U.S.

Honoring 2 Centuries Of Leadership

November 9, 2000 / 7:19 PM EST / CBS/AP

Three former presidents and four former first ladies joined President and Mrs. Clinton at the White House on Thursday night to celebrate the mansion's two centuries as a symbol of leadership and continuity.

The four presidents toasted 200 years of White House history as the executive mansion buzzed over an election that's still so close that no one know who the next residents will be.

The formal dinner honored the building's history and the 40 presidents who have lived there — both of which have been celebrated earlier this year — but much of the attention was focused on three of its recent occupants:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York's senator-elect and the only first lady to win high elected office used the occasion to show off a new, 300-place setting of Lenox china, the first to feature the White House itself in the center of a gold-edged plate.
George and Barbara Bush, who have a keen family interest in the outcome of the still unsettled presidential election. Their eldest son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and Vice President Al Gore, are locked in an unpredictable Florida recount for the final votes needed to decide the next White House tenant.

In his speech during the dinner, President Clinton said, "We Americans should take great pride in the fact that this contest was fought to a close conclusion," He also said,"It is not a symbol of the divisions of our nations but(of) the vitality of our debate. And it will be resolved in a way consistent with the vitality of our enduring Constitution and laws."

Mr. Clinton told a reporter at the dinner's close that he had chatted with President Bush about his son and the role he played in the presidential race.

"I told him I knew he was pround of his son and I said that whatever happens he ran a great campaign," Clinton said.

"Whatever happens this time, my pride and Barbara's pride knows no bounds," Bush said in his speech. "Moreover, our democracy will go on...and the new president will become part of the contuum of service that sets our nation and this building apart."

Other honored dinner guests include former President Gerald R. Ford and his wife, Betty; former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn; and former first lady Lady Bird Johnson. Of the nation's living former presidents, only Ronald Reagan, afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, was unable to attend.

President Carter called the unresolved election "an unaccustomed event for Americans."

"But I think all of us should remember that our system will prevail, that our nation is so great, so strong and the tradition is so embedded in the consciousness of all leaders here that we will survive present uncertainty about the outcome of the election," Carter said.

"I think we all have been following it; it's going to be a fascnating process," said Benjamin Adams. He is the seventh-generation grandson of John Adams, the first president to live in the White House, and a sixth generation descendant of President John Quincy Adams.

Mrs. Clinton, slipping from her 16-month Senate campaign into her role as first lady, told reporters that the new china is the product of a two-year design effort in which she took an active role. The china is a gift to the executive mansion from the White House Historical Association, which raised $240,000 from private donations.

The East Room had a head table for the Clintons, former presidential couples and Mrs. Johnson and round tables for the rest of the 190 guests.

The dinner menu, the selection of deserts and the wine list were an attempt to match the tastes enjoyed by White House guests in the age of John Adams and his successor, Thomas Jefferson, some two centuries ago.

When the Adamses arrived in Washington on November 1800, the city was a dispirited landscape of tree stumps, rutted muddy roads, construction debris and only a few new buildings. The President's House, as it was called for decades, was chilly, damp and uncomfortable.

"Our nation was new, carving out the symbols that would define it," Mr. Clinton said last week in a South Lawn ceremony celebrating Adams' arrival. "Two hundred years later, these walls carry the story of America."