We were also facing the more mundane challenges of any family changing jobs and residences. In the midst of forming a new Administration, we had to pack up the Governor’s Mansion, the only home Chelsea remembered. And since we didn’t own a house of our own, everything would come with us to the White House. Friends pitched in to organize and sort, piling boxes in every room. Loretta Avent, a friend from Arizona who had joined me on the campaign after the convention, took charge of the thousands of gifts that arrived from all over the world, filling a huge section of the large basement. Periodically, Loretta would shriek up the stairs: “Wait till you see what just came.” And I’d go down to find her clutching a portrait of Bill made out of seashells and mounted on a red velvet background or a collection of stuffed dogs dressed in baby clothes sent to our now famous black-and-white cat, Socks.

  We had to find a new school in Washington for Chelsea, who was almost a teenager and not happy with the prospect of dismantling her life. Bill and I wondered how we could give her a normal childhood in the White House, where her new reality would include twentyfour-hour Secret Service protection. We had already decided to bring Socks to Washington, although we had been warned that he could no longer roam free, collecting dead birds and mice as trophies. Because the White House fence was wide enough for him to slip through into traffic, we reluctantly decided he would have to be on a leash whenever he was outside.

  I had taken a leave of absence to campaign, but now I resigned my law practice and started putting together a staff for the office of First Lady, while helping Bill in any way I could. We were both grappling with what my role should be. I would have a “position”

  but not a real “job.” How could I use this platform to help my husband and serve my country without losing my own voice?

  There is no training manual for First Ladies. You get the job because the man you married becomes President. Each of my predecessors brought to the White House her own attitudes and expectations, likes and dislikes, dreams and doubts. Each carved out a role that reflected her own interests and style and that balanced the needs of her husband, family and country. So would I. Like all First Ladies before me, I had to decide what I wanted to do with the opportunities and responsibilities I had inherited.

  Over the years, the role of First Lady has been perceived as largely symbolic. She is expected to represent an ideal―and largely mythical―concept of American womanhood.

  Many former First Ladies were highly accomplished, but true stories of what they had done in their lives were overlooked, forgotten or suppressed. By the time I was preparing to take on the role, history was finally catching up to reality. In March 1992, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History revised its popular First Ladies Exhibit to acknowledge the varied political roles and public images of these women. In addition to gowns and china, the museum displayed the camouflage jacket Barbara Bush wore when she visited the troops of Desert Storm with her husband and featured a quote from Martha Washington: “I am more like a state prisoner than anything else.” The exhibit’s chief curator, Edith Mayo, and the Smithsonian were criticized for rewriting history and demeaning the “family values” of the First Ladies.

  As I studied the marriages of previous Presidents, I recognized that Bill and I were not the first couple who relied on each other as partners in life and politics. Because of research done by the Smithsonian and historians such as Carl Sferrazza Anthony and David McCullough, we now know about the political advice Abigail Adams provided her husband, which earned her the derogatory nickname “Mrs. President”; the behind-the-scenes role Helen Taft played in pushing Theodore Roosevelt to choose her husband as his successor; the “unofficial Presidency” run by Edith Wilson after her husband’s stroke; the political firestorms ignited by Eleanor Roosevelt; and the painstaking review by Bess of Harry Truman’s speeches and letters.

  Like those of many previous White House inhabitants, the relationship that Bill Clinton and I had built was rooted in love and respect, shared aspirations and accomplishments, victories and defeats. That wasn’t about to change with an election. After seventeen years of marriage, we were each other’s biggest cheerleaders, toughest critics and best friends.

  Yet it wasn’t clear to either of us how this partnership would fit into the new Clinton Administration. Bill couldn’t appoint me to an official position, even if he had wanted to.

  Anti-nepotism laws had been on the books since President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby to be Attorney General. But there were no laws to prevent me from continuing my role as Bill Clinton’s unpaid adviser and, in some cases, representative. We had worked together for so long, and Bill knew he could trust me. We always understood that I would contribute to my husband’s administration. But we didn’t know precisely what my role would be until late in the transition, when Bill asked me to oversee his health care initiative.

