We were escorted upstairs to the private residence on the second floor, which looked barren as our belongings had not been unpacked. But we had no time to worry about any of that. We had to get ready to go out.

  One of the most convenient features of the residence is the beauty salon, put in by Pat Nixon on the second floor. Chelsea, her friends, my mother, my motherin-law and my sister-in-law, Maria, crowded in and jockeyed to be transformed, like Cinderellas, for the balls.

  Bill wanted to attend each of the eleven inaugural balls that evening, and not just for the customary five-minute drop-by and wave. We were going to celebrate. Chelsea and four of her girlfriends from Arkansas accompanied us to several events, including the MTV Ball, before returning to the White House for a sleepover. The Arkansas Ball, held in the Washington Convention Center, was the biggest and most fun for us because that’s where our families and twelve thousand of our friends and supporters had gathered. Ben E. King handed Bill a saxophone, and the crowd erupted in cheers and Razorback hog calls of “Soooooo-ey!”

  No one had more fun than Bill’s mother, Virginia. She was the belle of at least three balls. She probably already knew half the revelers, and she was quickly meeting the rest.

  She also made a special friend that night: Barbra Streisand. She and Barbra struck up a friendship at the Arkansas Ball that continued with weekly phone calls for the next year.

  Bill and I carried on at the balls, and by the end of the evening, we had danced to so many renditions of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” the unofficial campaign theme song, that I had to kick off my shoes to give my feet a rest. Neither of us wanted the night to end, but I finally coaxed Bill out of the Midwestern Ball at the Sheraton Hotel when the musicians started packing away their instruments. We headed back to the White House well after two in the morning.

  When we stepped out of the elevator into the second floor residence, we looked at each other in disbelief: this was now our home. Too tired to explore these grand new surroundings, we crashed into bed.

  We had been asleep for only a few hours when we heard a brisk knock on the bedroom door.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Whuh?”

  TAP, TAP, TAP.

  Bill bolted up in bed, and I groped for my glasses in the dark, thinking there must be some sort of emergency on our very first morning.

  Suddenly the door swung open and a man in a tuxedo stepped into the bedroom carrying a silver breakfast tray. This is how the Bushes began their day, with a bedroom breakfast at 5:30 A.M., and it’s what the butlers were accustomed to. But the first words this poor man heard from the forty-second President of the United States were, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  You never saw anyone back out of a room so quickly.

  Bill and I just laughed and settled back under the covers to try to steal another hour of sleep. It struck me that both the White House and we, its new occupants, were in for some major adjustments, publicly and privately.

  The Clinton Presidency represented generational and political change that would affect every institution in Washington. For twenty of the previous twentyfour years, the White House had been a Republican domain. Its occupants had been members of our parents’

  generation. The Reagans often ate dinner in front of the television on TV trays and the Bushes reportedly awoke at dawn to walk the dogs, and then read newspapers and watch the morning news shows on the five television sets in their bedroom. After twelve years, the dedicated permanent staff was used to a predictable routine and regular hours.

  Children hadn’t lived there fulltime since Jimmy Carter left office in 1981. I suspected that our family’s casual lifestyle and roundthe-clock work habits were bound to be as unfamiliar to the staff as the formality of the White House was to us.

  Bill’s campaign had emphasized Putting People First, so on our first full day in the White House we wanted to make good on that promise by inviting thousands of people for an open house, many selected by lottery. They all held tickets and many had lined up in the dark before sunrise to meet us and the Gores. But we hadn’t anticipated how long it would take to greet everyone and hadn’t scheduled enough time. The lines stretched across the grounds from the East Gate to the South Portico, and I felt terrible when I realized many of the people waiting outside in the cold wouldn’t make it inside to the Diplomatic Reception Room before we had to leave. The four of us went outside to tell the hardy souls remaining how sorry we were that we could not stay to greet them, but that they were still welcome to visit their house.

  After our other obligations ended late that afternoon, Bill and I were finally free to change into casual clothes and have a look around our new home. We wanted to share these first days and nights in the White House with our closest friends and family. There were two guest rooms on the second floor, referred to as the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Bedroom, and seven other guest rooms on the third floor. In addition to Chelsea and her friends from Little Rock, our parents, Hugh and Dorothy Rodham and Virginia and Dick Kelley, and our brothers, Hugh Rodham (and his wife, Maria), Tony Rodham and Roger Clinton, were staying with us. And we had also invited four of our best friends, Diane and Jim Blair and Harry and Linda Thomason, to spend the night.

  Harry and Linda produced and wrote several television shows, including the hugely successful Designing Women and Evening Shade, but their hearts never left the Ozarks.

  Harry had grown up in Hampton, Arkansas, and started out as a high school football coach in Little Rock. Linda came from a family of lawyers and activists in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, just across the Arkansas State line. The only other famous person born in that patch of Missouri, Linda told us with a laugh, was Rush Limbaugh, the rightwing radio host who was one of George Bush’s biggest cheerleaders. Linda’s and Rush’s families knew each other and had a long-standing, amiable rivalry.

