by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
So the weary aide sailed to Italy. Together, he and his friend traveled across Europe to England. There they decided to return home on the maiden voyage of the new luxury liner, the S.S. Titanic. On the night of April 14, 1912, the two men were last seen on the slanting deck, calmly awaiting the final plunge. They had given their life jackets to women passengers.
President Taft was devastated by the news that Butt was among the dead. “He was like a member of my own family,” he said. “I feel as if he had been a younger brother.”
VI
Under Woodrow Wilson, the presidential secretary added another responsibility to his chores: congressional liaison. Wilson was fortunate enough to find the ideal man for the job—thirty-three-year-old Joseph Tumulty of Jersey City, New Jersey, a town where politics came close to being the major industry.
Tumulty backed Wilson when he ran for governor of New Jersey in 1910, and gave the college professor a political education second to none. (Wilson later remarked that anyone who does not understand politics after playing the game for a year or two in the Garden State had better go into another line of work.) When Wilson headed for the White House in 1913, he took Tumulty with him. He trusted Tumulty’s political judgment completely. He let him decide whom he should see and whom he should duck. He also depended on Tumulty to cajole leaders of Congress into looking with favor on the legislation Wilson sponsored.
Alas, inside the White House, Tumulty found himself confronted by an unexpected enemy: Wilson’s second wife, Edith Galt. She was jealous of Tumulty’s influence with the president, and persuaded her husband to fire him at the beginning of his second term. A reporter friend of Tumulty’s talked Wilson into changing his mind, but their relationship never regained its previous intimacy.
Nevertheless, Tumulty remained devoted to Wilson to the sad end of the president’s life in 1924. Few aides have left more emotional tributes to their departed chief. “Yes, Woodrow Wilson is dead,” Tumulty wrote. “But his spirit still lives—the spirit that tried to wipe away the tears of the world, the spirit of justice, humanity and holy peace.”
VII
Herbert Hoover expanded the White House staff from a secretary and a dozen or so office assistants to some forty people—a number that seems positively minuscule by today’s standards. Hoover’s staff were anonymous, faceless men operating in the shadow of their boss. In contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s staff was twice the size of Hoover’s and many of them rapidly became celebrities in their own right.
At the top of the list of Roosevelt aides was Harry Hopkins, a former social worker from Iowa. FDR enjoyed his cynical humor and his ability to get things done. As head of the Works Progress Administration, better known as the WPA, Hopkins spent eleven billion dollars in five whirlwind years and created jobs for 8.5 million men and women.
On the downside, Harry was often too fast with the come-back for his own good. When a reporter informed Hopkins that many congressmen said he was no politician, he sneered: “Tell ’em thanks for the compliment.”
Many presidents would have jettisoned such a controversial adviser, but FDR was a stubborn man. He not only kept Hopkins around, he moved him into the White House when his health collapsed in the late 1930s. His illness, a rare form of stomach cancer, did not stop Hopkins from masterminding Roosevelt’s bid for a third term in 1940. During World War II, FDR made him an unofficial secretary of state, sending him abroad to talk politics and military strategy with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
Another staff member who won FDR’s trust was his secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand. Missy had been with FDR since 1920, when she worked for him during his failed run for the vice presidency. She lived through his ordeal with polio and followed him to the governor’s mansion in Albany. She was thirty-seven when she came to the White House and moved into a pair of rooms on the third floor.
Missy acted far more like a wife than a secretary, boldly disagreeing with FDR in front of others, shopping for him, and making sure he took his cough medicine. “She was one of the very, very few people who was not a yes-man,” one aide said.
In 1941, Missy collapsed from a stroke that left her partially paralyzed, and retreated to the home of a sister in Massachusetts. She died in a Boston hospital on July 31, 1944, nine months before the man she called “F.D.” died in Warm Springs, Georgia.
VIII
FDR started out with a staff of fewer than one hundred people, but by 1945 the number had increased to 225. Some of the personalities who swirled through and around the Roosevelt Oval Office would make a book unto themselves. The prize for most colorful character undoubtedly went to Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson, a rotund Alabamian who was the Roosevelt White House’s court jester. FDR’s day invariably started with a visit from Pa, who always had a funny story for him.
Many people thought Watson was just a joker. But he was by no means politically stupid. As appointments secretary, he had a lot to do with who got to see the president. In 1944 he made sure no one who had a good word to say for Vice President Henry Wallace got anywhere near FDR for several months. That bit of infighting played no small part in making Senator Harry S Truman the Democratic nominee for the job. Watson joined this cabal (of which my father was totally unaware) because he knew FDR was dying and the vice president of 1944 was very likely to become president. He and many others thought Wallace would be a disaster.
Watson was an unlikely candidate for the select group of White House insiders who can say they helped change the course of American history. But proximity to the Oval Office almost guarantees such surprises.
