Margaret Truman (6 page)

IX

In addition to the various dinners that take place at the White House each year, there is also a full schedule of receptions. Some of the receptions start at 5:30 P.M. but the more formal ones usually begin at eight. The guest list numbers about fifteen hundred and everyone has a chance to shake hands with the president. On a number of occasions, I was invited to join Mother and Dad in the receiving line. I didn't mind greeting their guests—most of them were quite pleasant—but I did mind shaking fifteen hundred hands. You can—and I did—incur serious damage to your fingers from pressing that much flesh.

“Handshakitis” is a common complaint among White House residents. Is there anything that can be done to avoid it? I've made a little study of the issue, with some help from several presidents. Early in his career Harry Truman examined the problem with the thoroughness that he brought to all aspects of any job he tackled. Dad decided that the essence of survival handshaking was timing. You should seize the other person's hand before he or she grabbed yours. You should always slide your thumb between the other person's thumb and index finger, so that you, not he or she, did the squeezing.

Some presidents and first ladies have devised alternatives to the handshake. Edith Roosevelt held a bouquet of flowers in both hands, exempting her from the need to endure mashing. Instead of letting his own hand get crushed, Bill Clinton often used both hands to deliver a friendly democratic squeeze— without getting squeezed in return.

X

It may be hard to believe, but the president used to hold receptions on New Year's Day and the Fourth of July to which everyone in Washington was invited. I should hasten to add that they didn't all come. The social elite were almost always on hand but the working classes, realizing that neither their clothes nor their manners were suitable, mostly stayed home.

In James Monroe's era, New Year's Day receptions attracted about a thousand people, but as Washington grew into a fullfledged city, the crowds grew progressively larger. By Grover Cleveland's day, the number had risen to six thousand, putting an inordinate amount of stress on both the president and the White House floors. Calvin Coolidge, already on his way out of office, dispensed with the 1929 event and spent the holidays in Florida instead. I can readily identify with his excuse: He and his wife were sick of getting bruises from shaking so many hands.

Herbert Hoover revived the tradition and between noon and 3:30 P.M. on New Year's Day, 1930, he shook hands with an incredible 6,348 people. Hoover repeated his performance in 1931 and 1932, but that was the last New Year's Day reception at the White House. In 1933 the lame duck president followed Coolidge's example and decamped to Florida for the holidays. Between the Great Depression, World War II, and the burgeoning population of Washington, the receptions were never revived.

Still, you can't say they didn't have a good run. One hundred and thirty-one years is pretty impressive. The Fourth of July receptions, on the other hand, never even came close. They were started by Thomas Jefferson in 1803 and ended by Martin Van Buren in 1839.

Van Buren hated the crowds that poured into the White House for his New Year's Day and Fourth of July receptions, and his guests usually came away hating him. To keep them from staying any longer than was absolutely necessary, he refused to serve refreshments, which were the main reason most of them came.

Van Buren was particularly impatient with the Fourth of July receptions, which interfered with his summer escape to New York. Determined to find a way out, he let it be known that the president would be out of town on July 4, 1839, and the White House would not be open for callers. Presumably his successors were equally eager to escape Washington's beastly summers. Never again was there a reception on the Fourth of July.

XI

About fifty thousand people attend White House dinners and receptions each year. I am convinced that the White House catering staff deserves most of the credit for their success. Usually, they have a little more lead time than Lyndon Johnson gave them in 1963. But they are used to working miracles on short notice.

When former prime minister Ehud Barak of Israel visited the White House in 1999, Bill and Hillary Clinton planned an official working visit that included a luncheon for eighteen people. When word of Barak's arrival got out, so many people wanted to meet him that on five days' notice the luncheon for eighteen turned into a dinner for five hundred.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who could never be called a social butterfly, was nevertheless a demon hostess. She was forever inviting supporters of the many causes she espoused to the White House for tea. There were so many of these gatherings that she frequently had two a day. One of my favorite White House staff members, Alonzo Fields, used to call them “doubleheader teas.”

