Eli Attie, who served as special assistant to the president in 1996 and 1997, and later moved on to be Al Gore's chief speechwriter, says, "I got glared at if I had a loosened tie in the West Wing." In fact, he says, after coming from a more relaxed environment on Capitol Hill, he was amazed by how seriously people took dress at the White House. "You had to be ready for business."

Of the "jeans and pizza boxes" image, Attie says, "If it was ever true, I never saw it. Around the Oval Office, people wore dark suits. In fact, Evelyn Lieberman, the deputy chief of staff, was notorious for upbraiding women for wearing too much makeup or for wearing their skirts too short."

This isn't the first time the allegedly slatternly dress of Clinton's staff has been blown up and paraded around as a metaphor for the moral lassitude of the previous administration. When former FBI director Gary Aldrich published his book "Unlimited Access" in 1996, he described Clinton advance men who looked like "bikers" and staffers who resembled hippies and said "one young lady was dressed entirely in black -- black pants, black T-shirt, black shoes, even black lipstick."

The abbreviated length of one staffer's skirt apparently made Aldrich "wonder if I'd walked into Hooters by mistake." (While here Aldrich sounds as if he has spent some time imagining what a Hooter's staffer might wear, it's obvious -- unless the staffer in question was wearing nude stockings, cutoff jean shorts and an owl T-shirt -- that Aldrich is engaging in a bit of dramatic hyperbole.)

Of course, what we're meant to take from such statements is that Clinton staffers were cheese-crazed animals in redneck-cum-hippie attire, while the Bush staff resembles a team of Bible salesmen traveling Kansas circa 1955. In fact, all the rhetoric about this newfound respect for the office, combined with the repeated ejaculations about the president's punctuality, could lead some to wonder whether members of the new administration have nothing more impressive to recommend them. (But then people who wonder about this sort of thing probably like to wear lederhosen and eat out of the trash.)

One young Bush staffer, however, remarks that, in reality, White House styles of dress have not changed drastically. Business attire is still required during the week, but the look relaxes on the weekends in this administration as well. The difference, she says, is that nobody wears jeans or T-shirts. "On the weekends, though, you could get away with leather pants." (Whoa, partner!)

If the White House has made a big deal out of this new "clean-cut" image, maybe it's because it's proud of keeping something clean. We're looking at wholesale pollution of the air and water, and our food is starting to seem kind of scary, but those Bushies sure are "well-scrubbed." Maybe now that Bush has rehabilitated the image of the man in the crew cut and short-sleeved button-down shirt, and life at the White House is a bit like a chirpy costume drama starring Robert Young as a former Fuller brush-selling Boy Scout who grew up to be president, we're supposed to feel better.

Of course, if the Bush administration really wants to reflect its values through its wardrobe, maybe it should try lamb's wool -- or whatever it is that wolves wear when they're trying to pass for sheep.

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