Living History (21 page)

Bill finally finished writing and rehearsing the big speech an hour or two before dawn on the morning of his inauguration.

We slept very briefly and then started our extraordinary day with an emotional interfaith service at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Then we went to the White House, where the Bushes greeted us at the North Portico with their spaniels, Millie and Ranger, darting around their legs. They were very welcoming and put us at ease. Although the campaign had been bruising for both our families, Barbara Bush had been gracious to me when we had met in the past and had given me a walking tour of the family quarters of the White House after the election. George Bush had always been friendly when we had seen him at the annual National Governors Association conferences, and I had sat next to him at NGA dinners at the White House and at the Education Summit in Charlottesville at Monticello in 1989. When the summer Governors Conference was held in Maine in 1983, the Bushes opened their property at Kennebunkport for a big clambake. Chelsea, only three at the time, came along, and when she had to go to the bathroom, then Vice President Bush took her by the hand and showed her the way.

The Gores joined us at the White House, along with Alma and Ron Brown, who was Chairman of the DNC and soon to be sworn in as Commerce Secretary, and Linda and Harry Thomason, who had co-chaired the inauguration.

President and Mrs. Bush guided our party to the Blue Room, where we had coffee and made small talk for twenty minutes or so until it was time to leave for the Capitol. Bill rode in the presidential limousine with George Bush, while Barbara Bush and I followed in another car. The crowds lining Pennsylvania Avenue cheered and waved as we passed.

I admired Mrs. Bush’s elan as we prepared to watch one President, her husband, make way for another.

At the Capitol we stood on the West Front with its breathtaking view down the Mall to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The huge crowd spilled out beyond the Monument.

Following custom, the United States Marine Band struck up “Hail to the Chief’ one final time for George Bush just before noon, and again to the new President a few minutes later. I had always been stirred by those chords, and now I felt moved beyond words to hear them play for my husband. Chelsea and I reverently held the Bible as Bill took the oath of office. Then he gathered Chelsea and me in his arms and, kissing each of us, whispered, “I love you both so much.”

Bill’s speech stressed the themes of sacrifice and service for America and called for the changes he had featured in his campaign. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” he said, calling Americans to “a season of service” on behalf of those in need at home and those around the world whom we must help to build democracy and freedom.

After the swearing-in ceremony, while some of our new staffers hurried to the White House to start unpacking and organizing our things, Bill and I lunched in the Capitol with members of Congress. Just as the mantle of power passes from one President to the next at noon on Inauguration Day, so does possession of the White House. The belongings of a new President and his family cannot be moved into the White House until after he is sworn in. At 12:01 P.M., George and Barbara Bush’s moving vans pulled away from the delivery entrance as ours came in. Our luggage, furniture and hundreds of boxes were unloaded in a mad dash in the few hours between the ceremony at the Capitol and the end of the inaugural parade. Aides scrambled to locate what we would need immediately and stuffed the rest of our possessions into closets and spare rooms to deal with later.

White House security procedures require that essential employees be cleared with the uniformed Secret Service guards, a process known by its acronym, WAVES, which stands for “Workers and Visitors Entry System.” A list of prescreened guests or staff is then WAVE-d into the White House. Unfortunately, my personal assistant, Capricia Marshall, hadn’t quite mastered the system. She thought being “waved in” involved a welcoming hand gesture. Capricia, who would not let my inaugural gown out of her sight that day, carried it from Blair House, waving at guards as she went from gate to gate trying to find someone to WAVE her in. It’s a testament to her persuasiveness―and her eventual inclusion in the WAVES system―that my violet blue lace-covered ball gown made it past White House security on Inauguration Day.

After lunch, Bill, Chelsea and I drove from the Capitol down the parade route to the Treasury Building; there, with the Secret Service’s reluctant blessing, we got out and walked along Pennsylvania Avenue to the reviewing stand in front of the White House, where I sat down in front of a space heater to watch the parade. Because Democrats hadn’t had a winner in sixteen years, everyone wanted to participate. We couldn’t say no and didn’t want to. There were six marching bands from Arkansas alone, in a parade that lasted three hours.

