I’m sure most of you are already aware, but during President Obama’s most recent vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, he had the Oval Office redecorated — at no taxpayer expense, the White House quickly pointed out.

But among the new furniture, wallpaper and lamps is a new rug. It still bears the presidential seal, and the same company that made the Clinton-era rug made Obama’s. However, the president decided to adorn this one with five quotes of his own choosing around the border, as reported by ABC News‘ Jake Tapper:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people” – President Abraham Lincoln

“No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings” – President John F. Kennedy

“The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us” – President Theodore Roosevelt

Rarely do we get such a clear glimpse into the president’s mind. The White House insists Obama himself handpicked these quotes. For whatever reasons, these five lines are very important to him.

Upon reading the quotes, I noticed immediately that there were no quotes from any of the Founding Fathers. With any other president, this would be troubling.

Not so with Obama. Recall that on this year’s Fourth of July, he stated:

“We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America — civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American.”

Civil, voting, workers’ and women’s rights are fantastic, but why leave out the Bill of Rights? In referring to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as simply “men of property and wealth,” our president does them a great disservice.

The disdain he exhibits for the founders is clear; they were backward simpletons, a line of unenlightened loons until Lincoln set them straight. For Obama, it seems, American history only then saw its dawning.

There are other problems with this rug. As reported in the Washington Post, the quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is in fact inspired by a quote from 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker.

The quote from Roosevelt is the poorest of the group, having been taken out of context even more so than Obama’s own quote in John McCain’s “Dangerous” campaign ad.

The rest of the phrase following Roosevelt‘s quote on the president’s rug stated that, “in public life that man is the best representative of each of us … whose endeavor is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’ selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.”

I can see now why they cut him short.

One of the quotes is not attributed to its original source, one quote is horribly out of context and most are from Democrats. It’s pretty much the worst rug ever.