May 27, 2009 • 22 mins
When a person becomes the president, he or she is entitled to a 400k salary, as well as a hefty expense account -- and the benefits don't stop there! Learn more about the perks of being president in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor kandas Keener, joined by staff writer Jane mccreant. Hey. There,
candas Hey, Jane. I wanted to bring our listeners up
(00:21):
to speed about a special fact about you they might
not be aware of. And that's that's in addition to
being a very fabulous history writer, Jane is also the
website's resident money writer, and so she wrote this article
that's technically for our money channel of the website, but
it has such strong history overtones or undertones, I'm not
(00:44):
sure anyway to lose very strongly to history in fact
that we thought you all might be interested in, so
we decided to hijack it and presented to you today. Yeah,
it's a really cool subject and pretty fun because it's
it's fun to imagine what life would be like as
a president, you know, even though they have probably the
most stressful job in the world. It's uh, it's really
fascinating to delve into all of these special perks and
(01:06):
and extras that they get just by virtue of being
the chief executive in the United States. And it's pretty
controversial some of these big financial perks that the president gets, because,
as you know, if you've been keeping up with the news,
the Obama administration has really been cracking down on people
from Wall Street and perks that people in the financial
sector have been getting, and many of them have been
(01:29):
uh lashing back at the president and saying, you know,
you get a lot of perks too, and what's more,
yours are tax free. So who are you to say
what we can and cannot have? You know, you can
have to salary. The president's salary is capped by nature
of you know, the law, but he gets plenty of
things on the side that has some people pretty worked up.
He doesn't even need a salary for all these other
(01:50):
things that he gets. And to presidents in history have
actually refused salary. Do you know who they are? George
Washington and DFK. I mean JFK attends of family money.
So that's true, understand, But George Washington, that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah,
So I guess I'd kick it off with the White House,
which is probably the most obvious of the presidential perks.
All in all, there's about a hundred and thirty two
(02:11):
rooms in the residential White House and in thirty five bathrooms.
In addition to the standards of the swimming pool and
the tennis chords and basketball courts, you've got the jogging
track and the punning green, which just owns so much fun.
And yeah, the real estate ad really writes itself, but
it's off the market, you guys. And in addition to UM,
(02:32):
the pursuits for active presidents and first families, if you're
a little bit more sedentary, well, uh, that's working in
your favorite too, because there are at least five chefs
in the White House, including a full time pastry chef.
And if you are an appreciator of fine arts, you'd
be happy to know that the President can request different
works of art to be brought in from the National
(02:54):
Gallery on loan. And I actually have a personal anecdote
about this. Um. You may not be surprised to know
that I have people and I got to go on
a very behind the scenes tour of the White House
a couple of years ago, during which I saw the
White House Kitten, which is much much smaller than you
may have thought. Yeah, I've seen pictures. Actually it did
seem small from the picture day. And I saw the
(03:14):
florist and I got to meet the resident flourish there
as well as George Bush's cat. That was pretty cool.
And um, the point of the story is about works
of art because my source told me that during the
Clinton administration, Hillary Radham Clinton was a very active art
enthusiast and she very much enjoyed swopping out the different
(03:36):
works of art. And one time she wanted a very
heavy and unwieldy piece of sculpture brought into one of
the gardens and it was a huge production to get
this thing put down safely. And of course the curator
was there, you know, fretting back and forth the whole
time that something would happen. But it was put into place,
and I think it was taken out undamaged, unscathed. So
funny story about that. Only if you are president and
(03:56):
first lady can you command a huge, unwieldy piece of
sculpture to be put And yeah, that's awesome. And that's
in addition to the super expensive fancy furniture that they
get it as well. Right, Yeah, in the White House
they get a hundred thousand dollars to redecorate the White House.
And as you may know from reading my blog. The
Obama is elected not to take that and to use
(04:17):
their own money to redecorate. But in addition to that money,
the president also gets to choose from an array of
historical desks that have been used by other presidents. So
you know, for instance, someone could use the desk that
Lincoln had years Yeah, I think about all the historical
documents that were signed on that thing, all the different
speeches written, Emancipatient Proclamation and um all manner of rugs.
(04:42):
I heard that the rugs are just stacked right on
top of each other, and they're so heavy they have
to get huge machines and to lift them up. So
that there recently about changes that Obama made, especially the
Oval Office. I guess he took out a bust of
Winston Churchill and he did he bring in a new uggers.
I remember talking about the rugs and in the Oval
Office there's some talk about that. But in terms of money, uh,
(05:07):
you mentioned the floor is the flowers alone? One source
I found said that they cost about more more than
two hundred and fifty thousand per year. That's wild. Yeah,
and upkeep alone for the entire White House is about
four million a year. So it's a it's a sweet
pad they've got there. It definitely is. So if you've
got a great house, the next obvious park would be
(05:30):
great modes plural of transportation. We're talking about the presidential limo,
the two Boeing seven forty seven's air Force one and
Marine one. Yeah, and air Force one. It's kind of
weird because technically whatever plane the president is on is
referred to as air Force one as the radio call name.