  He was in the process of centralizing economic policy in the White House and wanted a similar structure for health care. With so many government agencies claiming a stake in reform, he worried that turf wars could stifle creativity and new approaches. Bill decided that Ira Magaziner should coordinate the process inside the White House to develop the legislation, and he wanted me to head up the initiative to make it law. Bill intended to announce our appointments right after the inauguration. Because of our experience in Arkansas, where Bill had appointed me to lead committees on rural health care and public education, neither of us spent much time worrying about reactions my involvement might provoke. When it came to political spouses, we certainly didn’t expect the nation’s capital to be more conservative than Arkansas.

  We were running late when we left Little Rock on the evening of January 16, 1993.

  Thousands of our friends and supporters jammed into a huge hangar at Little Rock Airport for an emotional farewell ceremony. I was excited about what lay ahead of us, but my enthusiasm was tinged with melancholy. Bill was on the verge of tears as he recited the lyrics of a song to the crowd of well-wishers, “Arkansas runs deep in me, and it always will.” What seemed like a thousand hugs and waves later, we boarded our chartered plane. Once we were airborne, the lights of Little Rock disappeared beneath the clouds, and there was nothing to do but look ahead.

  We flew to Charlottesville, Virginia, to continue the journey to Washington by bus, following the 121-mile route Thomas Jefferson had taken to his inauguration in 1801. I thought it was an appropriate way to initiate the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton.

  The next morning, we met up with Al and Tipper and toured Monticello, the great house Jefferson designed. Then we boarded another bus together, just as we had during the campaign, and headed north to Washington. Route 29 was lined with thousands of people cheering us on, waving flags, holding balloons and banners. Some held homemade signs to encourage us, congratulate us or chastise us: “Bubbas for Bill.” “We are counting on you.” “Keep your promises―AIDS won’t wait.” “You’re socialists, stupid.”

  My favorite was a plain, hand-lettered sign with two words: “Grace, Compassion.”

  The sky was still clear, but the temperature was dropping as we pulled into Washington, D.C. By some act of providence, the punctuality-impaired President-elect was running on time, and we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial five minutes early for the first official event―a concert on the steps in front of an enormous crowd that stretched down the Mall. Harry Thomason, Rahm Emanuel and Mel French, another friend from Arkansas, were the impresarios of the inaugural festivities. Harry and Rahm were so relieved to see us that they hugged each other.

  I had never sat in an enclosure of bulletproof glass―a strange sensation and somewhat alienating. I was grateful, though, for the little heaters by our feet because the temperature had dropped precipitously. Pop diva Diana Ross sang a spectacular rendition of “God Bless America.” Bob Dylan played to the packed Mall, just as he had on that August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the same steps. I felt extremely fortunate to have seen Reverend King speak when I was a teenager in Chicago, and now here I was listening to my husband honor the man who helped this nation overcome its painful history:

  “Let us build an American home for the twentyfirst century, where everyone has a place at the table and not a single child is left behind,” Bill said. “In this world and the world of tomorrow, we must go forward together or not at all.”

  The sun was setting when Bill, Chelsea and I led thousands of swaying, singing celebrants in a march across Memorial Bridge.

  We stopped on the other side of the Potomac River to ring a replica of the Liberty Bell, touching off a celebration in which thousands of “Bells of Hope” were rung simultaneously across the country and even aboard the space shuttle Endeavor as it circled the planet. We lingered a while as fireworks lit up the night sky over the capital. Then it was off to another event, and still another. By then all the celebrations were blending together in a kaleidoscope of faces and stages and voices.

