NYDailyNews

Bush Stamps His Brand On White House

By THOMAS M. DeFRANK, Daily News Washington Bureau Chief

In the first week of his presidency, George W. Bush decided to throw an impromptu dinner party for a small group of Texas pals. A White House steward suggested the Map Room might be a perfect venue.

But Bush demurred. Too much trouble for the waiters, he replied. The food and table settings would have to be carted down from the family quarters to the main floor of the White House.

"It's no problem for us at all, Mr. President," the staffer assured. "We served Mr. [Hugh] Rodman dinner down there every night."

Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's freeloading brother, who spent the last several weeks of the Clinton era in residence at the White House, is long gone from the Map Room. So are the infamous fund-raising coffees staged there by the Clintons.

And Bush and wife Laura entertained their old friends in the family dining room upstairs.

From Tex-Mex enchiladas on the First Family's down-home dining list to meetings that begin on time, the White House is a far different place these days — and Secret Service agents, grounds crew, telephone operators and others on the permanent staff say the Bushies treat the hired help better than their predecessors.

Not long ago, for example, an acquaintance asked one of the "little people" who are every organization's lifeblood how things were going under the new crowd.

"One of them actually held the door open for me," the astounded veteran remarked.

As might be expected of a Republican incumbent, what Presidents love to call the people's house is more of a corporate enclave under Bush than the frat-house, pizza-party, blue-jean style of the Clintonistas.

No male can enter the Oval Office without a jacket and tie. Shuttle vans to Capitol Hill have been cut back because they often ran half-empty. Sixteen separate cellular phone contracts for staffers have been pared to a handful.

Clinton staffers were even allowed to give friends tours of the supersecret Situation Room, where first word of foreign crises reaches the White House. No longer. "Unless you have official business there, the Situation Room is off-limits now," a senior Bush aide says.

In the next few weeks, the Bushies expect to become even more button-down by hiring a chief financial officer and a chief technology officer — two White House firsts.

"The only words I never want to hear are, 'Well, we've never done it this way,'" says Joe Hagin, the amiable deputy chief of staff for operations. "The permanent staff here is extremely professional, but just because this is the White House doesn't mean it can't be streamlined and made to run more efficiently."

Some Clinton aides privately called their boss "the late President Clinton" because he was notorious for almost never being on time. Bush, by contrast, is a stickler for punctuality. He's so intent on keeping a schedule, in fact, that last week he left the White House five minutes early for an event, leaving his official photographer behind and Hagin sprinting to make the motorcade. Even Bush's Saturday radio address to the nation is routinely released to reporters on Friday afternoons.

"Everything runs like a Swiss train," says a senior member of the permanent cadre. "It shows respect for the people who work for him and with him."

Rules have been tightened for White House dining. More than 500 staffers had dining privileges in the Clinton era, swamping the Navy stewards who run it. "They turned it into a fast-food restaurant," a senior Bush aide shuddered.

These days, all White House staffers retain carry-out privileges. But only about 150 senior staffers and military personnel are entitled to table service in the wood-paneled dining room — the norm before Clinton arrived.

In honor of the President's favorite comestible, the mess menu also sports a new entree — peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, in grape, strawberry or raspberry.

There's even a little touch of New York in this Texas-tinged White House: The entrance to the dining facilities features a freshly hung color print of the battleship Texas docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1930.

Original Publication Date: 5/13/01

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001