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Outside the gates of the White House, tourists, school kids and even usually blase native Washingtonians gathered to catch a glimpse of history at today's meeting of the incoming and outgoing presidents. In the photo above, by Mark Wilson of Getty Images, President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama walk through the Rose Garden en route to the Oval Office.
With Obama to be sworn in on Jan. 20 as the nation's 44th president and its first African American president, history was made at every step of today's visit by Obama and his wife Michelle.
There was this view, by Mandel Ngan of AFP/Getty Images, as the Obamas arrived at the White House, with everybody trying to figure out their places.
And finally this one, also by Ngan, of the penultimate Colonnade walk.
It will be a moment of history unlike any other, a transition not just from one president to another but from a shameful and long chapter of racial prejudice in American history to a new beginning.
President-elect Barack Obama, the first African American elected to the highest office in the land, will take a photogenic walk along the White House Colonnade this afternoon with President Bush. In those few steps, they will cement the progress of the civil rights movement's "We Shall Overcome."
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told reporters this morning that the Obamas will be greeted by the Bushes on the South Portico on their arrival at 2 PM Eastern, and then proceed to the Diplomatic Reception Room, where they will meet Adm. Stephen Rochon, the chief usher, who runs the residence.
Then the two wives will assume their own schedule -- adjourning to the First Family's living quarters, where Mrs. Bush plans to show Mrs. Obama the bedrooms used by children of past presidents. The Obama daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, are the youngest children to live at the White House since John F. Kennedy's administration in the early 1960s.
As for Bush and his successor, Perino said they will "walk down the Colonnade into the Oval Office," where, his staff said, Obama has never been. On the agenda: the economic meltdown, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a peaceful transition. But no news conference is planned afterward.
In a C-SPAN interview, reporters from the Associated Press and the Washington Post asked Bush White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten what he thought the president would tell the man who ran against his policies. Bolten said:
I know the president will want to convey to President-elect Obama his sense of how to deal with some of the most important issues of the day. But exactly how he does that, I don't know, and I don't think anybody will know.
Well maybe not the last. After all, there are still 71 days to go before the inauguration.
But late Sunday, George W. Bush's administration scrapped its original $123-billion bailout of American International Group (AIG) and offered a new one, for $170 billion, that extends the loan from two years to five. The deal is part of the $700-billion stash that Congress passed last month.
So far this morning, Wall Street seems to like the news. As for AIG, its CEO Edward Liddy said the new plan "is a significant step forward" that will help AIG divest itself of bad business loans. Tapped to lead the company amid its turmoil five weeks ago, Liddy also said it feels more like five years.
For one thing, Democrats have signaled that under President-elect Barack Obama's administration, the Treasury will use the $700-billion bailout money differently. If there's any left.
For another, Democrats are likely to be enraged that the U.S. government is bailing out Wall Street -- again -- while the Big Three auto makers are nearing the precipice. The White House has been resisting a direct bailout of an industry, preferring to dole out the money to the financial sector and let those traditional gatekeepers of the nation's money supply do their thing.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Stan Honda / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
President Bush is hardly a fan of Barack Obama's policies. He warned during the recent meltdown on Wall Street that the way to help the American people was not to raise taxes on the wealthy as Obama has suggested but to extend his own tax cuts on the upper class. And the president is resisting efforts by congressional Democrats to enact a second stimulus package for folks on Main Street.
But Bush made clear to the White House staff last week that he wanted a smooth transition, no pranks. Maybe the president remembers what happened in 2001, when Clinton staffers angry that Al Gore was defeated left anti-Bush graffiti on White House equipment, fixing "Hail to the Thief" and "W Happens" notes to file cabinets in what the GAO later determined was $15,000 in damage.
With President-elect Obama going to the White House Monday to meet with Bush, no one is expecting the two will find much common ground on policy.
But both sides are talking nice. Bush said he is looking forward to their talks. And Obama, noting that the country can only have one president at a time, said "the critical tone, I think, that needs to be struck by all of us right now is the American people need help. It's in that spirit that I will have a conversation with the president."
Both sides are also signaling that despite vast political differences and huge challenges, they want a seamless transition. As White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday, "Their posture and ours is one of genuine cooperation ... Both recognize the responsibility of keeping the country safe and helping pulls the economy out of its downturn."
If it is a good-faith transition, Bush might emerge more popular than his current ratings reflect.
To presidential scholars, none of this is a surprise.
"Good politicians are like pro wrestlers, bashing one another in public and then walking off arm in arm," Fred Greenstein, a political scientist now retired from Princeton, told the Wall Street Journal.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photos: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Credits: Getty Images; Associated Press
Barney the first dog bit a White House reporter today.
Apparently it wasn't the first time. Jon Decker, a political reporter for Reuters, had just finished a live shot for MSNBC at 10:35 a.m. when he spotted Barney and his handler on a walk. He bent down to pet him. Look out.