  During inaugural week, our families and personal staff stayed with us in Blair House, the traditional guest residence for visiting heads of state and Presidents-elect. Blair House and its professional staff run by Benedicte Valentiner, known to all as Mrs. V, and her deputy, Randy Baumgardner, made us feel welcome in the quietly elegant mansion that became an oasis during a hectic week. Blair House is famous for being able to accommodate any special need. Our crew was tame compared to certain visiting heads of state who demanded that their guards be nude to ensure they carried no weapons, or imported their own cooks to prepare everything from goat to snake.

  Bill gave a lot of speeches that week, but he still hadn’t finished writing the biggest one of his life: the inaugural address. Bill is a wonderful writer and gifted speechmaker who makes it look easy, but his constant revisions and last-minute changes are nerveracking.

  He’s never met a sentence he couldn’t fool with. I was used to his constant tinkering, but even I could feel my anxiety rise as the day grew nearer. Bill worked on the draft whenever there was a moment between events.

  My husband likes to pull everybody around him into his creative tumult. David Kusnet, his main speechwriter; Bruce Reed, his Deputy Domestic Policy Adviser; George Stephanopoulos, his Communications Director; Al Gore and I all put our two cents in.

  Bill also called in two longtime friends: Tommy Caplan, a marvelous wordsmith and novelist who had been one of his roommates at Georgetown University, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who had worked with us in Texas for the McGovern campaign. In the midst of the process, Bill received a letter from Father Tim Healy, the former President of Georgetown and head of the New York Public Library. He and Bill shared a Georgetown connection, and Father Healy had been writing the letter to Bill when he died suddenly of a heart attack as he returned home from a trip. The letter was found in Father Healy’s typewriter and sent on to Bill, who found in this posthumous message a wonderful phrase. Father had written that Bill’s election would “force the spring” and lead to a flowering of new ideas, hope and energy that would reinvigorate the country. I loved his words and his apt metaphor for Bill’s ambitions for his Presidency.

  It was fascinating to watch my husband that week as he literally became President before my eyes. Throughout the inaugural festivities, Bill received security briefings to prepare him for the historic responsibilities he was about to assume. With remarkable agility, he was already shifting his attention from a major speech to news of U.S. planes that were bombing Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s contempt for U.N. demands to briefings about the worsening conflict in Bosnia.

  He was still writing his speech the day before inauguration. To give him time to work, I agreed to fill in for him at his afternoon events, although I had to keep my own schedule, too. That afternoon I also squeezed in an appearance at events sponsored by my alma maters, Wellesley College and Yale Law School. On the way back from the Mayflower Hotel, my car got stuck in a gridlock of inaugural crowds and out-of-state vehicles on Pennsylvania Avenue, within sight of Blair House. I was so late and frustrated that I jumped out and took off running through the traffic. Capricia Marshall, who was watching from a window in Blair House, still laughs when she describes the sight of me darting between cars, wearing heels and a snug gray flannel dress, with my alarmed Secret Service detail scrambling behind.

  Bill finally finished writing and rehearsing the big speech an hour or two before dawn on the morning of his inauguration.

  We slept very briefly and then started our extraordinary day with an emotional interfaith service at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Then we went to the White House, where the Bushes greeted us at the North Portico with their spaniels, Millie and Ranger, darting around their legs. They were very welcoming and put us at ease. Although the campaign had been bruising for both our families, Barbara Bush had been gracious to me when we had met in the past and had given me a walking tour of the family quarters of the White House after the election. George Bush had always been friendly when we had seen him at the annual National Governors Association conferences, and I had sat next to him at NGA dinners at the White House and at the Education Summit in Charlottesville at Monticello in 1989. When the summer Governors Conference was held in Maine in 1983, the Bushes opened their property at Kennebunkport for a big clambake. Chelsea, only three at the time, came along, and when she had to go to the bathroom, then Vice President Bush took her by the hand and showed her the way.

  The Gores joined us at the White House, along with Alma and Ron Brown, who was Chairman of the DNC and soon to be sworn in as Commerce Secretary, and Linda and Harry Thomason, who had co-chaired the inauguration.

