying in size from 8-by-10 inches to 20-by-24 and costing $6,000, to fill the lobbies of most of the 7,100 buildings it services nationwide.

GSA spokesman Dale Bruce says the replacing of portraits is “symbolic of the peaceful turnover of democracy in America . . . It’s a tradition--there is no law,” to require it.

Part of the tradition mandates that the bill for GSA portraits be picked up by the party in power--something the Democratic National Committee apparently had forgotten after 12 years on the outside. After some confusion, the DNC has so far agreed to pay for about half of the portraits.

Another part of the custom is that the vice presidential portrait is placed next to the President’s in the lobbies of civilian buildings. To date, however, the frames reserved for Vice President Al Gore remain conspicuously empty.

“I haven’t seen any (of Gore),” said one official, who asked to remain anonymous. “I thought it was strange. But maybe it’s a way of saving money.”

The vice president’s office insists that it has not sent Gore’s portraits out because the GSA has not requested them.

GSA service officer Patricia Wolfe, whose job it is to replace the portraits at the GSA, and who replaced Ronald Reagan’s portraits with George Bush’s four years ago, nevertheless gained personal satisfaction in replacing Bush’s portrait with Clinton’s. “I look at it as though I’m making history,” she says.