Presidential Perks Gone Royal
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To maintain the White House grounds, the Park Service employs a chief horticulturist plus three foremen, eight gardeners, and one maintenance operator. Additionally, more Park Service personnel are called in to work on trees, roads, maintenance, outdoor plumbing and electrical services. The Park Service also unclogs drains and commodes when necessary, maintains an adequate stock of supplies sufficient to replace items such as toilet paper, hand towels and soap, sweeps the White House Visitor Center, shovels snow and ice from walkways and spreads sand, salt or other chemicals to prevent people from slipping, and assists with trash removal. Last year the price tag for these chores was $6,241,000. The Park Service’s operations at the White House provide an example of how to take a simple task like mowing grass and turn it into an expensive and excessive mini-bureaucracy.
Incidentally, did you ever wonder why your grass turns brown in the winter, while the verdant grass of the lawn at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue always keeps its brilliant color? There’s an easy answer: after the first frost, the taxpayers fund the National Park Service personnel’s mandate to spray paint the entire lawn to keep the White House bluegrass green.
The White House as the President’s Own Country Club
While youths at many inner-city schools must get their exercise on public courts strewn with broken glass, and even well-off Americans have, at best, a basketball hoop in their driveways, the President of the United States has a basketball court on the grounds of the mansion he calls home. First families and their guests can enjoy the many facilities of country-club caliber provided for them. These facilities also are useful for fundraising.
In fact, generous campaign supporters and potential contributors are frequent guests at the White House “country club.” “I shot a few baskets today with the President at the White House,” can be a great, albeit expensive, item to drop casually in conversation at a business meeting or social gathering.
Indeed, no expense has been spared to ensure that presidents and their guests can relax and play in style.
A Truly Regal Cinema
Another significant perk was added to the “castle” when President Truman ordered the conversion of a long east Wing coatroom into a movie theater. Now First Families could watch films around the clock. President Bill Clinton once said that the best of presidential perks was not Air Force One or Camp David but the White House movie theater, where presidential families and their guests can sit on luxurious lounge chairs in a beautiful chamber with the purest of acoustics to watch the movie they have summoned up—regardless of time of day or night.
Margaret Truman’s favorite film was The Scarlett Pimpernel. She ordered it so many times that the movie operator claimed he had memorized all the lines of every actor in the movie. Eisenhower loved Westerns and screened more than 200 films in his eight years in office. His favorite was Gary Cooper’s High Noon, a film also watched more often than any other by succeeding presidents.
When the theater was first used, its forty well-upholstered seats and the four massive armchairs in the front row for first family members were covered in stark white fabric. They later were covered in green until Nancy Reagan ordered the room converted to red, which was her favorite color.
During his presidency, Jack Kennedy’s back problems made it difficult for him to watch films. Usually his aides replaced the overstuffed chair reserved for commanders in chief with JFK’s famous rocking chair. On a few occasions, when his back pains were really severe, an orthopedic bed was brought in so that President Kennedy could watch a film propped up on pillows.
Lyndon Johnson was not much into films, although many times he particularly enjoyed watching and re-watching the 10-minute tribute to him that had been made on White House orders to introduce his new presidency to a skeptical public after the Kennedy assassination.
Richard Nixon always watched a movie when his best friend, Bebe Rebozo, was in town. The two of them saw 150 movies together. The only repeat for them was Patton.
Jimmy Carter saw a staggering 450 movies in the White House theater, which averages to one every three nights he was in office. The first movie he watched was All the President’s Men about the Watergate scandal that helped bring him into office. Interestingly, devout Baptist Carter was the first president to see an X-rated movie in the theater when he ordered Midnight Cowboy.
President Obama holds White House Super Bowl Party, Feb. 2, 2009.
(Photo with permission from Pete Souza /White House via Getty Images)
During their White House years, Ronald and Nancy Reagan mostly watched movies when they were spending a weekend at Rancho del Cielo, their ranch in California, or at Camp David. During President Reagan’s birthdays in the White House, Nancy usually ordered one of his old films to be shown. On those occasions, when guests were present, Reagan sometimes made side comments about the art of air kissing or the bad breath of the actress with whom he had been paired in the film on the screen.
President Clinton had an eclectic taste in films, ordering everything from serious thought-provokers like Schindler’s List to slap-sticks like Naked Gun. Clinton also liked the White House’s most-watched film, High Noon, and recommended to George W. Bush that he see it as his first movie in the White House theater. In his first year in office, Bush II especially enjoyed the slapstick Austin Powers films. After 9/11, his tastes turned more to war films.
People in the movie industry have been among the strongest supporters of President Obama’s candidacy. When the Obamas use the theater their guests often include the producers and stars of the films they show.