(05:51):
But you know, in common parlance, you know, we talk
about our Force one specifically talking about these really awesome planes,
the Boeing seven three sevens that you mentioned, and there
are two of them actually, and I think sometimes when
they take when they take the president out, one acts
like a decoy, partly to carry cargo and partly to
carry staff, which that kind of sucks to be a
decoy and to be flying on a decoy as a
(06:15):
as a staff member. But anyway, the Air Force one
plane that we're talking about carry up to seven d passengers,
which is not including the twenty six person crew. And uh,
there are areas special areas for the staff, even media
and security of course, and president has his own workout room,
isn't that nice wild yeah. Um, in addition to a
(06:36):
really nice office and bathroom and bedroom even can you
imagine having a bedroom on a plane this awesome? Um,
and like is really really excited about this. I think
to your presidential perks is that medieval tortures. Today we
both have our own little areas of fancy only four cents.
I'm sorry, UM, so you have say this is what
(06:57):
we're talking about. The middle level level of the plan.
There's actually malt will levels. The upper level you have
the cockpit, the telecommunications um center, and on the bottom
levels for cargo. But you don't really need a whole
lot of space for cargo because there are other special
planes c one one Star lifter cargo planes that carry
(07:17):
actually the motorcade of the president, and they send the limos,
the armored limos to wherever the president is headed, including
places like Perk number three, Camp David, which is the
super private getaway of the president. And when it was
originally built, I think it cost only what dollars to
belt so much, but it's been renovated so much and
(07:40):
it's such a nice relaxing place. And it's the fact
that it's ultra scure, like it's got super super um
strong security and ultra clothes. It's only an hour's drive
from d C. Not that he needs to drive, though
he takes he takes the helicopter. The helicopter. And it
was renamed Camp David during the I and Howard administration,
(08:01):
and that was after his grandson, which I think is
incredibly straight. That's that's really cute. But I don't know.
I like the first name law named after the Tibetan
utopia in the book Lost to Horizon and am right.
That's right. Um. It's got eleven different cabins, a pool,
its own skeet shooting range, and its own private office
(08:24):
cabin so the president can get some work done. So
even though it's kind of a relaxing place to go there,
it's still a place of business. And you probably remember it, um.
It's most known for when President Carter used Camp David
as a place for peace talks between the Egyptian president
and the Israeli Prime minister in seventy eight. And what's
interesting about Camp David is that, unlike the White House
(08:46):
you mentioned, you had a behind the scenes tour of that.
That's that's awesome. But Camp David is completely closed to
the public. Like, well, I hate to break it to you,
but now you're right, okay. I was like, oh, I
read authority, So yeah, this it's weird that, unlike the
White House, it's closed the public. It's even more secure
than the White House in that way. And it's nice
(09:06):
also because it's on top of a mountain, and so
growing up in d C. I know how hot that
city can get, and so you have much I think
about ten degrees cooler temperatures up up on top of
that mountain at Camp David. And in addition to all
of these wonderful perks that the president gets to enjoy
while he's in office, other little ones being things like
having your family around the office. You know they live there.
(09:29):
It's also your office. It's nice you know, your your
kids come in and just say, hey, Dad, how's it going. Yeah,
I know. I like working from home, flexible work hours.
As we know during the George W. Bush administration, he
liked to get in early, take a little break to
go work out, and then come back. And I think
Reagan was pretty famous for actually taking naps during the
work day, which is a luxury we do not have
(09:49):
yet around the house. Stuff works office, but fingers crossed,
you also get I smell a petition, you get free
soda from Pepsi and Coke, and like I mentioned before,
a complimentary emine isn't that nice. So in addition to
all these little perks you get while you're in office,
you may be happy to know too that the president
is taken care of after he leaves office. And since
(10:11):
ninety eight, all presidents have gotten a pension. And this
is particularly happy news for people like poor Thomas Jefferson, who,
as you may recall from the Monticello podcast, actually died
more than one hundred thousand dollars in debt, and he
would have been in luck had he had a much
later administration, because as of March two thousand eight, the
(10:31):
pension was one thousand, three hundred dollars annually, not too shabby.
In addition to a staff, an office, office supplies, and
Janie you pointed out the ex presidents also get phone services. Yeah. Yeah,
they get all the extra perks for for their office. Um.
