Tour de White House

The White House, which relatives and I toured recently, is one of the few residences of a head of state in the world that is open to the public. This is thanks to our wise founding fathers, who foresaw that the American people would yearn to walk in the hallowed rooms of their leaders, behold with their own eyes the fascinating china patterns of successive administrations, jump fences and crash internationals galas, etc. They therefore set aside rooms in the White House whose only function is for public gawking.

This provision can be found in Federal Document #932A: Public Access to Executive Residence (or at Least Part of It), which states that "A percentage of Rooms in the Executive Residence, to be named forthwith, shall be preserved solely for Public Viewing; they shall have no Bearing on actual Governmental Function nor on the President's day-to-day Business. Neither the President nor his Cabinet Members, nor Members of Congress, nor any visiting Dignitary, shall ever set Foot in any of these Rooms, unless doing so as a Member of the General Public. Nor shall any Member of the President's Family do so, unless in an Emergency in order to retrieve, for example, the Presidential Dog."

On any given day, there are throngs of people from the general public lined up to view these rooms, which include the Green Room, Blue Room, Red Room, Purple Room, Striped Room, Polka-Dot Room, the Multipurpose Room, the Multitasking Multipurpose Room, the Room Decorated by the Cat in Residence, etc. You can tell that these rooms have no actual governmental function because during tours they are staffed by "Secret Service" persons, who are obviously not true Secret Service because they do not wear dark glasses. They ARE, however, equipped with little earpieces, from which they receive top-secret governmental information, such as "bottom of the ninth, two outs, and Fernandez is up..."

Before entering these rooms, visitors are led along a corridor featuring photos of various presidents through the years. These photos also prominently feature presidential pets, who are often remembered fondly by visitors, even when their owners are somewhat difficult to remember. "Look, here's Him and Her! They were such cute beagles. Let's see, who was president then...Nixon? Ford?" "No, no, I'm sure it was earlier -- it was...him and..her..."

Some visitors are lucky enough to get a glimpse, as we did, of important members of the First Family during their tour. In our case it was the presidential dogs, Bo and Sunny, who made an appearance, albeit brief. The dogs were gracious but did not, following years of protocol, offer autographs.

The "Secret Service" people are full of interesting tidbits of information, such as that the room heavily decorated in green tones is known as the Green Room, or that the many pieces of furniture with eagles on them are from Teddy Roosevelt's era. ("He liked eagles," the Secret Service man offered. They certainly know their stuff, those Secret Service people.)

You will also learn, as a visitor, the number of rooms in the house (132), the number of fireplaces (28), and most important, the number of bathrooms (35). Visitors, of course, never see ANY bathrooms, they having not yet been invented when the idea for the Visitor Wing was conceived.

Despite this shortcoming, the tour is very informative and not to be missed. Of course, you could see much the same things on a virtual tour of the White House online. Maybe even a bathroom.