Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

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?”

The veteran butler replied: “Yes, sir. Presidents come and go. But George is always here.”

Like many venerable institutions, change came slowly to the White House. The phone system was a throwback to another era. To dial out from the residence, we had to pick up the receiver and wait for a White House operator to dial for us. Eventually I got used to it and came to appreciate the kind and patient operators who worked at the switchboard.

When the entire phone system was eventually upgraded with newer technology, I continued to place calls through them.

I knew I would never get used to the Secret Service agent posted outside our bedroom door. This was standard operating procedure for past Presidents, and the Secret Service was adamant, at first, about keeping it that way.

“What if the President has a heart attack in the middle of the night?” one agent asked me when I suggested that he station himself downstairs instead of with us on the second floor.

“He’s forty-six years old and in great health,” I said. “He’s not going to have a heart attack!”

The Secret Service adapted to our needs, and we to theirs. After all, they were the experts when it came to our safety. We just had to find a way to let them do their job and let us be ourselves. For twelve years, they had been used to a predictable routine where spontaneity was the exception, not the rule. Our campaign, with its breakneck pace, frequent stops and rope lines, made our agents scramble. I had many long conversations with the agents assigned to protect us. One of my lead agents, Don Flynn, said: “Now I get it. It’s like if one of us was President. We like to go places and do things and stay up late too.” That one comment helped set the tone of cooperation and flexibility that came to characterize our relationships with the agents sworn to protect us. Bill, Chelsea and I have nothing but praise for their courage, integrity and professionalism, and we feel lucky to remain friends with many agents who protected us.

Maggie Williams had agreed to help me at the end of the 1992 presidential campaign, but only if I understood that she would return to Philadelphia after the election to finish her Ph.D. at Penn. With the election over, I realized I needed her more than ever. I begged, pleaded, implored and hounded her to stay on through the transition, then to join the administration as my Chief of Staff.

Our first job was to recruit other staffers, pick office space and learn the intricacies of the traditional First Lady duties. Since the Truman Administration, First Ladies and their staffs had operated entirely out of the East Wing, which houses two floors of office space, a large reception room for visitors, the White House movie theater and a long glass colonnade that runs along the edge of the East Garden that Lady Bird Johnson dedicated to Jackie Kennedy. Over the years, as First Ladies expanded their duties, their staffs grew bigger and more specialized. Jackie Kennedy was the first to have her own press secretary.

Lady Bird Johnson organized her staff structure to reflect that of the West Wing.

Rosalynn Carter’s staff director operated as a chief of staff and attended daily meetings with the President’s staff. Nancy Reagan increased the size and prominence of her staff within the White House.

The West Wing is where the Oval Office is located, along with the Roosevelt Room, the Cabinet Room, the Situation Room (where top-secret meetings are held and communications are sent and received), the White House Mess (where meals are served) and offices housing the President’s senior staff. The rest of the White House staff work across a driveway in the Old Executive Office Building, or OEOB. No First Lady or her staff had ever had offices in the West Wing or the OEOB (which has since been renamed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building).

Although the visitors office, personal correspondence and the social secretary would remain headquartered in the East Wing, some of my staff would be part of the West Wing team. I thought they should be integrated physically as well. Maggie made her case to Bill’s transition staff for the space we wanted in the West Wing, and the Office of the First Lady moved into a suite of rooms at the end of a long corridor on the first floor of the OEOB. I was assigned an office on the second floor of the West Wing just down the hall from the domestic policy staff. This was another unprecedented event in White House history and quickly became fodder for late night comedians and political pundits.

One cartoon depicted the White House with an Oval Office rising from the roof of the second floor.

Maggie assumed the title of Assistant to the President―her predecessors had been Deputy Assistants to the President―and each morning she