“The White House is the finest prison in the world.” Harry S Truman.
The White House Paradox
The White House, or the Executive Mansion, is undoubtedly the finest residence the country has to offer the President of the United States, whoever it is. It is a beautiful structure and magnificently maintained. It is rent-free to the POTUS and family with numerous perks. It is finely furnished. Any repairs are undertaken by the “country.” A multitude of staff polish, dust, sweep, wash and provide the meals, laundry services and personal attention. A President and/or First Lady never has to wash a dish or iron a shirt. (And this doesn’t even count the administrative staff!) Walking distance to the office.
Forty-five Presidents and their families called it home, at least for a while. (George Washington never got to live there, although he helped supervise its construction.)
No matter how some of our early POTUSES demurred, they all wanted the position, and certainly deemed it a huge honor and responsibility. Of the first 34 (not counting GW, nor going beyond Eisenhower, and acknowledging the numerical confusion via Grover Cleveland), 11 re-upped for a second term. Two more (Lincoln and McKinley) were elected to a second, but incomplete term. Seven ran again – and lost. Three others (Van Buren, Fillmore and Theodore Roosevelt) wanted it so badly that they ran again – on a third party ticket. They still lost.
A few others, like John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant and even seriously ailing Chester A. Arthur wanted it but were denied their party’s nomination.
Only James K. Polk, James Buchanan and Rutherford B. Hayes willingly said “sayonara” and rode off quietly into the sunset.
Ergo, no matter what was later said, just about all of the above (and those who followed Ike), liked living there.
But once in residence, most of them looked upon the place as a metaphor for the burdens of the Presidency.
The Early Fellows: In Their Own Words
The illustrious George Washington couldn’t wait for his retirement back to Mount Vernon, commenting, I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree … and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.
Martha Washington, who never lived there but spent eight years in NY and Philadelphia’s temporary Executive Mansions, said …Indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else.
John Adams wrote documenting the departing George Washington’s comments as “Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest.” John Adams may have thought those exact words when he left the keys to the house for Thomas Jefferson.
Even later, ol’ John wrote his son, “No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.” His son obviously agreed: The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency. – J.Q. Adams
And Jefferson, upon leaving the Executive Mansion wrote a friend, “I am now at that period of life when tranquility, and a retirement from the passions which disturb it, constitute the summum bonum.”
His good friend and later successor, James Monroe claimed “I shall . . . be happy when I can retire beyond their reach in peace to my farm.”
Andrew Jackson, the born-for-storm fellow, conceded, “You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessings.“
Some Later Words of Exhaustion
James K. Polk: “I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign.” (Actually a dead sovereign, since he only lived a few months after leaving the WH.)
Outgoing President James Buchanan told his successor, Abraham Lincoln: “If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning to Wheatland, you are the happiest man in this country.”
Ulysses S. Grant had mixed feelings. “Cheap cigars come in handy; they stifle the odor of cheap politicians.” But FLOTUS Julia Grant LOVED the White House, and cried when she left. “Oh, Ulys, I feel like such a waif.”
One of the most unlikely POTUSes, Chester Alan Arthur did not mince words. “You have no idea how depressing and fatiguing it is to live in the same house where you work.” And, at the end of his term, he is quoted (maybe) as remarking…“there doesn’t seem anything else for an ex-President to do but to go into the country and raise big pumpkins.”
On the day Grover Cleveland left the White House, defeated after his first term, his wife, First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland told the staff: “I want you to take good care of everything… I want to find everything just as it is now when we move back in exactly four years from today.” Grover Cleveland said nothing, at least not for the record. They mostly lived in a private house in Washington where he could have some privacy.
And Coolidge really meant he did not choose to run. “Ten years in Washington is longer than any other man has had it—too long!”
And Even Unto Today
“We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living…” – Jimmy Carter
“From the moment I walked into the White House, it was as if I had no privacy at all.” – Nancy Reagan
“I really loved living in the White House, but I don’t miss it at all.” – Barbara Bush
And finally…. No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House. – Author/columnist Maureen Dowd
Sources:
Dunlap, Annette – FRANK: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland, America’s Youngest First Lady – Excelsior Editions, 2009
Grant, Julia Dent – The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant: (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant) – 1975, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/white-house-quotes
https://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/1590
https://www.azquotes.com/author/15324-George_Washington