And it's interesting you mentioned Thomas Jefferson because back when
(10:54):
one was researching first Ladies Um Dolly medicine, actually died
pretty poor. Because I think one of her relatives after
after James Madison died, after her relatives kind of squandered
her money and and she died pretty poor. Which is
now widows are more or less taken care of as
well if they want to be. It's interesting the wives
(11:15):
or the spouses of ex presidents also get benefits. They
they get a pension if they want to. But a
caveat to that is that they have to waive the
right to any annuity or pension under any other legislation.
And um really uh this became um an issue for
Nancy Reagan and Betty four. They didn't want to waive
(11:35):
this right, so they actually didn't get that pension. But
um lb J's widow did until she died just recently
in two thousand seven. UM. And what's interesting, um. Another
point about the wives of ex presidents is Hillary Clinton
is an interesting situation because she's in addition to being
a spouse of a former president, she's a senator now
or she just was um before being Secretary of State.
(11:59):
She while she was senator got protection shared by the
US Capital Police, who usually handle the senators, and the
Secret Service, who usually handled the spouses of ex presidents.
So it's just interesting to see how widows are handled,
especially when they take on more roles. And you think
that this may be superfluous, but our country has no monarchy.
(12:20):
We obviously have no royal members of a family to
take care of, and the president and his wife would
be the closest thing to royalty that we have. And
to consider how much a president, even an unpopular president,
puts into his office, you wouldn't want to think of
him or his widow living in squalor. Yeah, that's true,
(12:41):
and you want them to be able to focus, you know,
on the job that they were hired to do. And
what's more, even after the President and the First Lady
leave the White House, their names continue to carry a
lot of power, and as we mentioned in the First
Lady podcast, they can attach their names to many different
causes and really continue to make a difference out of office.
And President Jimmy Carter even famously said that he's made
(13:03):
a bigger difference out of office than he ever did
as president. And if you don't know, uh, Jimmy Carter
and Roslin Carter are very active at the Carter Center
and they're still working very hard as philanthropists and making
people aware of different UH causes around the world, like
like free voting rights and UM Guinea warm eradication. So
it's important that the president is given the tools that
(13:24):
he needs to continue his work. Definitely. And another interesting
part about being a former president is that they usually
get a presidential library. UM, and every president except for
Nixon since Herbert Hoover has gotten his own library, and
recently George W. Bush has gotten some press because he's
made UM a lot of money really quickly. And UM
he made more than a hundred million for the library
(13:47):
in the first one hundred days after after he left office,
which is you know, a record setting pays and his
library scheduled to open. UH. So you have this library
which is raised by private phone, but the archivist actually
gives the president's official records and papers over to this
library and manages it for him or her. One interesting
(14:09):
thing that I found researching the retirement perks is, like
you mentioned, Candice, this didn't start the form presidents and
start getting UH perks until nineteen fifty eight. And back
in nineteen twelve there was talk about giving them perks
because Andrew Carnegie actually said that he wanted to start
giving a pension to these former presidents, which sounds really nice,
(14:31):
but Congress found this kind of inappropriate coming from a
private donor. Yeah, you can see a sort of um,
you know, mixed motivations there, maybe, but um So Congress
was like, no, we don't want that, and so they
introduced legislation to start giving them a pension, but that died,
so they weren't ready to do it either. So unfortunately
(14:53):
it went another about four decades. Finally in the fifties,
poor Truman was suffering. He's struggling to pay and higher staff,
so Congress finally passed that legislation in fifty eight, thank goodness.
And another perk, if you can call it a perk,
is that when former presidents die, their funerals are paid
for and they get a very grand state funeral, which
(15:15):
at least takes the burden off of the family dies,
which is very important. And prior to their deaths, they
receive medical treatment at military hospitals, and they continue to
have security parks throughout their golden years. So as you
can see, there are definitely a lot of advantages to
being president of the United States. You get the four
thousand dollar year salary, your hundred thousand dollars in expenses
(15:38):
and a very hefty entertainment account that is renewed annually.
But I believe that whatever you don't knew that the
end of the year goes back into the funds. So
what is there not to love about being presidents? Well,
for one, you become a little out of touch with
the world sometimes, I thinks, of course, depends on the president.
(15:58):
I think some presidents are more in touch than others.
Although I will say I don't believe Bill Clinton jogged
McDonald's too much towards the end of this time. I
think that was just in the very beginning. But um
And Rogers, who was Deputy Assistant to the President and
executive Assistant to the White House Chief of Staff during
the George H. W. Bush administration, told a little anecdote
(16:20):
about going to McDonald's once when he was traveling with
Ronald Reagan and apparently someone gave Reagan a fifty dollar
bill to pay for lunch, and Ed Rogers said, if
he looked like you didn't know what to do with it, really,
And if you're president and you have this expense account
and everything is being done for you, I can imagine
that you know, things like that would be unsettling when
you're a common person again or you're thrust into the world. Um,
(16:43):
but presidents do you have to pay for stuff. They
may have white house chefs, but presidents have to pay
for the groceries. They have to pay for their personal
care items. So you can request anything you want cooked.