Maybe Barney, a Scottish terrier, was fed up with liberal media bias. Maybe he was unhappy with how ungrateful Americans seem to be for President Bush's leadership. Or maybe he was just snarling to get out of there.
One thing is clear: Despite high popularity ratings of their own (the Barney cam is a much-visited feature of the White House website) he and Miss Beazley are moving out. And Barack Obama, who promised his daughters Malia and Sasha that they could get a puppy once the political campaign had ended, has OKd a spring arrival for the new first dog.
Speculation is rampant in Washington about the breed of the new first puppy. Malia Obama, a 10-year-old with allergies, has apparently fallen for the cockapoodle, partly because the breed is hypoallergenic. After a lobbying campaign by animal rights activists in the fall, Obama voted for a rescued dog.
It was an emotional moment for President Bush, and his face showed the strain.
The election was two days in the past. He came out on the White House South Lawn under cloudy skies, the Washington autumn morning damp and dreary, to thank the White House staff for the work they have done.
"We believe that service to our fellow citizens is a noble calling -- and the privilege of a lifetime," he said.
He asked them to conduct themselves during the transition to the Barack Obama administration with "decency and professionalism."
Needing no mention: the reports of fraternity house shenanigans when the Bill Clinton staff turned their offices over to the incoming Bush brigades.
The president and Laura Bush will welcome Barack and Michelle Obama to the White House on Monday, and Bush said: "I hope you will join Laura and me in congratulating President-elect Obama, and wishing him the very best for his family and our country."
He said he recognized that with Jan. 20 approaching, "some of you may be anxious about finding a new job or a new place to live.
"I know how you feel," he said.
But, he added:
Earlier this year, I promised that I would sprint to the finish. I am keeping that promise. ... I will be honored to stand with you at the finish line.
The staff's applause triggered an apparent welling of emotions, and Bush did all he could do to keep them under control.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photos. Top, Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images; Ron Edmonds / Associated Press
After Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois today agreed to become Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, praise came from an unexpected quarter.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was at John McCain's side almost every day of the 2008 general election campaign, negotiated the details of the presidential debates with Emanuel, representing Obama.
This is a wise choice by President-elect Obama. Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills. He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together....
I worked closely with him during the presidential debate negotiations, which were completed in record time. When we hit a rough spot, he always looked for a path forward. I consider Rahm to be a friend and colleague. He's tough but fair. Honest, direct, and candid. These qualities will serve President-elect Obama well.
Toughness is the quality cited most often by presidential scholars -- and several former occupants of the position -- in describing what matters in a White House chief of staff.
Dick Cheney, chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, has developed something of a reputation for toughness himself as vice president to George W. Bush.
But Cheney told political scientist Martha Kumar in 2001 that organization was the key to being White House chief of staff. In an interview for the Presidency Research Group, for which Kumar spoke to 80 former White House staffers, Cheney said:
His reach, his ability to sort of guide and direct the government, to interact with the Cabinet, to deal effectively with the Congress, to manage his relationship with the press, all of those are key ingredients to his success.
Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House has become a jumble of construction equipment and fencing in anticipation of the assembly of a reviewing stand for the parade marking Barack Obama's inauguration as president on Jan. 20.
But this sign could signal not just the immediate danger at the construction site, but -- as President Bush could attest -- the turmoil, political brickbats and diplomatic contretemps that inevitably befall any chief executive residing here.
Bill Clinton got a $15-million advance to write his memoir, "My Life." And he was a president who'd been impeached for an embarrassing dalliance in the Oval Office.
For one thing, he's not known as an introspective guy given to self-criticism, seen as key to sales.
"I think any success will depend to a very large extent on [the content of] the book," said Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs, which published former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's tough take on the White House.
For another, foreign rights would be unlikely.
"President Bush is perceived as a unilateral cowboy who didn't respect other nations," said Jonathan Karp, whose Hachette Book Group published "Hard Call," Republican John McCain's latest book. "So there's a shortfall overseas."
Mostly, because his reputation, like Harry S. Truman's, may require a few decades to appreciate. Truman, the haberdasher from Independence, Mo., who became president on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, left office in 1953 as unpopular as Bush is now. His own memoir, a two-volume affair published in the 1950s, is little remembered. It was only in the 1990s, when David McCullough wrote his bestselling "Truman," that the pugnacious accidental president became an admired figure.
"Only in hindsight will history show whether Bush is deemed to be a good president who sacrificed his presidency for what he believed in or whether history judges him to be a failed president," said Marji Ross, president of the conservative Regnery Publishing, which, given its conservative audience, is in the market for books critical of President-elect Barack Obama.
Still, says Karp, if Bush is interested in penning his own version of history, he should consider it.
"Maybe only 30% of the public is still behind him," said Karp. "But 30% of 300 million people is not a small number."
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