Lou Henry Hoover gave Eleanor Roosevelt a run for her money when it came to inviting people to the White House. In 1932 alone, she presided at forty teas and held receptions for eighty different organizations. She and the president were also quick to extend luncheon and dinner invitations, often on very short notice. Once, after ordering food for a one o'clock luncheon for six people, Ava Long, the White House housekeeper, was informed a half hour before the guests were due to sit down that the number had changed to forty.

Mrs. Long instructed the cook to grind up every morsel of food she could find in the refrigerator and mix up a batch of croquettes. The end product was served with a mushroom sauce and several guests actually raved about it. When one woman asked what the dish was called, Mrs. Long replied tartly, “White House Surprise Supreme.” The housekeeper pulled off another surprise supreme when she handed in her resignation not long afterward.

XII

My favorite example of staff inventiveness was told by my friend Fields (the White House maître d'hôtel and butlers are always called by their last names) some years after he left the White House.

When the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition was ratified in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was deluged with gifts from wineries all over the world. Little of it was good enough to serve at the table, but FDR was too much of a penny-pincher to throw it away, so Fields was instructed to find a way to use it up.

Punch is one of the standard drinks at White House receptions. For a crowd of 1,200 people, Fields and his staff would prepare about 45 gallons of fruit punch for the nondrinkers and 110 gallons of spiked punch for those who liked stronger stuff, obviously the majority. Fields uncorked a few of the gift wines and went to work experimenting with various combinations until he came up with several recipes that passed his taste test. One of the most lethal contained muscatel, sauterne, applejack, and scuppernong. Another, only slightly less dangerous, combined blackberry wine, claret, sake, and sherry.

It didn't take long for the wines to disappear, but Fields occasionally had twinges of anxiety. “I could always see the headline,” he said. “President's party has tragic end. Guests go berserk after drinking spiked punch at the White House. Chief Butler being held for investigation.”

Questions for
Discussion

What purposes do White House social events serve?

Why do White House dinners have to be carefully planned?

What is the value of having an entrance ceremony for the president?

II

If Jefferson had any doubts about his defeat, they vanished when James Madison was elected in 1808 and Dolley became the first lady. Already well known as a hostess, she swiftly made it clear that ignoring the rules of etiquette and men-only dinners in the White House were as dead as the dinosaur bones ex-president Jefferson liked to collect.

For openers, Dolley staged the first inaugural ball at nearby Long's Hotel. Attended by over four hundred people, it was heralded as “a handsome display of female fashion and beauty.” Next, Dolley turned the White House into a political and social power center, with the two ideas so intertwined that no one could tell the difference.

Womanpower. The term did not exist in the nineteenth century, but the White House came to personify it. The State Dining Room became the scene of weekly formal dinners for as many as thirty men and women, with Dolley at the head of the table, presiding over the conversation. At Dolley's Wednesday evening receptions in the Elliptical Saloon, today's Blue Room, she engaged in conversation that was often highly political but simultaneously amusing and informative.

Few doubt that Dolley was responsible for her husband winning a second term in 1812. The warm atmosphere at her parties and her ability to make each guest feel important worked wonders on the congressmen and senators who could have blocked his nomination. By that time, if Dolley were mean-spirited (she wasn't), she might well have asked: “By the way, whatever became of that guy with the silly ideas about women—Tom Jefferson?”

III

Dolley Madison singlehandedly transformed the White House into a public platform for womanpower. The next first lady to take advantage of this breakthrough was Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams. Beautiful, charming, a gifted musician and writer, Louisa had only one problem: her husband. John Quincy had political ambitions, intense ones, but no political abilities whatsoever.

When Adams became secretary of state under James Monroe, Louisa decided she was his only hope of winning the White House. She plunged boldly into the swirling social stream and emerged as her husband's campaign manager, or perhaps a better term would be party chairman.