Michelle Obama acknowledges national anthem as the President waves to friends at Kennedy Center Honors
(Photo with permission from Jim Watson/Getty Images)
Compared to the 450 times President Carter used the movie theater in his four years in the White House, the average American citizen, according to industry statistics, goes out to see a movie slightly less than five times a year. Taxpayers have to stand in line and may have had to save up or spend lunch money to take their families to a flick. Those same taxpayers provide first families with free admission to the country’s plushest boutique theater. To insure that movies are available for the first family and invited guests to watch around the clock, literally 24 hours a day, projectionists sleep in the mansion so that one will always be on call.
Another Gift that Keeps on Giving
Speaking of the President’s ties to (and support from) Hollywood and many of those in the arts, President and Mrs. Obama, in addition to private and exclusive use of the best movie theater in America, also enjoy another entertainment-related bonanza: perpetual full access—not just for themselves, but also for friends and supporters—to the best seats at Washington’s premier entertainment showpiece, the Kennedy Center.
Referred to as the Presidential Loge, this section is located in the box tier just a few seats away from where the recipients of the Kennedy Center honors are seated for that world-class event. This special honors program is seen by the general public at least once a year on television. The president and first lady are always personally present to grace those awards with their presence, surrounded by the year’s recipients for their efforts in performances on stage, in film and in the field of music.
Considering that they have their own entertainment center in the White House, presidents and their families tend not to use the loge seats often for their own personal entertainment. However, they do make good use of the campaign value of sitting in “the Presidential Box” for various performances and functions. While the box is reserved for presidential use at each and every performance, it is more often friends and large financial contributors to the seated president’s campaign for re-election who are granted the highly visible privilege of attending shows—often treating their own friends to these seats—in this very special suite at the Center.
Front-row seating isn’t the only great part of this experience. . Guests enter a moderately large anteroom where they find several c
hairs covered in striped silk, an end table with a lighted mirror, and several oil paintings by famous artists for them to appreciate. They also have the Presidential Seal on several items to remind them of their patron, and a refrigerator stocked with champagne bearing the same seal and labeled as “Presidential” bubbles. Needless to say, popping the cork on a bottle of fine champagne is all the more exciting given the fact that the attendees are being treated by the current president at a center named after one of the most celebrated of presidents. This is an excellent example of the many honors bestowed upon the acting commander-in-chief that he can in turn bestow upon various dignitaries, friends and, of course, donors to his campaign.
“Dozens of Obama’s elite donors— many of them wealthy business figures—have been appointed to advisory panels and commissions that can play a role in setting government policy. Others have been invited to a range of exclusive White House briefings, holiday parties and splashy social events.”
—iWatchNews by the Center for Public integrity, January 19, 2012
Chapter Four
An Insider Tour of the
Presidential Palace and Grounds
The White House was not a posh palace in our country’s early history. In fact, Thomas Jefferson called living in the White House “a splendid misery.” Andrew Jackson saw it as “dignified slavery.” even as recent a president as Harry S. Truman referred to it as “the big white jail.” But as you have already seen in the earlier chapters, the White House and its attendant luxurious perks have grown expansively over the decades. Today, it accurately fits Gerald Ford’s description as “the best public housing in America,” or Ronald Reagan’s perfect description, “an eight-star hotel.”
Living free in the White House literally means living for free. Of course, the first family pays no rent. Unlike most every other tax-paying family, the first family doesn’t pay for help, electricity, air conditioning, heating, insurance, taxes, repairs and the cost of furnishing, maintenance, upkeep or cleaning. Today, our presidents and their families have exclusive and free use of all but five rooms of a 132-room mega-mansion that encompasses 55,000 square feet on 18 acres of the most valuable, non-oil bearing land in America. If the property were for sale, according to our nation’s top realtors, its value would be somewhere between a quarter and a third of a billion dollars. Also, unlike every other job in the United States in which housing happens to be included as part of the employment package, the internal Revenue Service assigns no tax value to the president’s free use of this finest of residences.
In this most elegant setting, presidents and their families are assisted 24 hours a day by personal doctors, dentists, pharmacists, chefs, valets (the President’s valet is reportedly paid $100,000 a year), maids, dressers, flower arrangers, nannies, chauffeurs, projectionists, pet handlers and more guards than the combined security forces of the Louvre, Versailles and the Vatican!
While the public believes the White House consists of three stories, it is in fact many more. There is one floor hidden behind the parapets above what appears, from the street, to be the roof, and officials will admit that there are ”more than two” subterranean levels which, for security reasons, are never shown or detailed to the public.
The White House really is not white. When painters arrive to give it a face-lift, they use 300 gallons of what, according to the color charts, is white-white-gray. Technically, the White House is off-white.
In the mansion’s four above ground levels are 132 rooms, including 16 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms (none open to the touring public), along with 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases and 3 elevators.
A common misconception is that the first family is squeezed into a small portion of the west end on the fifth floor. The residential area is actually enormous. First families can choose to bring their own furniture from home to make them feel more comfortable. They can also elect to use furniture from historical gems in storage in the White House attic. Depending on the first family’s wishes, there are usually two or more sofas, several overstuffed chairs, an assortment of armchairs, two or more tables, lamps, television sets, etc. These pieces are of the highest value, set on priceless rugs, and surrounded by silk draperies and historic works of art.