IX
The Truman aides who appeared in the West Wing underscored the growing maturity of the White House staff system. Dad was particularly careful about selecting his appointments secretary—no one sees more of the president or needs to be closer to what he is thinking. His choice for the post was Matt Connelly, who had worked for him on the World War II Truman committee.
Matt did more than schedule appointments, of course. He was the “contact man,” as he later put it, for politicians across the country when they came to Washington. Not all of them could get to see the president but they all saw Matt.
Matt made a big difference in the 1948 campaign, when Dad, the underdog by umpteen points in every poll, made his famous whistle-stop campaign across the country. Matt’s role as presser of political flesh outside the Oval Office put him on a first-name basis with politicians all over the country. One reporter noted that on the Republican candidate’s campaign train, “local politicians did not get the red-carpet treatment they received from Truman’s aide, Matt Connelly.”
The other indispensable Truman aide was Charlie Ross, who literally worked himself to death as press secretary, as I described in the opening chapter. Charlie had enormous prestige with the press corps and was greatly loved by all the Trumans.
X
None of these Truman staff members sought or got the kind of publicity that Roosevelt’s aides accumulated. Grandstanding was taboo in the Truman White House. There was only one exception to this rule—a big handsome Missourian named Clark Clifford. Some historians have called him “the Golden Boy” of the Truman White House.
There is no doubt that Clark was a smart lawyer and a polished writer. My father valued his services and his candid advice. But after Clark left the White House to launch a lucrative law practice in Washington, he began taking credit for almost everything the Truman administration did.
A distressing number of reporters and even a few historians believed Clark. They did not seem to realize that the phrase my father had on his desk—“The buck stops here”—was a description not only of presidential responsibility but of presidential leadership. No single White House aide or even all of them put together can claim credit for the big decisions. A president makes them in the lonely hours of his day (or night), after listening to dozens of people.
XI
Succeeding presidents assembled new staffs, who soon display
ed some of the tendencies that were already becoming apparent in the post–World War II White House. Infighting and vying for the president’s attention were raised to fine arts and an enlarged ego became a predictable side effect of working in the West Wing.
In the all too brief Kennedy regime, another side effect developed. The president emanated such glamour and charisma that his aides could not help sharing the glow. As Dave Powers, JFK’s old Boston pal, put it: “He made everybody around him look ten feet tall.” After JFK died, Powers added: “Now he’s gone and they’re shrinking.”
The Kennedy staff was relentlessly male. But in their midst was an important woman whom most of them barely noticed: presidential secretary Evelyn Lincoln. In appearance and demeanor, she was neither glamorous nor powerful, but she was capable and, equally important, loyal.
JFK remarked one day to his favorite speechwriter, “If I said, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, I have cut off Jackie’s head. Would you please send over a box?’ She would [reply] ‘That’s wonderful, Mr. President. I’ll send it right away. Did you get your nap?’ ”
Mrs. Lincoln had far more power than most White House watchers suspected. People could get to see the president through her door when they were turned away by JFK’s appointments secretary. But the biggest surprise came when Mrs. Lincoln published her book. While her portrait of JFK is affectionate on the whole, it revealed just how much this bird-like woman saw and remembered. Her JFK did not always wear his famous smile. He often blew his stack and berated everyone in sight, including innocent bystanders. At the same time, the book is a touching story of a country girl from the plains of Nebraska who fulfilled a lifelong hunger for glamour and excitement by getting a job in the White House.
XII
In his memoir of his days in William Jefferson Clinton’s administration, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich offers this glimpse of the White House staff.
The Secretary of Transportation phones to ask me how I discover what’s going on at the White House. I have no clear answer. . . . The decision-making “loop” depends on physical proximity to B— who’s whispering into his ear most regularly, whose office is closest to the Oval, who’s sitting or standing next to him when a key issue arises. . . . In this administration you’re either in the loop or out of the loop, but more likely you don’t know where the loop is, or you don’t even know there is a loop.
The Clinton White House may have been more chaotic than most, but in any administration there are always a few aides who are determined to be in the “loop” at all costs. George Stephanopoulos spent four years in the Clinton White House as the president’s senior adviser. Young, bright, and photogenic, Stephanopoulos was quickly singled out by the press as one of the stars of the White House staff. Eventually, however, he began to sour on life in the West Wing. Everywhere he looked, including the mirror, he saw vanity, ambition, and a love of power. Add in the long hours, the constant stress, and the ups and downs of presidential moods, and Stephanopoulos decided to preserve his sanity by bailing out at the end of Clinton’s first term.
