The veil is lifted. We now know who is booked at Blair House, kicking President-elect Barack Obama and his family to the waiting list and across Lafayette Park to the Hay-Adams Hotel. The only overnight visitor at the presidential guest manse is none other than John Howard, a former Australian prime minister and leading member of President Bush’s coalition of the willing in Iraq. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. (Paul Miller/Associated Press) Howard and his entourage will be bunking at Blair House on Jan. 12, the night before he, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bush, said Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for first lady Laura Bush. The three current and former heads of state are longtime political allies of Bush, and Blair and Howard were key partners in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Blair and Uribe also were invited to stay at Blair House, but declined Bush’s invitation, a second White House official said today. Blair, who traditionally stays at the British Embassy, and Uribe apparently found other accommodations, said the second White House official, who spoke only on the […]
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
Blair House Mystery Solved: It’s John Howard
Author: PHIL RUCKER and AL KAMEN
Source: Washington Post
Publication Date: 6-Jan-09
Link: Blair House Mystery Solved: It’s John Howard
Source: Washington Post
Publication Date: 6-Jan-09
Link: Blair House Mystery Solved: It’s John Howard
Stephan: Even in its final days, with its final gestures the Bush Administration, reveals the spite that is so much its measure.
The Blair House is not a single home, but a complex of over 100 rooms, dozens of bathrooms, a florist, an apearance salon, and a host of other services. This story tells us why the Obamas could not stay at Blair House, and why the taxpayers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the Hay-Adams Presidentially secure; at the quality-of-life cost of discommoding tens of thousands of Washingtonians, and visitors.
What amazes me is that no one in the Bush Administration recognized that the response to the Obamas was so crass it instantly became part of the historic narrative - the antipode to Dolly Madison taking the Washington portrait with her to save it, when the British fired the White House. It will be cited again and again. We historians love this stuff, and keep it alive.
