There is the most frightful angst dithering le tout Washington at the moment over which Great American is going to occupy the white palace on Pennsylvania Avenue next year.
Like most of le tout`s dithers, it is entirely inconsequential, having less to do with how the next president feels about the SDI or the INF or the IMF than it does with how he feels about the BMW.
But if the vast American hordes addicted to People magazine and Barbara Walters` interviews are any measure, it`s a dither afflicting le tout U.S.A. as well. If the vast American hordes were truly concerned about INFs and IMFs, we might have had a quite different set of finalists by now-or perhaps none at all.
What we`re chatting about here is the next era of Presidential Style, or as it was put to me early in the primary campaign by the proprietor of one of Nancy Reagan`s favorite and fanciest local gourmet slow-food joints: ”We don`t know whether we`re going to be serving coquilles St. Jacques or chili dogs.” Her real concern, of course, was whether she was going to get a presidential guest to serve at all, but that is to digress.
With the field apparently narrowed to Republican George Bush and Democrats Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, it would seem safe to rule out chili dogs-though, recalling Vice President Bush`s many years in Texas, maybe not.
LIVING IT UP?
What le tout wants to know is, would Bush turn the White House into something out of ”The Preppy Handbook”? Would Jackson spend hours on the balcony of the South Portico exhorting passing tourists to ”be somebody!”?
Would life in the Executive Mansion under a President Dukakis be as deadly dull as his campaign, even if he has Greek-American night every Thursday?
The answer, of course, is yes. If the question is phrased differently-to wit: Will the next president embarrass us?-the answer is also yes. They always have.
Perhaps the dither is not so inconsequential. The First Family tends to set the tone for the nation. The Reagans not only gave us limousines, ultra-chic California cobb salad, a boost to astrology and designer everything, but a doubled national debt to pay for it all.
Like those of the European monarchs before them (remember Henry VIII`s bare-handed banquets and Marie Antoinette`s sharing her cake recipes with peasants?), White House lifestyles have varied greatly.
George Washington and most of his immediate successors were content with the comfortable but circumspect life of the rural plantation gentry they had been beforehand.
Others took to the presidency with lavish, imperialist relish. Martin Van Buren, born the son of an upstate New York saloonkeeper, filled the White House with extravagantly expensive crystal, china, silver and draperies while decking himself out in the most foppish finery, replete with lavender suits and yellow kid gloves.
QUEEN FOR A TERM
His haughty and beautiful daughter-in-law Angelica ruled as the widowed Van Buren`s First Lady from a White House throne raised on a dais, and went about the Executive Mansion in satin gowns complete with long trains and fancy headdress.
Perhaps the most dramatic departures in presidential styles were those inflicted upon the nation by Jimmy Carter. Carrying on as though the muffin-making Fords were as prolifigate as the Romanoffs of Russia, Carter gave America its first Humble Presidency, serving cheap jug wine at state dinners, tromping about the White House in hiking boots while female staffers flopped about it in bare feet and clogs and banning aides from that ultimate of swank slow-food joints, the Sans Souci, thus bringing its demise (which some say was his only accomplishment as president).
Instead of enthralling Americans with all this, he only embarrassed them, and they turned to the luxe-loving Reagans with open arms and credit-card cases.
The Reagans` Beverly Hills style was remarkably transformed by White House life. Bewildered by crass complaints about her expensive tastes from the Washington press corps, whose members regularly dine at the finest capital restaurants on expense accounts that rival Malcomb Forbes`, Nancy Reagan sent dreadfully fashionable First Friend Jerry Zipkin back to La-De-Da Land and abandoned her crusade to save America`s vital fashion industry for the nobler one of saving America`s youth from drug abuse. She even changed her ”favorite recipe” from one for a rich crab casserole to one for macaroni and cheese.
BROWN SUITS AND PLAID
President Reagan`s style seems to have been elevated by White House life. He came to town sporting the kind of Hollywood brown suits and plaid jackets that proper Washingtonians get to see only when hardware wholesalers are having a convention in town. Those were replaced with bankers` pin-stripe long about the end of the Reagan recession.
