你所不知道的美国总统 Inside the Presidency

Inside the Presidency

Few outsiders ever see the President's private enclave.
By Elisabeth Bumiller
Photograph by Christopher Morris
History always makes a sharp turn in Washington when a new American President takes the oath of office, and so it will once again on January 20, 2009. There will be new Cabinet members, a new Congress, a new foreign policy, a new style in the East Wing, new embarrassing relatives (if the past is any guide), and new first friends.

But many other things in the private world of the President of the United States will stay remarkably the same. The maids on the permanent White House housekeeping staff will make the presidential bed, just as they always have. The kitchen staff will still peel potatoes and scramble eggs. The gardeners will have planted 3,500 tulip bulbs to bloom in the Rose Garden in the spring.

The permanent care and feeding of the President of the United States is an industry staffed by hundreds of people, largely supported by taxpayers, and little understood beyond the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. First families move in and out—"They get a four- or eight-year lease," says Gary Walters, former chief usher of the Executive Mansion. But the staff, customs, and mechanics surrounding the world's most powerful chief executive endure, often for generations.

Walters knows this well. As a deputy manager and then manager of the most famous address in the U.S. for 31 years, from Gerald Ford to the second President Bush, Walters spanned six presidencies and crises both global and domestic until his retirement in 2007. He ran a house with a 90-member residence staff of butlers, maids, chefs, maître d's, elevator operators, florists, curators, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. In some ways it was like running the world's most exclusive hotel, except that Walters was in charge of a building with four major and often conflicting functions: home, office, grand museum, ultimate event site. Incredibly, the White House has welcomed up to 30,000 guests in a single week.

Walters, an Army veteran and a former officer in the old Executive Protective Service (now known as the Secret Service Uniformed Division), brought military precision and the utmost discretion to a job that was never 9 to 5. His worst times, he recalls, were when one first family moved out, typically around 10 a.m. on January 20, and the other moved in—by 4 p.m. the same day.

Walters's goal was to have the departing family's possessions out and the new socks in dresser drawers, personal furniture arranged, pictures hung, family photos displayed, favorite snacks in the kitchen—all in that six-hour time frame. There is no chance to get a head start, since the new President does not officially take office until January 20 at noon, two hours after his moving van pulls up under escort in the White House driveway as the outgoing President leaves for the Capitol. To make the deadline, Walters would deploy the entire 90-member staff at once, divided into teams with specific tasks. Months of planning included repeat verbal dry runs. (No such rehearsals took place before Richard Nixon's early departure, however. Word went out that the First Lady had made a request through the usher's office for packing boxes. "That's how we knew," said Betty C. Monkman, a former White House curator.)

Some transitions were especially rocky. Bill Clinton stayed in the Oval Office until 4 a.m. on January 20, 2001. "Then he had his desk that had to be cleaned out," Walters recalls. He had to wait until the President went to bed before he could swoop in and help Clinton's staff clear out the office to make way for George W. Bush.

But once things settle down, "the White House is first and foremost a family home," Walters says. "It is the responsibility of the residence staff to change to the needs of every family, and not pigeonhole the family to the White House."

To ensure such comfort, Walters would begin questioning the First-Lady-to-be after the election in November, as soon as the outgoing President had invited the new one to visit. What rooms would you like to use for your bedrooms? What time do you want to get up in the morning? What kind of toothpaste should be in the bathroom? What snacks would you prefer stocked in the pantry?

Bush 43 said pretzels, which got him into trouble in 2002, when he choked on one while watching a football game in his White House bedroom, lost consciousness, hit the floor, then came to, with only the presidential dogs as witnesses. Bush's father requested easier to swallow Texas Blue Bell ice cream. He did not, however, request pork rinds, despite making a regular-guy show of nibbling them in public. "It was totally bogus," Walters says. "He didn't eat them."

The second Bush also liked to keep a stainless steel water dish at the foot of the South Portico's curved granite staircase, and Dale Haney, the superintendent of the White House grounds, could be seen moonlighting as the walker of the presidential terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. Chelsea Clinton had her friends over for pizza in the State Dining Room. Susan Ford hosted her junior prom in the East Room. In the Reagan Administration, known publicly for its old Hollywood glamour, the President and First Lady liked their private, just-the-two-of-them dinners served on trays in front of the television.

So what's for dinner? First Ladies and Presidents generally haven't cooked at the White House, although they have a second-floor kitchen in the family quarters, separate from the main kitchen on the mansion's ground level. The Clintons liked to use their kitchen for post-party glasses of champagne and raided its refrigerator for leftovers. But most families have simply selected a weekly menu from choices offered by the White House chef. State dinners, barbecues for Congress, and holiday receptions for the diplomatic corps are paid for by taxpayers, but the President is billed for all food consumed by his family and his personal guests. In the first months of a new administration, sticker shock is routine.