by Laura Bush
Joined by Chelsea, Hillary led me through the lower level, sharing with me her fond recollections of the parties they had hosted in the Palm Room, the glassed-in conservatory that divides the formal White House from the West Wing. It was a brief tour through their public and private lives, a whirlwind of parties arranged in the Blue Room, the Red Room, and the Green Room, until I could almost glimpse the elegantly set tables and the banquet chairs. But when we went up to the State Floor, both Hillary and I had forgotten about the public tours. She opened the door to lead me through the formal state rooms, and we caught sight of a large tour group. She quickly shut the door, but not before some very surprised tourists got a good look at the outgoing and incoming first ladies.
We moved upstairs to the family quarters, where at one point Chelsea said, "Mom, tell Mrs. Bush about the tomato plants," and Hillary led me out on the parapet off the third floor, where each spring they set out pots of tomato plants, because "you just can't get good tomatoes." I nodded my head and smiled and thought, Tomatoes? You can't get good tomatoes at the White House? But George and I also grew pots of tomatoes on the parapet.
Hillary was thinking about her own future and how much she wanted to buy a house of her own in Washington, saying that "men keep saying to me, 'You're going to be a senator, just rent something, and you can find something later.' But," she told me, "that doesn't work on my time line. I need to be moved into a new house. I need to have a house." And I understood her completely. If I had been Hillary, I would not have wanted to wait until after I was in the Senate to find my home.
We were standing in the first lady's dressing room when Hillary paused and remembered something that Barbara Bush had shown her, eight years before. "Your mother-in-law stood right here and told me that from this window you can see straight down into the Rose Garden and also over to the Oval Office, and you can watch what's going on."
I did look out that window many times over the years, out to the Rose Garden and around the grounds, always careful to stand just inside the frame so that no one would spot me. If George was doing an event in the Rose Garden, I could see it from the window and live on television at the same time.
I finished that day by interviewing potential staff members for my new East Wing office at the White House. The last candidate had four legs and was ten weeks old. He was a Scottish terrier puppy, born to a dog owned by New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, and, of course, I fell in love. I had seen his puppy pictures on November 4, my birthday, when George and I were in New Jersey on the last leg of the campaign trail. George hadn't gotten me a gift, and Christie Whitman suggested a puppy. Our D.C. interview sealed the deal. Barney flew back with me to Austin the next day to join our animal family. We already had a springer spaniel, Spot, one of the six puppies born to Bar's dog, Millie, in 1989, when she lived in the White House. Spot was the runt of the litter, and I can still recall Barbara and Jenna proudly taking their new puppy and their grandmother, simultaneously, to first-grade show 'n' tell in Dallas. Afterward, the principal of Preston Hollow Elementary, Susie Oliphant, had the children line the halls so that Jenna, Barbara, Bar, and Spot could walk past the whole school.
All our animals in Dallas were named for Texas Rangers baseball players. Spot got her name in honor of the infielder Scott Fletcher, Barbara's favorite player. Of course, the Rangers almost immediately traded Scott. Our cat was named after Ruben Sierra, whose nickname, El Indio, gave Kitty her name, La India. And at times, I would look at our pets and remember our girls and our lives, the family that we were beyond the White House walls.
For the move to the White House, I packed our clothes, family photos, and a single piece of furniture, a chest of drawers that had belonged to George's grandmother, which I thought would fit perfectly in my dressing room. We didn't send another thing. I knew from Bar that the White House has a huge and exquisite collection of furniture and art, and that we would leave office with an entirely new book collection, titles given to us by authors, publishers, and friends. For the trip to Washington, our possessions took up less than one very small moving van. The rest I planned to send to our ranch, and the incoming governor, Rick Perry, and his wife, Anita, very kindly waited to move into the Governor's Mansion until our home was ready, so that the movers could transport our furniture directly to Crawford.
I do regret now that in those hectic days I never sat down with Anita, the new first lady of Texas, to give her much of the same helpful advice that Rita Clements had given me. I never had a chance to walk her through everything, from the house to the responsibilities; there just wasn't time. Our good friend Jeanne Johnson Phillips was overseeing the inaugural festivities, and I was being asked to decide on programs, a prayer service, an authors' event, and of course, clothes. I had not looked at or contemplated an inaugural wardrobe for me or for the girls before the election was decided. Now I had barely one month to be dressed, not simply for the inauguration and the night of balls but for the three days of events surrounding them. And clothes are a big part of being first lady, dating back all the way to Martha Washington and Dolley Madison. The Dallas designer Michael Faircloth made me a deep turquoise outfit for the inaugural and a red lace gown with Austrian crystals for the inaugural night. But I had to have more gowns and outfits for other inaugural events, and I bought two other long dresses, one champagne, one deep teal, as well as two suits and a cranberry-colored dress. Jenna and Barbara bought inaugural ceremony outfits designed by Lela Rose, the daughter of our good Dallas friends Rusty and Deedie Rose; she also made their gowns for the Texas Black Tie & Boots Ball the night before. For their official inaugural night ball gowns, they chose designs by Susan Dell of Austin, a strapless beaded black gown for Jenna and a V-neck silk and chiffon beaded currant gown for Barbara.
