Our House Is Back
A visit to liberated territory.

By Kate O’Beirne
January 25, 2001 9:30 a.m.

y banishment is over, and maybe it is my imagination, but even the friendly Secret Service agents manning the Pennsylvania Avenue gates, greeting a different cast of visitors to the White House (that was Bob Novak!), seem pleased with the new regime. As soon as you enter the West Wing lobby and spot large color photographs of the new president and First Lady adorning the walls of adjacent hallways, there is no doubt you are in liberated territory. Further evidence appears when you note respectful young aides in suit jackets hurrying through the corridors, one of whom explains that photos from Saturday's Inaugural were in place by Monday morning.

The upbeat liberators are still working among packing boxes, and receiving calls on their Austin area-code cell phones, as they struggle to sort out the juvenile, destructive "pranks" the Clinton staff engaged in before vacating the premises. Some White House phones remain disabled owing to the confusion created by Clintonites who switched the face plates. The career veterans from the General Services Administration were reportedly shocked at the state of some offices in the Old Executive Office Building, where phone lines were cut and offices trashed with the contents of cabinets and draws thrown on the floors. In a particularly fitting legacy from their predecessors, Bush aides have found printers programmed to include pornographic pictures in their memos and reports.

The Clinton staff's lack of respect for their awesome new digs was evident from the beginning. Press accounts of Bill Clinton's early days in the White House portrayed the "college dorm" atmosphere created by aides in jeans, lounging with their feet on desks littered with soda cans and pizza boxes.

Now, the grown-ups are back in charge, with young White House assistants who might be expected to pull out knives and forks should a late-night pizza be delivered.