  After a whirlwind week of inaugural festivities, it felt good to relax with people we had known for years and trusted completely. At the end of the evening, we decided to raid the small family kitchen off the West Sitting Hall. Harry and Bill checked the cabinets while Linda and I opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for one item: a halffull bottle of vodka. We used the contents to toast the new President, the country and our future.

  Our parents had already gone to bed, and Chelsea and her guests were finally quiet.

  The night before, the girls had come back early from the inaugural balls and had a great time going on a scavenger hunt staged for them by the curators and ushers. I thought it would be a good way for her to have fun and get familiar with her new environment. The curators came up with all sorts of historical clues, such as find “the painting with the yellow bird” (Still Life with Fruit, Goblet and Canary by Severin Roesen, in the Red Room) and find “the room where it is sometimes said a ghost has been seen.” (The Lincoln Bedroom, where guests have reported cold breezes and spectral figures.) I don’t believe in ghosts, but we did sometimes feel that the White House was haunted by more temporal entities. Spirits of administrations past were everywhere. Sometimes they even left notes. Harry and Linda were given the Lincoln Bedroom that night. When they climbed into the long rosewood bed, they found a folded piece of paper under a pillow.

  “Dear Linda, I was here first, and I’ll be back,” the note said. It was signed “Rush Limbaugh.”

  EAST WING, WEST WING

  The White House is the president’s office and home, and it is also a national museum. Its organizational culture, I quickly learned, is like a military unit. For years things had been done a certain way, often by staff who had worked there for decades, perfecting the way the house was run and preserved. The head gardener, Irv Williams, started under President Truman. The permanent staff knew that they provided the continuity from one First Family to the next. In many ways they were the keepers of the institutional Presidency from one administration to the next. We were merely temporary residents. When the senior President Bush came to unveil his official portrait during Bill’s first term, he saw George Washington Hannie, Jr., a butler who had worked at the House for more than twentyfive years. “George, you’re still here?”

  The veteran butler replied: “Yes, sir. Presidents come and go. But George is always here.”

  Like many venerable institutions, change came slowly to the White House. The phone system was a throwback to another era. To dial out from the residence, we had to pick up the receiver and wait for a White House operator to dial for us. Eventually I got used to it and came to appreciate the kind and patient operators who worked at the switchboard.

  When the entire phone system was eventually upgraded with newer technology, I continued to place calls through them.

  I knew I would never get used to the Secret Service agent posted outside our bedroom door. This was standard operating procedure for past Presidents, and the Secret Service was adamant, at first, about keeping it that way.

  “What if the President has a heart attack in the middle of the night?” one agent asked me when I suggested that he station himself downstairs instead of with us on the second floor.

  “He’s forty-six years old and in great health,” I said. “He’s not going to have a heart attack!”

  The Secret Service adapted to our needs, and we to theirs. After all, they were the experts when it came to our safety. We just had to find a way to let them do their job and let us be ourselves. For twelve years, they had been used to a predictable routine where spontaneity was the exception, not the rule. Our campaign, with its breakneck pace, frequent stops and rope lines, made our agents scramble. I had many long conversations with the agents assigned to protect us. One of my lead agents, Don Flynn, said: “Now I get it. It’s like if one of us was President. We like to go places and do things and stay up late too.” That one comment helped set the tone of cooperation and flexibility that came to characterize our relationships with the agents sworn to protect us. Bill, Chelsea and I have nothing but praise for their courage, integrity and professionalism, and we feel lucky to remain friends with many agents who protected us.

  Maggie Williams had agreed to help me at the end of the 1992 presidential campaign, but only if I understood that she would return to Philadelphia after the election to finish her Ph.D. at Penn. With the election over, I realized I needed her more than ever. I begged, pleaded, implored and hounded her to stay on through the transition, then to join the administration as my Chief of Staff.

  Our first job was to recruit other staffers, pick office space and learn the intricacies of the traditional First Lady duties. Since the Truman Administration, First Ladies and their staffs had operated entirely out of the East Wing, which houses two floors of office space, a large reception room for visitors, the White House movie theater and a long glass colonnade that runs along the edge of the East Garden that Lady Bird Johnson dedicated to Jackie Kennedy. Over the years, as First Ladies expanded their duties, their staffs grew bigger and more specialized. Jackie Kennedy was the first to have her own press secretary.

  Lady Bird Johnson organized her staff structure to reflect that of the West Wing.

  Rosalynn Carter’s staff director operated as a chief of staff and attended daily meetings with the President’s staff. Nancy Reagan increased the size and prominence of her staff within the White House.

  The West Wing is where the Oval Office is located, along with the Roosevelt Room, the Cabinet Room, the Situation Room (where top-secret meetings are held and communications are sent and received), the White House Mess (where meals are served) and offices housing the President’s senior staff. The rest of the White House staff work across a driveway in the Old Executive Office Building, or OEOB. No First Lady or her staff had ever had offices in the West Wing or the OEOB (which has since been renamed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building).

