Margaret Truman by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets, History of the World's Most Famous Home

of charm and a steady diet of information. One veteran newsman of the era described his approach: “He let the ‘boys’ do most of the talking and guessing but never allowed them to leave the White House with a wrong impression, or without thinking they had got all there was in the story.”
    By the time Cleveland returned to Washington for his second administration, he thought so highly of Daniel Lamont he appointed him secretary of war.
    V
    William Howard Taft was the first chief executive to work in the West Wing, setting up shop in the Oval Office that was built at his request. One of the most frequent visitors to the new office was Major Archie Butt, who had been Teddy Roosevelt’s military aide and continued in the job for Taft. Butt adored Roosevelt and his family and at first was underwhelmed by Taft, but he gradually became devoted to him.
    Two years before the end of his term as president, Roosevelt had chosen Taft, his secretary of war, as the best man to succeed him. As time went on, Roosevelt began cooling on Taft. Butt tried to bridge the gap between them. When Roosevelt returned from a postpresidential trip to Europe, Taft asked Butt to deliver a confidential letter, inviting Teddy to the White House for a frank talk. Roosevelt declined with a formal letter, in which he addressed Taft as “Dear Mr. President” instead of the usual “Dear Will.” The two men finally met while Taft was vacationing in Massachusetts. Butt, who joined them, reported that the conversation was strained and nothing was resolved.
    Meanwhile, Archie Butt slowly but steadily shifted his allegiance to Taft. It was a stressful time for the major. As chief military aide, he was in charge of White House receptions and dinners, of which there were many. He was also William Howard Taft’s sounding board as the president brooded over his former friend’s threat to run him out of his job.
    Finally came Teddy’s announcement that he would be a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1912—the break Butt had struggled in vain to prevent. The exhausted aide had scheduled a trip to Europe to visit a friend. Now he wondered if he should go.
    â€œI really can’t bear to leave him just now,” he wrote to an aunt. “I can see he hates to see me go, and I feel like a quitter in going.”
    The next morning, Butt canceled his reservations. When he told Taft, the president ordered him to reinstate them. A month’s rest would restore Butt to fighting trim, Taft assured him.
    So the weary aide sailed to Italy. Together, he and his friend traveled across Europe to England. There they decided to return home on the maiden voyage of the new luxury liner, the S.S. Titanic. On the night of April 14, 1912, the two men were last seen on the slanting deck, calmly awaiting the final plunge. They had given their life jackets to women passengers.
    President Taft was devastated by the news that Butt was among the dead. “He was like a member of my own family,” he said. “I feel as if he had been a younger brother.”
    VI
    Under Woodrow Wilson, the presidential secretary added another responsibility to his chores: congressional liaison. Wilson was fortunate enough to find the ideal man for the job—thirty-three-year-old Joseph Tumulty of Jersey City, New Jersey, a town where politics came close to being the major industry.
    Tumulty backed Wilson when he ran for governor of New Jersey in 1910, and gave the college professor a political education second to none. (Wilson later remarked that anyone who does not understand politics after playing the game for a year or two in the Garden State had better go into another line of work.) When Wilson headed for the White House in 1913, he took Tumulty with him. He trusted Tumulty’s political judgment completely. He let him decide whom he should see and whom he should duck. He also depended on Tumulty to cajole leaders of Congress into