We first walked into the White House as its new residents in the early evening after the last float passed by. I remember looking around in wonder at this house I had visited as a guest. Now it would be my home. It was during my walk up the path toward the White House and up the stairs of the North Portico and into the Grand Foyer that the reality hit me: I was actually the First Lady, married to the President of the United States. It was the first of many times I would be reminded of the history I was now joining.

Members of the permanent White House staff, numbering about one hundred, were waiting to greet us in the Grand Foyer. These are the men and women who run the house and tend to the special needs of its residents. The White House has its own engineers, carpenters, plumbers, gardeners, florists, curators, cooks, butlers and housekeepers who continue from one administration to the next. The entire operation is overseen by the “ushers,” a quaint term from the nineteenth century still used to describe the administrative staff. In 2000, I published my third book, An Invitation to the White House, which was both a tribute to the permanent White House staff and a behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary job they do every day.

We were escorted upstairs to the private residence on the second floor, which looked barren as our belongings had not been unpacked. But we had no time to worry about any of that. We had to get ready to go out.

One of the most convenient features of the residence is the beauty salon, put in by Pat Nixon on the second floor. Chelsea, her friends, my mother, my motherin-law and my sister-in-law, Maria, crowded in and jockeyed to be transformed, like Cinderellas, for the balls.

Bill wanted to attend each of the eleven inaugural balls that evening, and not just for the customary five-minute drop-by and wave. We were going to celebrate. Chelsea and four of her girlfriends from Arkansas accompanied us to several events, including the MTV Ball, before returning to the White House for a sleepover. The Arkansas Ball, held in the Washington Convention Center, was the biggest and most fun for us because that’s where our families and twelve thousand of our friends and supporters had gathered. Ben E. King handed Bill a saxophone, and the crowd erupted in cheers and Razorback hog calls of “Soooooo-ey!”

No one had more fun than Bill’s mother, Virginia. She was the belle of at least three balls. She probably already knew half the revelers, and she was quickly meeting the rest.

She also made a special friend that night: Barbra Streisand. She and Barbra struck up a friendship at the Arkansas Ball that continued with weekly phone calls for the next year.

Bill and I carried on at the balls, and by the end of the evening, we had danced to so many renditions of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” the unofficial campaign theme song, that I had to kick off my shoes to give my feet a rest. Neither of us wanted the night to end, but I finally coaxed Bill out of the Midwestern Ball at the Sheraton Hotel when the musicians started packing away their instruments. We headed back to the White House well after two in the morning.

When we stepped out of the elevator into the second floor residence, we looked at each other in disbelief: this was now our home. Too tired to explore these grand new surroundings, we crashed into bed.

We had been asleep for only a few hours when we heard a brisk knock on the bedroom door.

Tap, tap, tap.

“Whuh?”

TAP, TAP, TAP.

Bill bolted up in bed, and I groped for my glasses in the dark, thinking there must be some sort of emergency on our very first morning.

Suddenly the door swung open and a man in a tuxedo stepped into the bedroom carrying a silver breakfast tray. This is how the Bushes began their day, with a bedroom breakfast at 5:30 A.M., and it’s what the butlers were accustomed to. But the first words this poor man heard from the forty-second President of the United States were, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

You never saw anyone back out of a room so quickly.

Bill and I just laughed and settled back under the covers to try to steal another hour of sleep. It struck me that both the White House and we, its new occupants, were in for some major adjustments, publicly and privately.

The Clinton Presidency represented generational and political change that would affect every institution in Washington. For twenty of the previous twentyfour years, the White House had been a Republican domain. Its occupants had been members of our parents’

generation. The Reagans often ate dinner in front of the television on TV trays and the Bushes reportedly awoke at dawn to walk the dogs, and then read newspapers and watch the morning news shows on the five television sets in their bedroom. After twelve years, the dedicated permanent staff was used to a predictable routine and regular hours.

