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

catering to: George W. Bush or Al Gore. After the decision was handed down, Laura Bush had less than half the normal amount of time to prepare for their move.
    The recount was highly contentious, with the entire national election hinging on the results in Florida, and when the verdict came down against Gore, Bill Clinton’s staff was furious. The younger Clinton aides, in particular, were vocal about their disdain for the incoming president. One staffer shouted at Chef Mesnier,in no uncertain terms, that Bush would be a one-term president: “We’ll kick his ass out of here!” he yelled at the chef. In keeping with the residence staff’s credo to be apolitical Mesnier says, “I let him have his say and said nothing myself.” (He says that the Clintons themselves weren’t happy about their staff’s behavior, loyalty notwithstanding.)
    Regardless of who won the election, the Clintons hated to leave. Hillary Clinton said that even after eight years of living in the residence, and enduring incredibly painful times there, she still views the White House “with the same awe I felt as a little girl pressing my face up to the gate to get a better look.” The whole family, including Chelsea, took advantage of their private theater one last time to watch the movie State and Main well after midnight the night before President George W. Bush’s inauguration. They didn’t want to miss a minute that the house was still under their temporary ownership. “The fun of that night left them so tired that when Barbara, Jenna, and I glanced over at Bill during George’s inaugural address, he was dozing,” Laura Bush recalled.
    President Clinton confessed to the Bushes on the morning of the inauguration that he had put off packing for so long that, right at the end, “he was packing simply by pulling out drawers and dumping their contents into boxes.”
    While Hillary Clinton always appreciated the majesty of the White House, she had her regrets. She told Laura Bush that she wished that she hadn’t insisted on having an office in the West Wing and that she had not decided to turn down invitations just because her schedule was too packed. She always felt particularly guilty about declining an invitation from Jackie Kennedy to attend the ballet. Jackie died a few months later. Her advice to Bush: Don’t lose sight of what’s important.

    W ORKERS OFTEN FOUND themselves at the center of world events. Betty Monkman, who served in the curator’s office from 1967 to 2002, eventually becoming chief curator, was responsible for supervising the workers who hung and removed artwork for each new incoming first family. During the transition from Carter to Reagan, she remembers, the staff turned on televisions throughout the residence as they worked so that they could watch the final throes of the tense Iran hostage crisis. “President Carter had been up in the Oval Office all night long with his staff and barely got over to the house to dress for his ten A.M. event with President Reagan,” Monkman said. “Nobody knew what was going to happen. The whole country was waiting.” The Iranians released the remaining fifty-two hostages minutes after Reagan was sworn in as the nation’s fortieth president—one last dig at Carter, who had worked day and night to bring about their release before the end of his administration.
    No matter what occurs outside the White House, the staff is always singularly focused on the move. “We were constantly on our feet,” Monkman said. “Once, in the Ford administration, we were doing something in Susan Ford’s bedroom and President Ford just happened to come around when people were starting to disassemble things to say good-bye to the household staff. Right before he went downstairs he made it a mission to come by and thank everybody for their work and that was something the staff appreciated.” As soon as he left, the rush was on.
    Though they try not to get too attached to the mansion’s current