Much of the White House furniture has come from wealthy donors. Grace Coolidge urged her husband, Calvin, to back a congressional resolution to permit the White House to receive rare old pieces as gifts to the mansion. Spurred by generosity, the opportunity for “bragging rights,” and perhaps some handsome tax credits, the well-to-do have provided a flood of historical and priceless items. In all, there are more than 14,000 pieces of furniture, china, silver and artwork in the White House that are considered of inestimable or historic value.
South of the private living area are the first lady’s massive bedroom, the first lady’s office, the first lady’s dressing room with vast closet spaces, the president’s own palatial bedroom and the great Yellow oval Room, which some presidents have called a study, but which most first families use as a second living room.
North of the family living room are three more very large first family bedrooms with adjacent sitting rooms, the president’s 20 x 30-foot dining room, and an elevator to transport the first family downstairs to an exclusive, even larger private dining room on the floor below.
These spaces take up two-thirds of the floor, measuring approximately 6,000 square feet. Compare that to your own home size. The national average is less than 1800 square feet and in many urban areas some people make do with 300 square feet facing a brick wall—a fraction of the size of even the smallest presidential dining room. But presidential living space does not stop there.
During the Reagan Administration, the central hall was transformed into a spacious double drawing room. Its excellent furnishings are set on fine carpet; the walls hold magnificent oil paintings or watercolors, and valuable urns of deep green foliage and beautifully arranged flowers are everywhere. The wide corridor is also warmly lighted with crystal chandeliers and handsome table lamps.
There is ample room, just in this attractive corridor, for a cocktail reception of 300 close friends or financial supporters. It is in this corridor, alongside the elevator entrance, that the usher generally leaves the many gifts that flow in each and every day. Those of high value are intended to go to the State Department for storage in the vaults, but some of them eventually end up in presidential libraries. Jacqueline Kennedy reportedly coveted the jewels in a ceremonial dagger that had been presented to her husband by a Saudi King and tried to pry them out.
Gifts of lesser value may be kept by the first family. They range from articles of clothing, some of them haute couture, for example, Hermes ties and imported leather shoes, to expensive sets of golf clubs, electronic products and personal inventions. The gifts cover an interesting range from humorous to folksy to just plain worthless.
They may include jars of jelly, homemade Afghans, or crocheted coasters embroidered with the American flag. When the Bush dog, Millie, had pups, Barbara Bush received hundreds of dog bowls, many of them monogrammed.
The first family also has use of the great Yellow oval Room and the Treaty Room. However, the first family is not limited to even these giant spaces. On the eastern third of the fifth floor are the Lincoln Suite, the Monroe Suite (a bedroom and large sitting room) and the Rose Suite, known as the Queens’ Rooms. For one hundred and fifty years, American presidents have used these suites to house foreign guests. The pink Queens’ Suite received its designation after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen mother, the Netherlands’ Queen Wilhelmina, and Greece’s Queen Frederica stayed in it during their state visits. The public supposes this part of a first family’s space is reserved for visiting heads of state, but this is not how it actually works.
Obviously, foreign heads of state do not just drop by. If a foreign leader wishes to pay a visit, his foreign office contacts the American ambassador in his country expressing a willingness to visit, if invited. Depending on a presiden
t’s mood or a particular rough spot in U.S. relations with a foreign country, the foreign leader is invited to make a State Visit on a specified date.
Today, unless a visiting foreign leader happens to be a very close personal friend of the president, he/she and retinue are accommodated not in the White House but rather in Blair house. These VIP guest quarters consist of four connected townhouses for a combined total of 70,000 square feet. With more square feet than the White House, Blair house has 119 rooms, four dining rooms, a gym, a flower shop and a hair salon. Only a few hundred feet northwest from the White House, Blair house is so often used to put up visiting heads of state that it has become known as the President’s Guesthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. When occupied by a foreign head of state, that nation’s flag flies atop Blair house and the property technically, if temporarily, becomes the territory of that nation.
Since the other rooms on the fifth floor of the White House are no longer used for foreign dignitaries, the first family can, and does, use them personally. If the first lady wants, she can make the Rose Room her own and can let a relative, friend or contributor sleep in one of the Queens’ Rooms. A president’s children can also play house in the Lincoln Bedroom, or play jacks on the carpet or bounce on the 9 x 6-foot Lincoln Suite bed. Very little is sacred, and what the public thinks of as possibly “cordoned off ” for state visits is very much at the first family’s disposal. You might be surprised at how informal first families have been in making themselves at home. Pat Nixon smoked cigarettes in the private quarters, but when her husband wanted to enjoy a cigar, she sent him to the easternmost end of the floor to smoke his stogies in the Lincoln Sitting Room.