Sunday, February 16, 1969. In the morning at the Aspen Lodge of Camp David, the putative topic of discussion, carried over from the evening before, is redecoration of the White House offices, but the actual topic, in the mind of President Nixon—and, really, what other mind counts?—is: Am I, or am I not, the President of the United States?
It is, after all, his White House generally and his Oval Office specifically, and yet everyone has an opinion, which would not be such a bad thing except that no one hesitates to express the opinion, sometimes to the President and sometimes as if the President is not present or at least does not have the final decision.
There are factions. His wife, Pat, wants originals—original paintings and furniture and furnishing from the early 19th century. Not a bad thing, in theory, but it takes so much time, and it means listening—probably for the next year—to the pompous peroration of that Protocol person from the State Department—that hotbed of self-serving, cud-chewing, theory-loving bureaucrats—who apparently has appointed himself Chief of Making the White House a Museum, although Pat seems to love him. Authenticity, they both say, repeatedly, in the same tone of voice Billy Graham says “Jesus.”
The people from some company called Plymouth want the same era, but done not with originals but with reproductions, which is not surprising, because the company makes and sells reproductions, and why the hell is there a company with a commercial interest in a single approach involved at this stage in the discussion? That aside, the President tends to favor this approach, as it favors speed and control, and he wants to make his mark on the White House now. He is not sure he gives much of a shit whether the decorations are authentic; the Georgetown academic elitists will turn their noses up at whatever Nixon—whether Dick or Pat—does to the White House.
Then there are the colors. Needless to say, the Museum faction wants everything muted, and although the President cherishes nothing more than dignity, he believes you can take that sort of thing too far. He wants a White House that evokes not just dignity but also joy. As President, he plans to hit the uplift theme hard, and so he wants bright colors, at least in the Oval Office, and let the intellectuals and tastemakers grind their teeth!
Also present at this discussion is Julie, who naturally sides with her mother, but whose disagreements with the President are attractively covered by her calling him “Daddy,” and Bebe Rebozo, who sides with the President—as well he should, being the President’s best friend—but who says barely a damn thing except, and this truly is helpful—that getting together the money for the renovations, no matter what approach is taken—will be no problem.
And finally, but for some reason absolutely crucial to the President, is that portrait of George Washington above the fireplace in the Oval Office, which, the President states to the group, interrupting a digression about whether 18th century French or English furniture is more in style, has to go—immediately.
And when Julie exclaims, “But, Daddy, it’s George Washington!” the President finds that he is beside himself with anger, much as he adores the doting Julie, that he should need to explain to his own daughter that the problem is not George Washington, but that the portrait makes the Father of Our Country look like a simpering fancy-boy and not the Real Man the President knows the first President to be, based on the President’s extensive reading of Presidential history. Choked with thoughts and words, aware that others are staring at him with expressions of consternation, the President responds to Julie only with sullen silence.
Finally, in just the sort of unfathomable spasm the President finds endemic to women, Pat has decided that she, herself, wants to design the Oval Office rug. For Christ’s sake. Next thing she’ll want is a woman nominated for the Supreme Court. Oh, well, give her the rug. How bad could it be?
Then, from the chatter going on around the President, he extracts the information that Pat and Lady Bird Johnson had reviewed blueprints—blueprints!—of the third floor in November of last year, just after the election, without the President’s notification. Hearing this, Nixon swiveled to glare at Bob Haldeman, but he was not in the room.
Where everyone agrees is on the need to get rid of the Camelot crap of the Kennedys and the boorishness of the Johnsons—especially, the President thinks but did not say, that elaborate shower mechanism that LBJ had installed and which, on Nixon’s first morning in the White House, Nixon struggled to operate, the power of the stream almost knocking him over when he figured out how to make the water flow through it. Fortunately, that was an embarrassment witnessed by no one, although the President was pretty sure that Bob Haldeman caught him later that day studying a catalog of shower heads among the Presidential briefing books, but was tactful enough not to mention it.
Unexpectedly, to the President, the voice of reason in all this is a woman, the wife of some retired Wall Street type, introduced by Attorney General Mitchell to Pat, a young-looking woman in her fifties, a blonde, who has taken up interior design, apparently with some success. She seems educated, not in the sense of formal education, which the President thinks is usually a mistake for women, but in the sense of one who has read on her own, as has the President. This woman has the most sensible comment of the day:
“You are the Nixons. You,” nodding toward him, “are the President. You are the most powerful man in the world. And you,” nodding toward Pat, “are the First Lady. You are the most powerful woman in the world.” (Well, Nixon thinks, not as powerful as Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir, but let it go.) “You, The Nixons, can have whatever you want. You, of all people, do not need to compromise. You should not compromise. Mr. President, you can make the Oval Office a place of majesty and a place where men do important work, real work. Mrs. Nixon, you can create over time a collection of art and furnishings that will be the envy of the world’s best museums. You can have dignity and you can have color—how about deep blues and sunbeam golds? You are happy, cheerful people. You want a happy, cheerful look. And by presenting such a look to the public, you will, I am fully confident, influence the country in a happy, cheerful way.”
