Look who’s coming to lunch. The old guy who flopped as a president, triumphed as an ex-president and has become the conscience of the nation, maybe the world. The presidential father, who created maybe the broadest international military coalition in history, beat Iraq but spared Saddam Hussein. The big dog we call Bubba, who presided over (mostly) peace and (mostly) prosperity and who married well. The current commander-in-chief, with low approval ratings but a high sense of duty — history will reward him for this — when it comes to the transfer of power. And the new guy.
Marking a birth, not a funeral
That will be one heck of a session on Wednesday, a dejeuner for destiny. Five presidents in one place, and the extraordinary thing will be that it’s not for a funeral but for the birth of a new administration. A great moment, an American moment, one of high hopes during a period of low spirits, one of good wishes during a period of bad news.
They are coming together in the house whose heritage they share at the invitation of George W. Bush to honor, warn, counsel and commiserate with Barack Obama. The occasion is reminiscent of a somber moment the day Franklin Roosevelt died. Harry Truman asked Eleanor Roosevelt if there was anything he could do for her. “Is there anything we can do for you?” she responded. “For you are the one who is in trouble now.”
All our troubles soon will become Obama’s, and only four people on Earth know and understand that burden.
Presidential gatherings are rare and rarified. Presidents don’t just drop in for lunch with other presidents, so there are few opportunities for spontaneous meetings like the time, in 1888, when Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Grieg all just happened to be at the same party in Leipzig. (How could Rimsky-Korsakov have been left out? Must have been busy that night.)
The protocol for presidential funerals — and five presidents were at President Ronald Reagan’s funeral, which is likely to serve as a model for future such events — is formal and predictable. But there is no protocol for lunch. So Wednesday’s proceedings, and the direction of the conversation, are likely to be free-form, befitting five men who personify Lord Beaverbrook’s assessment of David Lloyd George: “He did not seem to care which way he traveled, providing he was in the driver’s seat.”
Obstacles to avoid
Before long, only one of the men at the presidential lunch will be in the driver’s seat, and it will matter a great deal which way he travels, for he will not travel alone. The other four will know what obstacles to avoid, though they may be chary of mentioning them: Don’t be surprised by volatility in Iran (Jimmy Carter); don’t ever neglect the economy (George H.W. Bush); don’t be distracted by your own bad habits (Bill Clinton); don’t let what you want to do overtake what the circumstances say you must, or must not, do (George W. Bush). Presidents are like regular people, only more so. They don’t like to dwell on their errors.
But they also are like regular people in thinking their own experience, and their own successes, have relevance for the future. So Obama may hear a lot about the prospects of reconciliation in the Middle East (Carter and Clinton), the benefits of building broad international coalitions (Bush 41) and the advantages of single-party rule (Bush 43). Obama is respectful of his elders, and of history, but he also knows that he got invited to this lunch because he didn’t defer to his elders and because he was willing to defy history.
Obama knows, too, that there is something to learn from each of the presidents in the room, and of course from the many who have been in the White House before him.
All can offer lessons
From Carter, the new president can learn the persistence of the energy challenge (lesson learned with high cost), the importance of personal relationships on Capitol Hill (lesson learned too late), the eternal appeal but frequent futility of trying to impose American values abroad (lesson never learned), and the resilience of the Washington establishment (lesson learned by others, as well — so much so that Reagan would have had the same saucy stories to add in this regard, after Washington was the target of his attacks in 1980).
From the senior Bush, the new president can learn the importance of the gentle, personal touch, the enduring value of behaving with decency and chivalry, the dividends of humility, and the dangers posed by leaning too far in one realm of the presidency (foreign policy) and too little in the other (domestic affairs).
From Clinton, the new president can learn the value of passionate engagement in every aspect of the presidency, the use of the bully pulpit to affirm important American ideals such as diversity, the sheer delight in setting the nation’s conversation and the formidable danger of presidential overexposure.
It will be harder for Obama to learn much from the current President Bush, in part because the president-elect ran for office to repudiate much of the Bush administration, in part because the current president’s approval ratings are so low that any Obama policy that carries the aroma of a Bush policy will be in bad odor with the American people.
But Obama ought to remember the grace it took for Bush to convene this meeting. Obama and Bush have an important characteristic in common — each someday will be a former president, and each will appreciate a little grace and respect from his successors — that and the mercy of history.
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