XIII
Some stars, such as Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice, have emerged in George W. Bush’s West Wing, but so far no one seems to have become a golden boy (or girl) or a grandstander. There have been rumors of intrigues and rivalries, backstabbing and betrayals—some of which may actually be true. Such things happen even—or perhaps especially—in the White House. But we will have to wait a few years for insider books to be written and historians to mull over diaries and letters and E-mails before we really know what’s been happening. Meanwhile, I continue to believe that, whatever their political views or personal agendas, most of the small army of men and women who work in the West Wing have a genuine commitment to the country. They may never experience the close personal relationship that John George Nicolay and John Hay enjoyed with Abraham Lincoln, but there is a bond of mutual respect and affection. There is also the realization that grueling hours and constant crises are not a bad trade-off for the privilege of serving the president of the United States.
Questions for Discussion
What qualities should a president look for in selecting staff members?
Why is the job of appointments secretary so important?
Why are White House staff members apt to resign after a year or two on the job?
A 1982 photo of the residence staff in the State Dining Room. Do a head count and you’ll see why Nancy Reagan called the White House an eight-star hotel. Credit: Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library
8
Frontstairs, Backstairs
SOME OF THE most important people in the White House are all but invisible except to the families who live there. I’m talking about the household staff—the hundred or so men and women who prepare and serve the meals, vacuum the floors, polish the silver, repair the plumbing, check the wiring, and do whatever else is needed to keep the President’s House in perfect condition.
Overseeing this large and varied assortment of workers is the chief usher, who is basically the general manager of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He—so far they have all been men— works directly with the president and first lady and conveys their requests to the rest of the staff.
Every change in administration brings a spate of new requests. The day after Lyndon Johnson moved into the White House, he demanded that Chief Usher J. B. West do something about his shower. “If you can’t get it fixed,” he snapped, “I’m going to have to move back to The Elms”—a reference to the house he and his family had lived in during his vice presidency. West, with a couple of White House plumbers in tow, went up to inspect the offending shower. They found it in good working order, but it was not the superfancy model the president was used to. There was no way to regulate the direction and force of the spray.
Accompanied by the plumbers and the White House engineer, West went out to The Elms to study the shower. It was unlike any they had seen before, but they got in touch with the manufacturer and were able to order a duplicate. The new shower was no sooner installed than the president was on the warpath again. This one wasn’t right either. West called the manufacturer again. This time they sent the company engineers to check out The Elms shower and make one that would be exactly the same.
The new shower still didn’t satisfy the president so another one was ordered and when that one didn’t work, it was replaced by yet another one. The engineer decided the problem was water pressure, so a special tank with its own pump was installed just for the president’s shower. But it still wasn’t strong enough. West and his staff kept designing and redesigning LBJ’s shower, and spending thousands of dollars and untold man-hours in the process, trying to find one that would satisfy him. They ended up with a complicated fixture that had a half dozen different nozzles and sprays, but by the time they finally achieved perfection, Johnson was on the verge of moving out.
When LBJ gave his successor, Richard Nixon, a tour of the White House, he made a point of extolling the wonders of his shower. After one encounter with LBJ’s maximum force spray, the new president called the chief usher’s office and said,
“Please have the shower heads all changed back to normal pressure.”
II
The job title chief usher dates back to Benjamin Harrison’s administration. There are various explanations of why it was adopted, but the most plausible one is that in the old days, the top man at the President’s House was the man who ushered people in to see the chief executive.
The most durable chief usher in White House history has to be Irwin Hood Hoover, who went by the nickname Ike. Hoover was a twenty-year-old employee of the Edison Company when he was sent to the White House in 1891 to install the first electric lights for Benjamin Harrison. When he was finished, he got a letter from the commissioner of public buildings, offering him a permanent job as the house electrician. Hoover accepted the offer and he soon figured out why it had been made. President Harrison and his family were afraid to touch the light switches for fear of being electrocuted!
/>
Ike would turn on the lights in the downstairs rooms in the evening and turn them off when he came to work the next morning. It took the Harrisons the better part of a year to get up the nerve to use the electric lights in the living quarters. They were equally fearful of pushing the electric call buttons to summon the servants. “There was a family conference every time this had to be done,” Hoover wryly recalled.
Ike was promoted to usher in 1904 and became chief usher during the Taft administration, a job he held for the next twenty-five years. In all that time, there was only one problem he was unable to solve. When Herbert Hoover became president in 1929, there were two Mr. Hoovers in the White House. To avoid any confusion, Mrs. Hoover insisted that Ike be referred to as “Mr. Usher.”
III
I’m sorry to say that slaves were not uncommon in the pre–Civil War White House. Abigail Adams, the first woman to examine the place with the eyes of a practiced hostess, thought at least thirty servants were needed to run it. She was unquestionably right, but the early presidents tried to cope with far fewer than that number because Congress, already convinced the president was overpaid at $25,000 per year, declined to include the White House in their budgets.
Jefferson tried to economize by importing some of his slaves from Monticello, but he soon decided this was not a good idea. They did not get along with his French steward, who had a poor command of English and an autocratic style. By the end of his first term, Jefferson was telling his daughter back in Monticello that he preferred white servants. “When they misbehave, [they] can be exchanged,” he wrote. He meant fired and replaced, of course.