Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

House and its professional staff run by Benedicte Valentiner, known to all as Mrs. V, and her deputy, Randy Baumgardner, made us feel welcome in the quietly elegant mansion that became an oasis during a hectic week. Blair House is famous for being able to accommodate any special need. Our crew was tame compared to certain visiting heads of state who demanded that their guards be nude to ensure they carried no weapons, or imported their own cooks to prepare everything from goat to snake.

Bill gave a lot of speeches that week, but he still hadn’t finished writing the biggest one of his life: the inaugural address. Bill is a wonderful writer and gifted speechmaker who makes it look easy, but his constant revisions and last-minute changes are nerveracking.

He’s never met a sentence he couldn’t fool with. I was used to his constant tinkering, but even I could feel my anxiety rise as the day grew nearer. Bill worked on the draft whenever there was a moment between events.

My husband likes to pull everybody around him into his creative tumult. David Kusnet, his main speechwriter; Bruce Reed, his Deputy Domestic Policy Adviser; George Stephanopoulos, his Communications Director; Al Gore and I all put our two cents in.

Bill also called in two longtime friends: Tommy Caplan, a marvelous wordsmith and novelist who had been one of his roommates at Georgetown University, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who had worked with us in Texas for the McGovern campaign. In the midst of the process, Bill received a letter from Father Tim Healy, the former President of Georgetown and head of the New York Public Library. He and Bill shared a Georgetown connection, and Father Healy had been writing the letter to Bill when he died suddenly of a heart attack as he returned home from a trip. The letter was found in Father Healy’s typewriter and sent on to Bill, who found in this posthumous message a wonderful phrase. Father had written that Bill’s election would “force the spring” and lead to a flowering of new ideas, hope and energy that would reinvigorate the country. I loved his words and his apt metaphor for Bill’s ambitions for his Presidency.

It was fascinating to watch my husband that week as he literally became President before my eyes. Throughout the inaugural festivities, Bill received security briefings to prepare him for the historic responsibilities he was about to assume. With remarkable agility, he was already shifting his attention from a major speech to news of U.S. planes that were bombing Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s contempt for U.N. demands to briefings about the worsening conflict in Bosnia.

He was still writing his speech the day before inauguration. To give him time to work, I agreed to fill in for him at his afternoon events, although I had to keep my own schedule, too. That afternoon I also squeezed in an appearance at events sponsored by my alma maters, Wellesley College and Yale Law School. On the way back from the Mayflower Hotel, my car got stuck in a gridlock of inaugural crowds and out-of-state vehicles on Pennsylvania Avenue, within sight of Blair House. I was so late and frustrated that I jumped out and took off running through the traffic. Capricia Marshall, who was watching from a window in Blair House, still laughs when she describes the sight of me darting between cars, wearing heels and a snug gray flannel dress, with my alarmed Secret Service detail scrambling behind.

Bill finally finished writing and rehearsing the big speech an hour or two before dawn on the morning of his inauguration.

We slept very briefly and then started our extraordinary day with an emotional interfaith service at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Then we went to the White House, where the Bushes greeted us at the North Portico with their spaniels, Millie and Ranger, darting around their legs. They were very welcoming and put us at ease. Although the campaign had been bruising for both our families, Barbara Bush had been gracious to me when we had met in the past and had given me a walking tour of the family quarters of the White House after the election. George Bush had always been friendly when we had seen him at the annual National Governors Association conferences, and I had sat next to him at NGA dinners at the White House and at the Education Summit in Charlottesville at Monticello in 1989. When the summer Governors Conference was held in Maine in 1983, the Bushes opened their property at Kennebunkport for a big clambake. Chelsea, only three at the time, came along, and when she had to go to the bathroom, then Vice President Bush took her by the hand and showed her the way.

The Gores joined us at the White House, along with Alma and Ron Brown, who was Chairman of the DNC and soon to be sworn in as Commerce Secretary, and Linda and Harry Thomason, who had co-chaired the inauguration.

President and Mrs. Bush guided our party to the Blue Room, where we had coffee and made small talk for twenty minutes or so until it was time to leave for the Capitol. Bill rode in the presidential limousine with George Bush, while Barbara Bush and I followed in another car. The crowds lining Pennsylvania Avenue cheered and waved as we passed.

I admired Mrs. Bush’s elan as we prepared to watch one President, her husband, make way for another.

At the Capitol we stood on the West Front with its breathtaking view down the Mall to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The huge crowd spilled out beyond the Monument.

Following custom, the United States Marine Band struck up “Hail to the Chief’ one final time for George Bush just before noon, and again to the new President a few minutes later. I had always been stirred by those chords, and now I felt moved beyond words to hear them play for my husband. Chelsea and I