With Bush, Dukakis and Jackson, though, what you see is likely what you`ll get-and it won`t be Jerry Zipkin or macaroni and cheese.
Not to be truly gross about it, but George Bush is really prep. He doesn`t wear air hose (no socks) with his tassel loafers and Sperry Top-Siders, and I`ve yet to see him wearing those dorky lime green slacks with little designs on them, but otherwise he`s a walking cover boy for the L.L. Bean and Brooks Brothers catalogues.
This means Baxter State Parka in winter, windbreaker in summer and ensembles of gray flannels, blue blazer and Lacoste polo shirt at otherwise formal Christmas parties. Bush is so simply super he`s given to washable cloth watchbands and socks with little gold rings around the tops.
TENNIS, SOMEONE?
A tennis freak (he`s been known to watch videotapes of himself cavorting on the court), he`s also keen on boating, though he`s a traitor to his class in preferring powercraft to sail. He`s also keen on truly proletarian baseball.
People have derided Bush for carrying on like a Texan after growing up in the Effete East, but there`s a lot of Texan there. Yes, when he first moved to Texas he did invite an associate home for a drink and the associate did drink it out of the bottle, even though it was Bush`s only one, and the Bushes were aghast. And, yes, the Texans did whistle when Bush first went outside in Bermuda shorts. But things have changed. He really does like country-and-western music and he actually does eat all that chili stuff, which may be why he keeps flailing his arms about while making speeches.
He has a Latin American daughter-in-law, and is fond of Spanish cooking, too, beyond Tex-Mex.
He is a quintessential Washington insider, and a Bush White House will likely be host to an endless stream of power elite. He is also the consummate clubman, belonging to more clubs than there`s even room for in his ”Who`s Who” listing, including a Washington one so exclusive it has only one dining table. A Bush White House doubtless would be very similar to one of your-or at least his-better clubs, but it will accept women!
CHIC OUT, MATRONLY IN
Most notably, Barbara Bush, who has proven herself one of the most genuine candidate`s wives to hit the campaign trail. She keeps her hair its natural white (people of her truly tasteful class never dye their hair, because such vanity is considered vulgar and a sign of insecurity). She is content to dress in the matronly styles that won the capital ultrachic W magazine`s contempt as ”Frumpy Washington.”
She is a crusader to eliminate illiteracy, and once ghost-wrote a best-selling autobiography of her cocker spaniel Fred, now deceased.
Unlike their immediate predecessors, the Bushes are a rapturously close-knit and ever-expanding family, complete with L.L. Bean-type dogs, and the many children and grandchildren will likely be White House fixtures.
True, the most colorful thing about Dukakis is that Jerry Zipkin has taken to calling him ”Doo-Doo-Ka-Ka.” And he does seem to wear a dark blue suit, light blue shirt and red tie for all occasions. But I do have a picture of him in more lighthearted garb, an odd ensemble of canvas-top boating shoes, Cap d`Antibes sailor pants and Boston Celtics lounge shirt (in it he`s standing on a folding chair that brings him to eye level with three basketball-sized Celtics team members).
But it does take a lot of verve to grow eyebrows like that, and he is a genuine jock. He did play varsity basketball in college (I`m not sure if he brought his folding chair onto the court with him), and he is a jogger who competed in the Boston Marathon, finishing a respectable 157th or something. He`s not likely to be seen wasting time loping around the White House South Lawn the way Carter did every night, but one shouldn`t be surprised to see a basketball hoop nailed up over the West Wing drive.
COOL MICHAEL
A Harvard Law superachiever, he is an exhaustive reader, though his tastes run less to Marcel Proust and Tama Janowitz than to the Law Review and government reports. Dukakis has probably forgotten more statistical minutiae than Jimmy Carter or Reagan`s speech researchers ever even glanced at.
A consummate politician who served in the Massachusetts House seemingly since John Quincy Adams` days and as governor of that state nearly as long, Doo-Doo-Ka-Ka is a man truly gaga over government. Described even by admirers as a fellow ”not warm” and chided by Boston political commentators for his lack of friends, he probably would feel damned uncomfortable at one of those Kennedy clan Hyannisport weekend fun fests, especially if they`re all wearing cutoffs and swimsuits. There would likely be an endless stream of visitors at a Dukakis White House, but they`d all be staff aides, and you couldn`t tell the parties from the meetings.
