“It’s a real departure from the norm, especially because of the precedents,” said Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.” “To the extent such symbolism matters, it portends a change. A shift from the veneration of the rule of law, to the veneration of an individual.”
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While presidents such as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln all have their likeness on the U.S. currency, that happened after they were either dead or at least out of office; in 1866, Congress passed a law that prohibited using the “portrait or likeness of any living person” on legal tender. To have a leader put his face on an official instrument when the person is actually in power is, like the lapel pin, Mr. Ford said, “a bad sign.”
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“When Caesar put his face on a coin, it was a personal, rather than a civic, assertion of power,” Mr. Ford said. It was also when Rome moved from republic to empire.

That is why Mr. Carr’s pin matters. “It’s a reflection,” Mr. Ford said, “of the mind-set of someone working in the administration.” When that person is also the person charged with overseeing communications laws and regulations, it seems especially — well, pointed.