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Washington
Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital by Christopher Buckley Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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The Two Schlep I’ve been a fan of Christopher Buckley’s
writing for a long time. We can count on him for great humor and outstanding
satire. Readers of his latest offering, Washington
Schlepped Here, won’t be disappointed. In fact, readers are rewarded with
both finely written humor, and some accurate and perceptive historical
narrative. Here’s an excerpt from one of the strolls through Washington, DC
presented in this small book (pp. 120-124): EISENHOWER EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING The
second Bush administration renamed the OEOB the Eisenhower Executive Office
Building, which to my mind is a bit much, since in 1957 Ike's administration
wanted to tear the building down and put up a ghastly modern replacement. The
Kennedy crew put a stop to that, thank heavens, as well as to plans to tear
down an entire row of historic houses on Lafayette Square. Twenty years
later, Mrs. Kennedy would play a significant role in stopping the tearing
down of another American Beauty, New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The
OEOB—which I still insist on calling it—is my favorite building in
Washington. It's a gaudy old pile, to be sure. Technically, it's French
Second Empire, but it's been called other things: Victorian wedding cake,
"the greatest monstrosity in America" (by Harry Truman), "Mr.
Mullett's architectural infant
asylum" (Henry Adams). Me, I
calls it grand. It
looks a bit like the Denon Pavilion of the Louvre in Paris, only more so.
When it was finished in 1888, at the height of the Gilded Age, it was the
Pentagon of its day, the world's largest office building, with two miles of
corridors, 556 rooms, and 900 columns. According to Applewhite, those 26
concrete Grecian urn-type flowerpots you see were added by Army Captain
Douglas MacArthur when he was superintendent of the building in 1913. You
don't usually think of "MacArthur" and "flowerpots" in
the same sentence, do you? This
is where my office was, in a room with a majestic view of—an interior
courtyard parking lot. Into the bargain, it was being resurfaced. Being a
U.S. government project, this took 18 months, so my enduring memory of my
days of power and glory is the sound of jackhammers and a window-unit air conditioner
that raided and dripped onto the shag rug next to my electric typerwriter. I'm
sure there's a plaque up on Room 205 to commemorate my historic tenure, but
the OEOB is possibly better known for having provided office space for 25
secretaries of state, including John Hay, William Jennings Bryan, Coidell
Hull, and George C. Marshall; and for 21 secretaries of war, including Robert
Todd Lincoln andHenry Stimson. Since
Lyndon Johnson's time, vice presidents of the United States have had an
office on the second floor overlooking the West Wing of the White House. Vice
President Walter Mondale nicknamed the OEOB "Baltimore" because it
was so remote from the real power, that is, about a hundred feet away in the
West Wing. The VP's office was renovated while I worked here, and after
painstaking work was restored to the glory it enjoyed when it had been the
office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and later.
General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing. A poor Secret Service agent
had to sit there every day for nearly a year while the workmen
labored, to make sure they didn't plant any bugs. Even
after two years of going into that office, I never lost my awe of the place.
Mr. Bush's desk had been used by all the vice presidents, and before they
left office it was the custom for them to write their names in the drawer.
Mr. Bush would show it to visitors. In staff meetings, Mr. Bush would sit in
an armchair and didn't mind if one of us sat in his desk chair. I never
dared, but one time someone who did accidentally touched an alarm button with
his knees and the Secret Service came rushing in through three doors. There's
history in every square foot of the Old Exec. It was originally called the
State, War and Navy Building. You could tell from the emblem on the
doorknobs—eagle, crest, anchor—what wing you were in. You'd be in some boring
meeting with the deputy assistant for whatever and someone would say,
"Wasn't this Hull's office?" and it would turn out that sure
enough, it was right here that he summoned the Japanese envoys Nomura and Korusu on December 7,
1941, and tore them new orifices. Or you'd be in another boring meeting and
that office would turn out to have been Nixon's hideaway, where he went to
get away and to scribble his endless, endless memos to Haldeman and
Ehriichman on yellow legal pads. The
two miles of corridors are tiled in black and white and if you look down as
you walk, you'll see little fossils embedded in them. My girifriend at the
time also worked in the building and I still remember the sound of her high
heels approaching my office door. It
was in the basement of the OEOB that new staffers who traveled with their
principal got a briefing by the Secret Service on how to stay alive. This was
just after Hinckley
shot President Reagan and crippled Jim Brady for life, so we did pay
attention. Basically, the briefing consisted of home assassination movies,
with expert narration. We saw the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination,
backward and forward, in slow motion; saw Arthur Bremer unloading his pistol
into George Wallace, paralyzing him for life. The one I remember most vividly
was of an attempt on President Park Chung Hee of South Korea. He's giving a
speech, surrounded by security men. Someone runs down the aisle, pulls out a
pistol, and begins blazing away. President Park coolly ducks behind the
podium, while a fierce gun battle ensues. Then one of his security guards
takes cover onstage—behind Mrs. Park. And surprise, she's killed. I thought
it was an interesting career move on the security man's part. The Secret Service agent narrating
this tragic Keystone Kop drama observed, " We don't do it this
way." When
the lights went up, the basement room was very quiet. The agent said,
"If something happens, you basically have two choices: duck, or take the
round." I said, “What was the first choice again?" Fond as I already was of Mr. Bush,
I was pretty sure that if it came to that, I would opt for Option One. The
OEOB was the creation of an English immigrant architect named Alfred B. Mullett.
Poor old Mullett worked 17 years building his masterpiece only to end up
suing the government. He felt overworked and underpaid. The government said.
Get lost, and Mullet shot himself. His ghost is supposed to wander the two
miles of corridors, but I never saw it, even though I spent many late nights
in the place. Let's
rejoin Tony by the statue of Andrew Jackson. You can't miss it: it's smack in
the middle of. . . LAFAYETTE PARK Buckley delivers an insider’s point of
view, a fan’s enthusiasm, and a humorist’s élan. I have several disclosures
that may influence how you receive this review. First, Buckley and I lived a
few blocks apart in DC from 1997 through 2000. No walking tours of that
neighborhood are included in that book because he knows the neighbors are fed
up enough with tourist traffic. Besides, he can hear and smell the tour buses
idling outside Washington Cathedral from his home office. There were times we
banged grocery carts together in the neighborhood gourmet hangout. If that
constitutes inappropriate conduct for a reviewer, take my comments with a
grain of salt. Very pricey salt. I walked by his house regularly and noted
when the lights were on in his writing warren. Unless it was cool, he wasn’t
writing at home. I share Buckley’s favoritism of the OEOB (which I fondly
recall as the State, War and Navy building), so that probably influenced my
rating. One day, he and I were drinking at the watering hole where the
British soldiers drank after they burned the White House. The site was the
same, not the bar. He described the burning in the book, but not the
drinking. With these disclosures off my chest, I can now recommend Washington
Schlepped Here, and you know from whence I come and go. Steve Hopkins, May 27, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the June 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Washington
Schlepped Here.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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