The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House by Kate Andersen Brower Read Free Book Online

started gathering information on the candidates during the primaries, well before a general election candidate is selected. It was particularly difficult when President Ford, President Carter, and President George H. W. Bush lost their bids for a second term. “The ownership is of the family that’s there but you have to be watching out for what’s going to occur,” Walters said.
    In December, after the election and before the inauguration, Walters would arrange for the incoming family to get a guided tour of the White House from the current first lady. It’s then that the incoming first lady would be presented with a book containing the names and photographs of the people who work in the residence. The book helps the first family learn the names of everyone who works in the house and is partly a security measure, so that if they see anyone unfamiliar they can alert the Secret Service.
    The departing first family pays for their personal things to be moved out of the White House. The incoming president also pays for bringing belongings into the mansion either out of the new first family’s own coffers or from funds raised for the campaign or transition. It is the job of the incoming family to coordinate with the Secret Service to get their personal effects to the White House the morning of the inauguration.
    One logistical challenge that comes with every inauguration is the transfer of the incoming first family’s furniture and larger belongings to the White House. After the election of 1960, theKennedys’ social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, told Jackie in a memo that she had asked the Eisenhowers’ social secretary, Mary Jane McCaffree, “if we couldn’t smuggle a lot of stuff over without the [Eisenhowers] knowing and she said yes, the head Usher could store cartons, suitcases, etc., out of sight and then whisk them into sight on the stroke of 12 noon. Isn’t that marvelous??? Right out of Alfred Hitchcock.” Baldrige recalled pulling up to the White House with Jackie’s maid, Providencia Paredes, and Jack Kennedy’s valet, George Thomas, in a car with the inaugural gown and all of the Kennedys’ luggage. They arrived as everyone else was gathered at the Capitol for the inauguration ceremony. The snow-covered South Grounds were bathed in bright sunshine. “We had timed the pilgrimage from Georgetown to the White House so that we would not arrive before twelve noon, because at noon, officially, the new president takes possession of the White House.”
    Nearly a half-century later, the same conditions applied. The Obama family’s advisers started meeting with residence staff soon after the election, and by the week before the inauguration, much of the Obamas’ furniture had already been shipped to the White House, where it was stored in the China Room on the Ground Floor so that it could be moved quickly upstairs. The Bushes had told Chief Usher Stephen Rochon that they wanted to make the move as easy as possible for everyone, but Rochon was eager to make sure the Bushes never felt as if they were being pushed out. “We want to keep it out of the sight of the existing family. Not that they didn’t know it was there, but we didn’t want them to feel that we were trying to move them out.”
    Other Obama advisers made similar connections with the residence staff. More than two months before the inauguration, Chief Florist Nancy Clarke met with the Obamas’ decorator, Michael Smith, to discuss floral arrangements for the private rooms where friends and family would be staying on the night of the inauguration.
    “There’s very limited time to prepare the house, so there’sa whole team working on making certain that everything was as perfect as it could be in the time that we had allotted,” said Social Secretary Desirée Rogers, a close confidante of the Obamas since their Chicago days and their first social secretary. On Inauguration Day “we were in the house as soon as we could be,” she recalls,