Louisa began giving a weekly dinner party and launched “Mrs. Adams's Tuesday nights” in which men and women mingled in a convivial atmosphere reminiscent of Dolley Madison's drawing rooms. In 1822, Louisa topped everyone, including herself, with a New Year's Eve party for five hundred.

Thanks to Louisa, John Quincy Adams won the presidency in 1824. I wish I could say the result was four years of triumphant happiness. Alas, the opposite was the case. John Quincy proved to be a poor president. A lot of his problems arose from the close election, which was decided in the House of Representatives. Louisa's partying paid dividends there, but Andrew Jackson, who won the popular vote, accused Adams of making a “corrupt bargain” with another contender, Kentuckian Henry Clay, to win his votes by making him secretary of state. The accusation wrecked Adams's relations with Congress.

Still, no one could take away Louisa's triumph; to this day she remains the only female campaign manager to put her candidate in the White House.

IV

The White House has empowered women other than presidents' wives. Among the least recognized members of this group are the women who operated as substitute or stand-in first ladies for bachelor or widowed presidents or for those whose wives were ill or simply not interested in serving as White House hostesses.

The first of these stand-in first ladies was Andrew Jackson's niece, Emily Donelson, who was married to her cousin, the president's private secretary, Andrew Jackson Donelson. Although Emily was only twenty-one when she came to Washington, she had been born on a Tennessee plantation, and was unintimidated by either the size of the White House or its social responsibilities.

Despite her busy family life—three of her four children were born at the White House—Emily did a good job as hostess and household manager. In addition to being a model of tact, she was one of the few people who was not afraid to stand up to the notoriously fierce-tempered Jackson.

The next president, Martin Van Buren, was also a widower. He spent his first two years in the White House without a hostess. Then his son Abraham married a twenty-two-year-old South Carolina belle named Angelica Singleton, who soon took over the social side of the White House.

Angelica was a niece of Dolley Madison's—it was Dolley, in fact, who had masterminded her match with Abraham Van Buren—but in at least one respect Angelica lacked her aunt's political savvy. During her honeymoon in Europe, she picked up a somewhat dubious custom. Instead of standing in a receiving line, getting her pretty hand mashed, she posed on a platform at the south end of the Elliptical Saloon with flowers in her arms and hair. She wore a gorgeous white dress and surrounded herself with a half dozen women friends, also in glowing white.

The youthful Queen Victoria was posing thus in London. But this was democratic America and Angelica's posing was greeted with cries of political outrage, mingled with sarcastic yawps. Angelica finally got the message and started shaking hands.

V

The proxy first lady who may have enjoyed the job most was Harriet Lane, the vivacious niece of bachelor president James Buchanan. Ignoring the storm clouds of the oncoming Civil War, twenty-seven-year-old Harriet made the Buchanan White House a lively place. Her hair was golden blond, her eyes violet, her mouth impish. Young men and not a few older ones swarmed from all directions to attend her parties.

During the Buchanan era, Washington was awash in southern hospitality and Harriet was determined to have the White House lead the way. She kept the place lively right up to the eve of the Civil War. In 1860, the last year of her reign, she presided at the great social event of James Buchanan's administration, the reception of Queen Victoria's handsome nineteen-year-old-son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. Harriet planned a series of lavish social events, climaxed by a banquet on a coast guard cutter, appropriately named
Harriet
Lane
.

The partygoers steamed down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, where Harriet and the great-grandson of George III paid a visit to George Washington's tomb. Dinner was served on the return voyage with the Marine Band providing music for dancing.

Did the prince have a good time? Four decades later, he personally invited Harriet Lane Johnston to London to attend his coronation as King Edward VII.