The President agrees. The President believes this sentiment is well stated. But the President wishes that it were the President, rather than this woman, no matter how nice, blonde, and self-educated, who laid down the law regarding White House redecoration.
11:14 p.m. After the conference comes another kind of redecoration. Or perhaps a reordering, a reconstructing. A restating for the record. A cleansing. Something made possible by Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman as daily, sometimes hourly, recipient of Nixon’s best self—that is to say, the self that Nixon wants to be, which Nixon realizes and is delighted that does not meet what the cognoscenti would categorize as “best,” and, when he does not receive Nixon’s best self, as editor of what Haldeman does receive into Nixon’s best self, and into documented intentions and actions.
Speaking with Haldeman, conveying the Official Version of the Conference on Redecorating, the President finds himself growing excited about the project, even improving on the recommendations of the nice, blonde, self-educated lady. Reproductions (in his notes, Haldeman records the President as saying “authentic reproductions,” after which phrase Haldeman inserts a question mark in parentheses) in the staff offices, antiques in the Oval Office; Lincoln Sitting Room, Cabinet Office, West Wing Conference Room (which the President calls the “Fish Room,” pleased to show off his knowledge of White House and Presidential history, that room being where Franklin D. Roosevelt kept an aquarium, at the same time planning to give the room a Nixonian nickname)—all would be redone.
The call ends, the President satisfied that Haldeman is now in possession of the President’s directives and has been designated the action officer of the redecoration, although the President did not express this explicitly.
All is well. The President even has time, before the group choppers to the White House, to read his elaborately prepared, lengthy, staff-annotated daily news summary, the President’s marginal comments to which staff translate into Presidential orders. And when the President arrives at page nine, all becomes not well, and another call to Haldeman is required. The Times, the President tells Haldeman, has reported that the Secret Service shipped bulletproof cars to Europe for the President’s forthcoming trip, when the President ordered, ordered, that no cars be sent to Europe, particularly not bulletproof cars. The President is not afraid, and he will not have the public suggest that he is afraid. The President wants to know if the Times has this wrong, or, as the President suspects, if his orders have been ignored.
Am I, the President thinks, or am I not the President of the United States?
At 7:45 p.m., the President finally is able to answer to that question in the affirmative. Alone in the Oval Office, hunched over briefing books, the President is struck by a notion. He lifts his head and looks. He looks at the room, yes—the fire sparking and crackling in the fireplace, the three briefing books spread out on his desk, the four additional briefing books spread out on the coffee table, the two open briefcases on the credenza behind the desk—but what he looks at is himself in the Oval Office. Un-redecorated though it is, portrait of the simpering George Washington un-replaced over the fireplace, the office nonetheless has a mystique. More than that, he in the office has a mystique. Here, alone, studying, preparing to meet with European leaders, conceptualizing the restructuring of the interplay of nations, Richard Nixon, even when, or especially when hunched over his desk, grows to his full stature.
The President telephones Haldeman, describes the scene, and asks why no one has thought to capture such a moment in a photograph. Haldeman arrives ten minutes later, accompanied by Presidential photographer Ollie Atkins and an assistant carrying Atkins’ camera bag, the scene is recorded, and the President instructs Haldeman to have the PR people “get these pictures out there.”
When the visitors are gone and the President is again alone, he lets his gaze sweep the room once more. Something is wrong with this room. The President squints from his position at his desk toward the fireplace. Something is wrong and he will not wait for any decorators to decide that they agree that this something is wrong. He is the President. His squint toward the fireplace turns into a glare. He sees what is wrong in the world, in the nation, in the Oval Office. And he can issue the directive that will turn something wrong into something right.
His face tense with determination, he lifts the Dictaphone handset at the corner of his desk, pauses, locates the record button, presses it—thrice; the first and second times his finger slips off—and speaks, Presidentially:
“To Bob Haldeman. From the President. Even before the Oval Office is re-done, I would like to have the coffee table in front of the fireplace replaced by one that does not block the view of the fireplace from the desk. Do not consult with others. This decision is final. By Wednesday, give me a report on your progress.”