We arrived in Washington, D.C., and stayed, as all presidents-elect do, in the historic Blair House across the street from the White House, the same home where we had stayed with Gampy in 1988. When I went to the Lincoln Memorial for a concert to open the inaugural festivities, my place on the platform was next to the spot marked "President-elect."
Inauguration Eve began early in the morning with a series of interviews at Blair House, including a sit-down with Katie Couric, then of NBC's Today show. Toward the end of our conversation, she said to me, "You appear to be a very traditional woman. Is that a fair characterization?" It was slightly better than the other perennial interview question, "Are you going to be Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush?" as if the first lady's role was like hand-me-down shoes and I had to choose between two previously worn pairs. But there was, from the start, an underlying assumption on the part of the press that I would be someone else when I assumed the role of first lady, that I would not, under any circumstances, simply be myself.
As I had done when George was sworn in as governor of Texas, I planned an event to celebrate authors. This was to be my "first lady" inaugural party. I was much more interested in listening to Stephen Ambrose discuss history or Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark talk about plotting a mystery or having Stanley Crouch and the Texas author Steve Harrigan discuss literature than I was in attending another large luncheon or party; and to me, an afternoon with authors was as glamorous as a high-heeled, long-gown ball. The Cheneys sat in the front row, along with Bar and Gampy and my mother and George, who introduced me by saying, "Her love for books is real, her love for children is real, and my love for her is real." Then I walked onto a stage decorated to look like a library, and before a crowd of more than three thousand, I spoke of my passion for literature, saying, "Our country's authors have helped forge the American identity, create its memory, and define and reinforce our national consciousness," adding, "Books have done what humans rarely do, convince us to put down the remote control."
Inauguration Day dawned cold and rainy, but to George and me, the morning was beautiful. We began with a church service at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church. The creamy yellow building held its first service in 1816; its nearly one-t
housand-pound steeple bell was cast by Paul Revere's son. Every president since James Madison has worshiped there; pew fifty-four is designated as the President's Pew. St. John's became our Washington church while we were at the White House; it was where we had attended services in 1988, when George had been working on his father's presidential campaign.
Listening to the sermon and the prayers provided our last moments for tranquil reflection. From St. John's, we would be whisked from event to event; each second of our day would be accounted for, and the clock was unyielding.
After the service, we drove straight across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where Bill and Hillary Clinton were waiting to greet us for the traditional coffee. The Cheneys came, as did Al and Tipper Gore. Then we departed in our motorcade for the Capitol, George and Bill Clinton riding in the president's car, and Hillary and me following behind. As we chatted on the short drive, I thought of how, in most cases, a first lady's departure day is the start of her retirement. For Hillary, it was the beginning of her own career. And nearly two years after George had held his press conference in the garden of the Texas Governor's Mansion, he was going to be sworn in as the forty-third president of the United States, and only the second presidential son to hold the office himself. History would now record John Adams and John Quincy Adams and George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
As we rode up Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw a collection of protesters, waving placards and calling George's election illegitimate. Until that moment, I had thought that once a winner was formally declared, the postelection rancor would die down, that everyone would move on. But in the years to come, we found that, for some, the bitterness remained.
There is no grand entrance to be made for the outgoing president and his incoming successor. We entered through a side door at the Capitol into a rather ordinary hallway, distinguished only by two moderately sized gilded eagles perched at the top of each wall. From there, it was off to an interior room to wait. Outside, invited guests and spectators had been gathering for hours, even with the rain. Now, with the noon hour approaching, it was George's time. We began our walk, the same basic route that I had taken for Gampy's inaugurals and through the spaces where we had strolled with friends on all those weekend tours. We crossed the sturdy crypt, built to support the soaring dome of the Capitol Rotunda. Lynne Cheney was my companion; George, as the incoming president, would be the last to take his place on the podium. From the crypt, we climbed the stairs to the magnificent Rotunda, ringed by statues and enormous paintings of Revolutionary War scenes, the landing of the Pilgrims, the discovery of the Mississippi, and the baptism of Pocahontas. We passed them all as if in a blur; there was barely time to glance up at the fresco in the dome, painted to glorify George Washington.
George had wanted to use Washington's Bible, the same Bible that his father had used in 1989, for the bicentennial of George Washington's inauguration as the nation's first president. The Washington Bible had been specially transported under Masonic guard from New York to Washington. But we also had a Bush family Bible on hand, the same one that George had used when he was sworn in as governor of Texas, in case the weather turned bad. In the end, we would use both, the Bush Bible laid on top of Washington's, both closed to protect them from the damp, and the continuity of our national past resting beneath George's hands.