VI

The last of the substitute first ladies, Rose Cleveland, proved that good looks were not a prerequisite for the job. Just under forty, Rose was the bachelor president's youngest sister. She was as plain as a fence post and did not try to disguise it. Nor did she make any effort to disguise her intelligence. A teacher in her native Buffalo, as well as a staunch feminist, she believed that women should vote, hold jobs, and have opinions about everything, including politics. As the president's hostess, she did not hesitate to make this clear to his guests.

At first, Washington's reaction was negative. They were not used to women who were more interested in reading and writing than in the latest gossip. But gradually, among a select group, a different Rose emerged. Warm, often humorous, she established lifelong friendships with several members of Washington's elite.

Miss Rose's reign ended when the president married Frances Folsom in 1886 and his sister went back to teaching and writing. Thereafter womanpower in the White House became the exclusive property of first ladies.

VII

The most famous representative of womanpower in the White House seems at first glance in a class by herself. Eleanor Roosevelt towers above the historical landscape these days as a force for tolerance, brotherhood, and human rights. She spoke out for these and other causes in her time, but the stature she achieved after she left the White House interferes with an accurate assessment of her years as first lady. A close look reveals she was not as powerful or influential as we all want to remember her.

Perhaps the clearest proof of the limitations of a first lady's womanpower is the story of Mrs. Roosevelt's brief career as second in command of the Office of Civilian Defense at the beginning of World War II. The head of the agency, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York, was an old friend. But he and the first lady soon fell to quarreling because Mrs. Roosevelt had a bad habit of appealing to the president when she did not get her way.

FDR, who was trying to organize a major war, had no time for minor ones. He put the agency under the supervision of an aide, who said yes to everything Mrs. Roosevelt wanted to do. La Guardia resigned with a farewell blast at the first lady.

Next, Congress began scrutinizing the Office of Civilian Defense. They discovered that Eleanor had put a pair of old friends on the public payroll, neither of whom was doing much work. Someone pointed out that the two were getting the same pay as General Douglas MacArthur, who was ducking Japanese bullets in the Philippines. A firestorm of negative publicity broke out in the media. The friends resigned and a humiliated Eleanor Roosevelt soon followed suit.

VIII

Eleanor Roosevelt's experience illuminates the very tricky problems first ladies face when they try to move beyond the White House to the public arena. Few if any first ladies worked harder than Rosalynn Carter. She toured the country, she whizzed abroad on goodwill missions, she presided at White House receptions, and somehow found time to learn Spanish.
The New York Times
called her “the most influential First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.” But unlike nonpolitical first ladies, such as Pat Nixon and Mamie Eisenhower, Rosalynn never became the nation's most admired woman in the public opinion polls.

It may have had something to do with the nickname the press fastened on her: “the steel magnolia.” It may have had even more to do with the way the voters view the first lady's role: as simply being there. The American people apparently do not like a woman who has not been elected to office to start exercising political power. Running the White House, they seem to think, is more than enough responsibility.

IX

This mind-set became excruciatingly apparent when Hillary Rodham Clinton tackled the very public job of overhauling the nation's health care system. From the start, the venture had problems. Many staffers felt health care might collide with an even more important priority, getting Congress to pass the president's budget. This may have been the reason for a major blunder—the total failure to draw Congress into the loop early in the game.

It took the better part of a year to get the plan in shape for the president to introduce in a speech. Eventually, Hillary testified on its behalf before five congressional committees, and gave bravura performances. From there it was all downhill (no pun intended, I swear!).

Nobody really liked Mrs. Clinton's health plan, not even her husband's cabinet officers, but because she was the president's wife, nobody wanted to criticize it either. Congressmen and senators heaped unctuous public praise on the first lady and deplored the plan behind the scenes. When the 1,342-page bill was finally sent to Congress, there were nine more months of argument that did little but unite the opposition. The bill was never even voted out of committee for consideration by the full Congress. All in all, it was a humiliating experience for both the first lady and her husband. From Maine to California, Hillary's performance had people asking a tough but pertinent question: “Who elected her?”