Oval Office

Just wondering if the Oval Office is oval so that the President can't be cornered. ALAN BLIZZARD Claremont

Watching Hillary Rodham Clinton's exit from the State Department is a little like watching the season-ending episode of a popular television series that may not come back the next year. As loyal as its viewers are, there are always wary network executives and even exhausted writers and producers who'd just as soon let it go. It's a good policy, after all, to leave your audience wanting more. Clinton's finale could hardly have been more dramatic. After falling ill with a stomach virus in early December, she fainted, sustained a concussion and landed in a hospital with a blood clot between her brain and skull.

While President Obama was on vacation, his West Wing office got a bit of a face-lift, complete with a new rug, fresh wallpaper and paint, and new furniture — all done at no taxpayer expense, according to the White House. The renovation of the Oval Office came 19 months after Obama first set foot inside as president, and represents "his stamp" on the room, the White House said. In making changes, the White House took pains to ensure that new additions were American-made.

The Oval Office isn't the place to learn on the job. That was the line from both Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain in 2008. In fairness, that's always the argument the more experienced candidate uses against the less experienced candidate (just ask Mitt Romney). But Barack Obama seemed a special case, easily among the least experienced major party nominees in U.S. history. A Pew poll in August 2008 found that the biggest concern voters had with Obama fell under the category of "personal abilities and experience.

THE BODY COUNT continues to mount in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military situation continues to deteriorate. On the home front, Democrats appear resurgent, and Republicans are bracing themselves for losses in November. If I were George W. Bush, I would have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. But if he is plagued by despair or doubt, he gave no sign of it in an Oval Office meeting last week with seven conservative columnists.

Most Americans do not want their children to be president, according to a Knight-Ridder newspaper poll. Many Americans consider the Oval Office a dreadful place to work and believe the president has less influence than journalists, judges, lawmakers and lobbyists, the Miami Herald reported. The poll surveyed 1,002 registered voters between Sept. 3 and 15. It found that 63% of respondents would not want their children to become president, while 32% said they would.

Goodby, muted blues and creamy couches. The President who took office promising change started right in the Oval Office, adding bold new colors, striking stripes and artwork rich in symbolism. The new look for the Oval Office, completed by an Arkansas designer under the direction of President Clinton, was formally unveiled Friday. "I like it a lot," he said, praising the results.

President Clinton and former Republican rival Bob Dole met Friday, making good on an election-night agreement to sit and chat. Meeting alone in the Oval Office, the two men talked for about an hour--a visit the president described as "fascinating and fun," White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters. Clinton and Dole "compared notes on the election, and probably agreed on how miserable their staffs were," McCurry joked.

A top official of the National Rifle Assn. who is also chairman of the Iowa Republican Party predicts that if George W. Bush wins in November the NRA will be right inside the Oval Office when it comes to influencing gun control policies and, moreover, will be able to count on "a Supreme Court that will back us to the hilt."

President Bush says the presidency is hard work and that the most important decisions are often not politically popular. Sen. John F. Kerry replies that the president is devious and stubborn, most notably and tragically when he is wrong. Both combatants should find comfort in "Decisions That Shook the World," a three-part Discovery Channel series that, starting tonight, dissects presidential decision-making at its most crucial and, at times, most devious and controversial.

By calling a halt to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, President Obama not only helps himself politically with two groups vital to his reelection - Latinos and young people - but also shows the advantage that comes with a seat in the Oval Office. So long as the economy struggles and joblessness stays persistently high, another four years will remain an iffy proposition for the Democratic incumbent. But unlike distractions that have dominated the presidential campaign in recent weeks - discussions of stay-at-home moms, the treatment of animals, Donald Trump and the president's birth certificate - Obama's order on immigration speaks to constituencies that could potentially swing half a dozen or so critical states in November.

"You will be our president when you read this note," George Herbert Walker Bush wrote to Bill Clinton, the man who defeated him in the 1992 campaign, denying Bush the provisional vindication that reelection provides until history has its chance to judge from a distance. Nonetheless, in Oval Office tradition, Bush left a note for Clinton to read on taking office, and it echoed the message of transitions past, even between bitter political rivals: "I am rooting hard for you. " Note the pronoun: You will be our president.

With ex-presidents earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees and book deals, a bipartisan effort is underway in Congress to scale back taxpayer support for well-to-do former occupants of the Oval Office.   The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act seeks to amend a half-century-old law that sought to "maintain the dignity” of the office of the president. The proposal would provide a taxpayer supported pension of $200,000, about the same amount that they now receive.

Ten months after resigning the presidency, three years after the botched burglary of a Washington building that had set his downfall in motion, Richard M. Nixon drove to the Coast Guard station in San Mateo, Calif., to meet with grand jurors and, for the only time, testified under oath about the Watergate affair. Nixon's testimony has remained locked out of sight ever since by grand jury confidentiality rules, a last, tantalizing secret from one of America's greatest political scandals.

"I think increasingly the American people are going to say to themselves, 'You know what? If a party or a politician is constantly taking the position my-way-or-the-highway, constantly being locked into ideologically rigid positions, that we're going to remember at the polls,'" President Obama said at his Friday news conference. I know everyone is sick of hearing about the debt-limit negotiations. Lord knows I am. When I turn on the news these days, I feel like one of the passengers seated next to Robert Hays in the movie "Airplane!"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly lectured President Obama on the shortcomings of his plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during a tense Oval Office appearance that laid bare the strained relations between the leaders. Admonishing a president of the United States on international television, Netanyahu rejected the plan outlined by Obama that would use the borders in effect before the 1967 Middle East War as the starting point for negotiations, saying that doing so would risk Israel's security and force it to negotiate with "a Palestinian version of Al Qaeda.

On Jan. 20, 1997, a bright but wintry Monday morning, regular CBS network television programming was preempted by Connie Chung-Gingrich, whose quickie Las Vegas divorce and Lucky 7-11 Chapel of Love wedding to a prominent legislator had recently astounded viewers and voters alike.

An Oval Office meeting Tuesday morning yielded no deal on a final budget resolution, raising the specter of a government shutdown at week's end. President Obama had called Tuesday's meeting in an effort to finalize a deal that Democrats have said was within reach but Republicans had yet to coalesce around. Participants included Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.)

One of the perennially fun things about following American politics is tracking the people who say they are not running for president. The fact is, somewhere around 310,767,362 Americans will not be running for president in 2012. Most of them will not bother making a formal announcement of what they are not going to do. Those who do run for president will make a formal announcement ? perhaps several to maximize free media coverage ? long after everyone already has figured out they are running.