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

“laying out things, getting things ready, putting the clothing in each room.”
    Weeks before the inauguration, Rogers met with the florists and discussed what kind of flowers would sit on the cabaret tables and which kind of candelabras and candlelight they would use for those precious moments the first family has to enjoy their new, heady surroundings before they change for the balls.
    “All those little things can make everybody feel comfortable and welcome,” Florist Bob Scanlan said.
    The new president filled most of the West Wing with loyal aides from his presidential campaign and from his early political career, including longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs, whom he named as his first White House press secretary, and close friend Valerie Jarrett, whom he brought on board as a senior adviser. Michelle Obama brought her own team of aides, many of whom she had known for years. A couple of days after moving in, Michelle asked her East Wing staff and the entire residence staff to gather in the East Room. Katie McCormick Lelyveld, the first lady’s then press secretary, remembers her boss making it clear who was in charge.
    “This is the team I walked in the door with,” the first lady told the longtime residence staffers as she gestured toward her small cadre of political aides. “You guys are part of our new team,” she told them before turning to address her own staffers, including Lelyveld: “It’s on you to make sure that you know everybody here. They were here before you and they’re the ones that make this place tick. We are on their ground now.” The first lady’s staff then circulated around the room, introducing themselves.
    “At the time it was a matter of us investing in them to make surethat we knew what their role was, and how they fit into the bigger picture,” Lelyveld said. “ We were the new kids.”
    From those first days onward, Lelyveld looked to residence workers for advice. When she wanted to think of a clever way to preview the Obamas’ first state dinner menu, she went down to the kitchen and asked Executive Chef Cristeta “Cris” Comerford how she thought they should lay out the room so that members of the media could see what she was preparing without distracting her from her work. When she asked workers from the Engineering and Operations departments about rearranging furniture for a TV interview on the State Floor, she was reminded that the White House is not the average household. “You’re working in a museum,” she says. “It’s not just two chairs for an interview,” but “two chairs in the Blue Room that are older than you are—by centuries—that need to be moved out of the way. So you defer to the staff whose job it is to take care of that space.” (The furnishings are so precious that one housekeeper was told by his boss that if he broke a certain French gilded bronze clock that had been on display at the White House since 1817 he should not bother ever coming back. He wouldn’t make enough money in his lifetime to replace it.)
    On the Friday after President Obama’s inauguration, the president casually made the rounds to introduce himself. When he came to the second-floor kitchen, he found several butlers gathered around the TV. He playfully punched James Jeffries on the shoulder.
    “What are you looking at?” he asked them.
    “We were looking at what was going on at the Lincoln Memorial before the inauguration,” Jeffries replied. “Congratulations on becoming president.”
    “Thank you,” Obama said with his trademark ear-to-ear grin and walked out of the room.
    A few minutes later, when he came back into the kitchen, Jeffries got up the nerve to add: “I just congratulated you. Tomorrow,if I happen to be called to come to work, you can congratulate me for having been working here for fifty years.”
    “I ain’t got to wait until tomorrow,” Obama replied, without missing a beat. “I can do that right now. Congratulations.”
    Though Desirée