As we left the Rotunda, we walked down a steep set of stairs in a very ordinary hallway, no decorations, just wide-cut, gray stone blocks bathed in darkness, except for the blinding array of television lights waiting to illuminate us as we descended. But from the small doorway, Washington, D.C., was spread before us, the vast expanse of the Mall, the tall, spare point of the Washington Monument, the wide colonnade of the Lincoln Memorial, and the blocks of hard granite buildings lining the avenues. Their edges were soft, as if in a dream, because a cool mist had settled over the city. And even though I had seen the exact same view three other times, on this day, that sight, for those few seconds, was uniquely ours.
I tried to savor it all--the oath of office, the inaugural address, the military band, the friends and family who had come to share the day. For me, the inauguration is the thing of beauty, the scene that will last when all others have faded away.
After the ceremony, back inside, George paused at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the Rotunda and tried to hug me and the girls and his parents, but there was a clock to be kept, and the Senate staffers who oversee the inaugural events were urging us on. We walked the Clintons out to the limousine that would carry them to Andrews Air Force Base, where they would depart for their new home in Chappaqua, not far from New York City. Then we returned for the inaugural luncheon in Statuary Hall, the semicircular room with the wide, marble Corinthian columns quarried from along the Potomac River. It was here that the U.S. House of Representatives had met for nearly forty years, where John Quincy Adams supposedly used the room's echoey acoustics to eavesdrop on his fellow congressmen, and where he also eventually collapsed at his desk. In this room too, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson were inaugurated as president, and the Marquis de Lafayette became the first foreign dignitary to address the U.S. Congress. This afternoon, I sat next to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, who had overseen the inaugural events, and we talked about the intricacies of planning the ceremony. I looked out upon the other tables, catching site of Jenna and Barbara at their first inaugural lunch and at all our own good friends scattered about the room.
Surrounding us were the statues of prominent Americans from many states. We gazed out upon marble carvings of Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boy from Vermont; Robert Fulton, who invented the steamship; and also Sam Houston, whose statue had been carved by the Austin artist Elisabet Ney. She had called him one of "my wild boys."
George and I left the lunch so that he could review the troops, and then we began the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to commence the inaugural parade.
Barbara and Jenna were halfway through their freshman year of college. I had told them to be careful of what they wore on their feet. Inaugural festivities require a lot of climbing stone staircases, standing on marble floors, standing in general, and then sitting in a chilly reviewing stand to watch all the wonderfully enthusiastic floats, performers, and bands from every state in the nation pass. They, of course, chose stiletto-heeled boots, and by the time they got to the Capitol, they were ready to take them off.
After the parade, where both the Midland and Lee high school bands performed, as well as the marching bands from my alma maters, the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University, there was a brief period to rest and eat a small dinner before we began dressing for the round of inaugural balls. The unbelievably efficient White House ushers and staff had removed the Clintons' possessions--Bill Clinton had told us that morning that, by the end, he was packing simply by pulling out drawers and dumping their contents into boxes. Then the staff unpacked all our clothes and arranged our rooms; even our photographs were out on display. The transfer of families is a choreographic masterpiece, done with exceptional speed.
By now, my feet hurt, but I squeezed them into my shoes. It was painful almost from the first step. One of my friends from Midland later wrote that she saw women wearing tennis shoes under their long evening dresses, and that our good friend Dr. Charlie Younger had lent blue surgery covers to protect everyone's shoes and feet from the cold and wet. Some of our close friends couldn't get rides back to their hotels after the balls; they rode D.C.'s subway system, the Metro, in their tuxes, ball gowns, and high heels.
We had eight balls; the Clintons had held fourteen just four years before. "Ball" is almost a misnomer for some of these events, which are held in convention centers and hotel ballrooms with cash bars and are more like cattle calls, where there is barely space to turn around and no place to sit down. People wait all evening for the president and first lady and also the vice president and his wife to walk in on a great stage. Eac
h moment is like a scene from a play, with eight nearly identical performances in a single night. The inaugural organizers recite the same introduction; the president speaks; and the new first couple dances the same dance to the same music, waves, and departs for another ball in another part of town. The fun was actually getting to visit with whoever was riding with us to the next ball. We had Condi Rice and her date in our limo a couple of times; and also George's campaign chair, Don Evans, and his wife, Susie, old Midland friends; and Mercer and Gabby Reynolds, who had helped plan the inauguration. We told jokes and laughed as the motorcade rolled through the city that was now our home.
For the next inaugural in 2005, I chose my shoes with what I thought was more care, but they were dyed to match my dress, and they must have shrunk during the dyeing process. That night, I distinctly remember walking from ball to ball through the underground corridors of the Washington Convention Center in my bare, aching feet, carrying my shoes in my hand.
But I loved watching George dance with Jenna and Barbara at the Texas-Wyoming Ball, and I loved that the people who had worked so long and hard for us had a chance to celebrate as well. Our theme was "Celebrating America's Spirit Together." It was not, however, a late night for the new president. We were home before midnight, quite a change from the previous administration, which relished late nights. Bill and Hillary had not wanted to miss more than a few minutes of their last day in the White House, even watching a movie in the movie theater at 2:30 a.m. 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.