Mrs. Dukakis, a divorcee whose father was concertmaster of the Boston Pops, is quite something else. She has been a champion of Asian refugees even though that cause isn`t much of a big vote-getter in Southie. She has been candid enough to admit to both an addiction to diet pills and to reading
”Jane Eyre.” She would be the first Jewish First Lady and, if there were a Greek-American night at a Dukakis White House, the menu might well include blintzes.
Dukakis family life is nearly as intense as the Bushes`, if not quite so numerous.
RHYMES WITH . . .
Jesse Jackson would likely be the most memorable president since Teddy Roosevelt, not simply because he would be the first black president but because there has never been anyone in the history of the planet as inimitable as Jesse Jackson. Certainly he`d be the first president who ever spoke entirely in rhymes, not to mention riddles.
It is well to take note of his irrepressible style, even though political professionals insist he can`t win the Democratic nomination. With his mass of delegates and mesmerizing convention-hall presence, there`s every likelihood he may make a serious bid for the No. 2 slot, and a Vice President Jesse would constantly overshadow if not overwhelm a President Dukakis, who might well end up demanding equal time from the networks.
Jackson`s would truly be a TV presidency, with cameras not only bolted to the Oval Office floor but stationed in all the other White House rooms as well. As TR said, the presidency is a ”bully pulpit,” and the Rev. Mr. Jackson knows pulpits.
It would also be a telephone presidency. Jesse is constantly on the phone as a mere civilian, and though he`s already enmeshed in a dozen global crises, as president he`d likely have Congress complaining about White House phone bills the way it now does the budget for the B-1 bomber.
STAY-AT-HOME JESSE
It`s not known if Jesse would scrap the B-1 bomber, but it wouldn`t be surprising if he junked Air Force One. He absolutely hates to fly (his multimedia jaunts to far-flung places notwithstanding). As Reagan has done to rail service in America what it wanted to do to the Environmental Protection Agency, this would largely confine Jackson to the Executive Mansion, but he would just as likely hold court there.
He`s keen on celebrities, counting superstars such as Bill Cosby, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Roberta Flack among his favorites, not to speak of half the athletes in America. The weekly White House guest list alone would compel People magazine to expand to 500 pages. But he`d have in evidence representatives of every noble cause in America as well.
Not that life would be one endless photo opportunity. Jackson is well served by a remarkably competent staff and has already put together a substantial think tank of leading black minds. But with all these groups milling about, and with Jesse at their center, the White House would doubtless be the noisiest since TR chased his screaming children through it.
Jackson carries a heavy work by the late theologian Paul Tillich around with him, but it would seem he`s no more of a reader than Reagan is, and in fact may have borrowed it unread from Reagan`s library.
PASS THE O.J.
A morning person who runs down about the time the sun does, he might well become the first president to inaugurate the State Breakfast. And foreign diplomats and Washington poobahs still recovering from Carter jug wine would find themselves having to exchange toasts with fruit juice. Jesse is an O.J. junkie.
His would certainly be the most casual presidency on record. He forswore the dashikis he made famous in the late `60s for black and dark brown safari suits, and though those were put aside in favor of garb more suitable for televised campaign debates, they`d likely reappear once he was sworn into office. Anyway, they`d look kinda cute with presidential seals on them.
His wife Jackie is considered to be the stabilizing force in Jackson`s whirlwind existence, and it`s probable that her presence would be felt as much as his would be heard. She cites activist Eleanor Roosevelt as her First Lady role model and is considerably closer to Jesse than Eleanor was to FDR.
Interestingly, Tipper Gore, wife of once-was candidate Al Gore, told USA Today that the people she`d most like to have over to the White House were Jesse and Jackie Jackson. When asked the same question, Mrs. Jackson said she`d most like to have over Barbara Bush. ”I think she and I would hit it off.”
Perhaps it is time for a woman president. –
