THERE are a couple of ways to get into the White House. The first is to win a presidential election. Difficult. Then there’s the easy way: You simply sign up for the White House tour, a free self-guided ramble through the eight rooms available for public inspection. Actually, it’s not so easy anymore. In a simpler time, tourists just lined up at the White House and walked in. As demand increased, a booth was set up, in 1976, to dispense tickets on a first-come-first-served basis. After the 9/11 attacks, the system changed radically. Now, anyone who wants to tour the White House must apply through the office of his or her representative in Congress, which forwards the names to the White House for clearance. And because the tour is a hot ticket, applications most be submitted at least 21 days ahead, and up to six months in advance. Successful applicants receive an e-mail with the date and time of their tour. Once they get the green light, visitors show up at the appointed time on 15th Street between E and F Streets and join the line to enter through the southeast gate. Anyone who has flown on an airline in recent years will recognize the familiar territory of identity checks and electronic scans, although here you do get to keep your shoes on. At the head of the line, rangers from the National Park Service check photo IDs against a list of names. Farther along, a Secret Service officer repeats the process. In the meantime, a park ranger hands out historical pamphlets to children. Someone, somewhere, judged the audience (eighth graders and younger) acutely. “Dad, listen to this,” a boy behind me said after studying the document. “Benjamin Harrison was the first president to install electricity, but he was so afraid of it that he had the electricians turn the lights on and off.” A barrage of presidential trivia followed. Dad looked stoic. He should have encouraged his son to do some missionary work with a cluster of adults behind us who were heatedly debating one of history’s great unanswered questions: did Grant lead the Union or the Confederate army? Once they have passed through a scanner in a flimsy-looking prefab building, visitors proceed at their own pace. There are no tour guides. Instead, Secret Service officers stand ready to answer historical questions. More on them anon. The ground floor, where the tour begins, deflates expectations. The hallway is dim. The rooms are small and little-used. A velvet rope bars entry. This is frustrating. I would have liked to inspect the books in the library, but I couldn’t make out the titles. The China Room, organized by Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith, to showcase plates and glassware used by the presidents, also tantalized. There they were, the presidential dishes, but well beyond visual range. Ditto the objects in the enticingly bright, golden-hued Vermeil Room, devoted to gilded silver accumulated over the years. But in the hallway, visitors can step right up to a full-length portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton, dressed in a black pantsuit and smiling radiantly. I suspect that foreign visitors, especially if they think of the White House as the American equivalent of the Elysée Palace, come away with the impression that the nerve center of the world’s mightiest nation is an oddly ramshackle, disorganized project with respect to architecture and interior decoration, and an unaccountably humble interpretation of national glory and grandeur. They are right. Many of the rooms have been used for a variety of purposes over the years. Presidents and first ladies have embarked upon renovations, additions and makeovers. The Vermeil Room, to take one of many examples, was once a billiard room. Teddy Roosevelt demolished the conservatories in 1902 and commissioned a thorough renovation of the White House, to drag the place out of the Victorian age and dismantle the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, whom Chester A. Arthur had hired for an 1882 renovation.
No comments:
Post a Comment