I always thought this was funny - Bush Clean-up Team Scrubs Clinton Stains From Oval Office
As one of his first acts as president of the United States, George W. Bush ordered a top-to-bottom scrub-down of the Oval Office complex where his predecessor carried on a messy affair with a 23-year-old White House intern.
Bush had a "SWAT team" of two dozen cleaners scour his future workplace, beginning just four minutes after he took the oath of office, the New York Daily News reported Sunday.
From 1995 through 1997 Monica Lewinsky and ex-President Clinton had sex in the hallway and annex just outside the Oval Office door and often left behind towels stained with lipstick and other substances for White House stewards to clean.
Even one of the president's naval valets, who had been summoned before the Starr grand jury, testified he and other attendants feared picking up tissues found around the Oval Office because of the presidential stains.
Other testimony indicated that Clinton sometimes used adjacent offices (Nancy Heinrich's comes to mind) and the Oval Office sink to finish the encounters in a satisfactory manner.
During a campaign appearance on "The Late Show" with David Letterman last fall, Bush joked that a post-Clinton office scrubbing would be a top priority - but never gave a hint that he actually intended to do it.
Besides the removal of whatever physical stains Clinton left behind, Bush ordered an immediate revamping of his office's decor - including the removal of almost every artifact from the Clinton era.
Among the items swept away by the Bush clean-up SWAT Team: Clinton's gold damask Oval Office drapes, his gaudy royal blue floor rug and couches upholstered in glitzy cherry red and cream silk.
Bush had movers resurrect the more elegant ivory and beige terra-cotta carpeting favored by Ronald Reagan and installed more sedate furniture.
The two dozen direct-call phone lines ordered by Clinton during his first week in the White House (a feature that allowed him to call Lewinsky for phone sex without detection by White House operators) have also been replaced.
The new president will have instead direct telephone links to his wife, Laura, Vice President Cheney and other senior White House staffers.
"By day's end, there was little to suggest Bill Clinton had ever been [in the Oval Office]," reported the News. |