  Although the visitors office, personal correspondence and the social secretary would remain headquartered in the East Wing, some of my staff would be part of the West Wing team. I thought they should be integrated physically as well. Maggie made her case to Bill’s transition staff for the space we wanted in the West Wing, and the Office of the First Lady moved into a suite of rooms at the end of a long corridor on the first floor of the OEOB. I was assigned an office on the second floor of the West Wing just down the hall from the domestic policy staff. This was another unprecedented event in White House history and quickly became fodder for late night comedians and political pundits.

  One cartoon depicted the White House with an Oval Office rising from the roof of the second floor.

  Maggie assumed the title of Assistant to the President―her predecessors had been Deputy Assistants to the President―and each morning she attended the 7:30 A.M. senior staff meeting with the President’s top advisers. I also had a domestic policy staffer assigned to my office fulltime, as well as a presidential speechwriter designated to work on my speeches, especially those relating to health care reform. My staff of twenty included a Deputy Chief of Staff, press secretary, scheduler, travel director and compiler of my daily briefing book. Two of the original staff are still with me today: Pam Cicetti, an experienced executive assistant who became my all-purpose person, and Alice Pushkar, Director of the First Lady’s Correspondence, who assumed one of the most daunting of all jobs with poise and imagination.

  These physical and staff changes were important if I was going to be involved in working on Bill’s agenda, particularly as it related to issues affecting women, children and families. The people I hired were committed to the issues and to the idea that government could―and should―be a partner in creating opportunities for people who were willing to work hard and take responsibility. Most of them came out of the public sector or from organizations committed to improving economic, political and social conditions for the underrepresented and the underprivileged.

  Before long, my staff was recognized within the administration and by the press as active and influential, due in large part to the leadership of Maggie and Melanne Verveer, my Deputy Chief of Staff. Melanne and her husband, Phil, had been friends of Bill’s since their days at Georgetown University, and she was a longtime Democratic activist and experienced Washington hand. A true policy wonk who loves the complexities and nuances of issues, Melanne had worked for years on Capitol Hill and in the advocacy world. I used to joke that there wasn’t a single person in Washington she didn’t know.

  Not only was Melanne a legend in the nation’s capital; so was her Rolodex. At last count, it contained six thousand names. There is no way to catalog the many projects that Melanne masterminded, first as Deputy and then, in the second term, as my Chief of Staff. She also became a key player on the President’s team, advocating for policies affecting women, human rights, legal services and the arts.

  Soon my staff became known around the White House as “Hillaryland.” We were fully immersed in the daily operations of the West Wing, but we were also our own little subculture within the White House. My staff prided themselves on discretion, loyalty and camaraderie, and we had our own special ethos. While the West Wing had a tendency to leak, Hillaryland never did. While the President’s senior advisers jockeyed for big offices with proximity to the Oval Office, my senior staff happily shared offices with their young assistants. We had toys and crayons for children in our main conference room and every child who ever visited knew exactly where we stashed the cookies. One Christmas, Melanne ordered lapel buttons that read, in very small letters, HILLARYLAND, and she and I began handing out honorary memberships, usually to long-suffering spouses and children of my overworked staffers. Membership entitled them to visit anytime―and to come to all of our parties.

  The West Wing operation was up and running, but my East Wing duties were still giving me the jitters. Just ten days after the inauguration, Bill and I would be hosting our first big event, the National Governors Association annual dinner. Bill had been Chairman of the NGA, and many of those attending were colleagues and friends we had known for years. We wanted the dinner to come off well, and I was eager to dispel the notion, percolating in the news media, that I had little interest in the customary functions of the First Lady’s office, which included overseeing White House social events. I had enjoyed those responsibilities, carried out on a far less grand scale, as First Lady of Arkansas and looked forward to them now. But my staff and I needed guidance. I had been to White House dinners since 1977, when President and Mrs. Carter invited then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and his spouse to a dinner honoring Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada and his wife, Margaret. We had been back every year Bill was Governor for the very dinner I was now charged with planning. Attending the event as guests was a far cry from hosting it ourselves.

  I had the help of our new social secretary Ann Stock, an energetic woman of impeccable taste and style who had worked in the Carter White House and then as a top executive at Bloomingdale’s. Ann and I tried different combinations of linens and place settings before settling on the gold-and-red-rimmed china acquired by Mrs. Reagan. We worked on the seating arrangements, eager to ensure that our guests would be comfortable with their tablemates. We knew almost everyone and decided to mix them up on the basis of interests and personalities. I consulted with the White House florist, Nancy Clarke, as she arranged the tulips I had selected for each table. From that day on, Nancy’s cheerful stamina never ceased to amaze me.

  Every hour of life in the White House brought some new and unanticipated hurdle.