  President and Mrs. Bush guided our party to the Blue Room, where we had coffee and made small talk for twenty minutes or so until it was time to leave for the Capitol. Bill rode in the presidential limousine with George Bush, while Barbara Bush and I followed in another car. The crowds lining Pennsylvania Avenue cheered and waved as we passed.

  I admired Mrs. Bush’s elan as we prepared to watch one President, her husband, make way for another.

  At the Capitol we stood on the West Front with its breathtaking view down the Mall to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The huge crowd spilled out beyond the Monument.

  Following custom, the United States Marine Band struck up “Hail to the Chief’ one final time for George Bush just before noon, and again to the new President a few minutes later. I had always been stirred by those chords, and now I felt moved beyond words to hear them play for my husband. Chelsea and I reverently held the Bible as Bill took the oath of office. Then he gathered Chelsea and me in his arms and, kissing each of us, whispered, “I love you both so much.”

  Bill’s speech stressed the themes of sacrifice and service for America and called for the changes he had featured in his campaign. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” he said, calling Americans to “a season of service” on behalf of those in need at home and those around the world whom we must help to build democracy and freedom.

  After the swearing-in ceremony, while some of our new staffers hurried to the White House to start unpacking and organizing our things, Bill and I lunched in the Capitol with members of Congress. Just as the mantle of power passes from one President to the next at noon on Inauguration Day, so does possession of the White House. The belongings of a new President and his family cannot be moved into the White House until after he is sworn in. At 12:01 P.M., George and Barbara Bush’s moving vans pulled away from the delivery entrance as ours came in. Our luggage, furniture and hundreds of boxes were unloaded in a mad dash in the few hours between the ceremony at the Capitol and the end of the inaugural parade. Aides scrambled to locate what we would need immediately and stuffed the rest of our possessions into closets and spare rooms to deal with later.

  White House security procedures require that essential employees be cleared with the uniformed Secret Service guards, a process known by its acronym, WAVES, which stands for “Workers and Visitors Entry System.” A list of prescreened guests or staff is then WAVE-d into the White House. Unfortunately, my personal assistant, Capricia Marshall, hadn’t quite mastered the system. She thought being “waved in” involved a welcoming hand gesture. Capricia, who would not let my inaugural gown out of her sight that day, carried it from Blair House, waving at guards as she went from gate to gate trying to find someone to WAVE her in. It’s a testament to her persuasiveness―and her eventual inclusion in the WAVES system―that my violet blue lace-covered ball gown made it past White House security on Inauguration Day.

  After lunch, Bill, Chelsea and I drove from the Capitol down the parade route to the Treasury Building; there, with the Secret Service’s reluctant blessing, we got out and walked along Pennsylvania Avenue to the reviewing stand in front of the White House, where I sat down in front of a space heater to watch the parade. Because Democrats hadn’t had a winner in sixteen years, everyone wanted to participate. We couldn’t say no and didn’t want to. There were six marching bands from Arkansas alone, in a parade that lasted three hours.

  We first walked into the White House as its new residents in the early evening after the last float passed by. I remember looking around in wonder at this house I had visited as a guest. Now it would be my home. It was during my walk up the path toward the White House and up the stairs of the North Portico and into the Grand Foyer that the reality hit me: I was actually the First Lady, married to the President of the United States. It was the first of many times I would be reminded of the history I was now joining.

  Members of the permanent White House staff, numbering about one hundred, were waiting to greet us in the Grand Foyer. These are the men and women who run the house and tend to the special needs of its residents. The White House has its own engineers, carpenters, plumbers, gardeners, florists, curators, cooks, butlers and housekeepers who continue from one administration to the next. The entire operation is overseen by the “ushers,” a quaint term from the nineteenth century still used to describe the administrative staff. In 2000, I published my third book, An Invitation to the White House, which was both a tribute to the permanent White House staff and a behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary job they do every day.