Children hadn’t lived there fulltime since Jimmy Carter left office in 1981. I suspected that our family’s casual lifestyle and roundthe-clock work habits were bound to be as unfamiliar to the staff as the formality of the White House was to us.

Bill’s campaign had emphasized Putting People First, so on our first full day in the White House we wanted to make good on that promise by inviting thousands of people for an open house, many selected by lottery. They all held tickets and many had lined up in the dark before sunrise to meet us and the Gores. But we hadn’t anticipated how long it would take to greet everyone and hadn’t scheduled enough time. The lines stretched across the grounds from the East Gate to the South Portico, and I felt terrible when I realized many of the people waiting outside in the cold wouldn’t make it inside to the Diplomatic Reception Room before we had to leave. The four of us went outside to tell the hardy souls remaining how sorry we were that we could not stay to greet them, but that they were still welcome to visit their house.

After our other obligations ended late that afternoon, Bill and I were finally free to change into casual clothes and have a look around our new home. We wanted to share these first days and nights in the White House with our closest friends and family. There were two guest rooms on the second floor, referred to as the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Bedroom, and seven other guest rooms on the third floor. In addition to Chelsea and her friends from Little Rock, our parents, Hugh and Dorothy Rodham and Virginia and Dick Kelley, and our brothers, Hugh Rodham (and his wife, Maria), Tony Rodham and Roger Clinton, were staying with us. And we had also invited four of our best friends, Diane and Jim Blair and Harry and Linda Thomason, to spend the night.

Harry and Linda produced and wrote several television shows, including the hugely successful Designing Women and Evening Shade, but their hearts never left the Ozarks.

Harry had grown up in Hampton, Arkansas, and started out as a high school football coach in Little Rock. Linda came from a family of lawyers and activists in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, just across the Arkansas State line. The only other famous person born in that patch of Missouri, Linda told us with a laugh, was Rush Limbaugh, the rightwing radio host who was one of George Bush’s biggest cheerleaders. Linda’s and Rush’s families knew each other and had a long-standing, amiable rivalry.

After a whirlwind week of inaugural festivities, it felt good to relax with people we had known for years and trusted completely. At the end of the evening, we decided to raid the small family kitchen off the West Sitting Hall. Harry and Bill checked the cabinets while Linda and I opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for one item: a halffull bottle of vodka. We used the contents to toast the new President, the country and our future.

Our parents had already gone to bed, and Chelsea and her guests were finally quiet.

The night before, the girls had come back early from the inaugural balls and had a great time going on a scavenger hunt staged for them by the curators and ushers. I thought it would be a good way for her to have fun and get familiar with her new environment. The curators came up with all sorts of historical clues, such as find “the painting with the yellow bird” (Still Life with Fruit, Goblet and Canary by Severin Roesen, in the Red Room) and find “the room where it is sometimes said a ghost has been seen.” (The Lincoln Bedroom, where guests have reported cold breezes and spectral figures.) I don’t believe in ghosts, but we did sometimes feel that the White House was haunted by more temporal entities. Spirits of administrations past were everywhere. Sometimes they even left notes. Harry and Linda were given the Lincoln Bedroom that night. When they climbed into the long rosewood bed, they found a folded piece of paper under a pillow.

“Dear Linda, I was here first, and I’ll be back,” the note said. It was signed “Rush Limbaugh.”

EAST WING, WEST WING

The White House is the president’s office and home, and it is also a national museum. Its organizational culture, I quickly learned, is like a military unit. For years things had been done a certain way, often by staff who had worked there for decades, perfecting the way the house was run and preserved. The head gardener, Irv Williams, started under President Truman. The permanent staff knew that they provided the continuity from one First Family to the next. In many ways they were the keepers of the institutional Presidency from one administration to the next. We were merely temporary residents. When the senior President Bush came to unveil his official portrait during Bill’s first term, he saw George Washington Hannie, Jr., a butler who had worked at the House for more than twentyfive years. “George, you’re still here?”