But if you haven't actually footed the bill at the
grocery store, it's not going to happen. And and other
downside to being president, the anti perks, if you will,
(17:04):
is that everyone has an opinion about what you do.
And I think with the Obama administration, even so early
in the game, this has been a huge deal. And
I think that the American public, and not even just
the American public, maybe the international public, has been very
nitpicky about this family. For instance, um, the dog Little
Bou Obama. Before Beau Obama came to be, there was
(17:26):
much debate about whether the Obamas would get a pure
bred dog, whether they should adopt one, and as you recall,
they had special concerns about their daughter's health since she
had allergies to dogs. It was very important that they
got one that was you know, I think we're allergy
friendly And a story that really piqued my interest since
I'm interested in fashion and style was Oscar de Laurenta
(17:50):
getting onto MSUs Obama for some of her choices of attire,
wanting to see her wearing more American designers and nitpicking
the items that she had chosen. And he even commented,
you don't go to Buckingham Palace and a sweater, because
she did. She had on a little stylish card. Again,
so bearing that sort of criticism is pretty rough. And
in addition to that, I mean, like one of the
(18:12):
parks we alluded to earlier was the Marine one helicopter,
and you know that started the controversy because it ended
up being much more expensive than it originally was thought
to be. And this, of course with this program was
started too before Obama came in, So during when he
was campaigning and he heard how expensive it was getting,
he was like, oh, we need to take a closer
look at that. And it's tough because he's he's inherited
(18:34):
all these super expensive things, and like is it worth
it for security? And and she was it worth stopping
a program? Like that's a waste of money for all
this money that's gone into it. You know, it's sort
of a darned if you do and darned if you
don't situation. And as you may recall, Alice Waters was
being very vocal about the Obama's choice of White House
chaff and encouraging them to have an organic vegetable garden
(18:58):
on the White House property and even trying to make
recommendations about the Secretary of Agriculture and UM. One of
our our bloggers here, Sarah Dowdy, who's our our green editor,
blogged about Mrs Obama having planned a garden and now
always well and good. Maybe she was able to uh
appease Alice Waters and her camp of followers, and then
(19:19):
not too long ago she was actually petitioned by the
Mid America Crop Life Association to put fertilizer and pesticides
on her organic garden. So you can't really win something
if your president or first lading. It's a job, definitely. So,
as you were saying, some of these parks may seem
like luxuries, but other ones, like security, for instance, are
(19:41):
just necessities, and some presidents have actually wanted to or
at least dependence have wanted to opt out of the security.
You can imagine, um, how awkward it is to go
around everywhere with security guards, the disadvantages of that sort
of perk, And it wasn't until eighty four that the
law was passed to UM to allow the President and
(20:02):
his dependence to opt out of that security, which is interesting.
And when people leave the House Stuff Works Office, we
actually offer security detail for our more notable workers here,
like our bloggers and our podcasters. And it used to
be that Marshall Brain did that, but he's been keeping
really busy, so now our producer Jerry Rowland follows people
around and sharing that they're safe from the masses of
(20:23):
adoring fans and and full creepy. Honestly, it really is.
So my question is, Jane, what do you think about that?
I'm not so sure. It actually turns out that, uh,
I'll have to face that decision soon because I'm actually
leaving the House Stuff Works office. I'll be moving out
of the area and sadly leaving behind all my colleagues
and Ukandice and I will cry. I'll cry too, and
(20:47):
you can't see tears through your your headphones this podcast.
But you should know that Jane has been such an
important and significant addition to the Stuff You Missed in
History Class podcast. It's a totally differ creature now than
when it first started almost a year ago, and I
really appreciate the quiet, dignity and intelligent conversation she's brought,
(21:10):
and especially all of her facts about the Crusades and
the history of the Catholic Church. She's really it's been
it's been a joy being able to record with you, Candice.
You're always effervescent and uh uh, you make history really exciting.
Even when I might dry interpretation, See, you're able to
(21:31):
spend it something happy and fun. I wouldn't call it dry.
Dane has promised that she'll continue listening to the podcast,
and I certainly hope that, even though there will be
a notable absence here, that all of you will continue
doing the same and until next time. You can read
more about presidential perks and other great presidential history on
the website at how stuff works dot com. For more
(21:57):
on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and be sure to check out this Stuff you Missed
in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot
com on page m
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor kandas Keener, joined by staff writer Jane mccreant. Hey. There,
candas Hey, Jane. I wanted to bring our listeners up
(00:21):
to speed about a special fact about you they might
not be aware of. And that's that's in addition to
being a very fabulous history writer, Jane is also the
website's resident money writer, and so she wrote this article
that's technically for our money channel of the website, but
it has such strong history overtones or undertones, I'm not
(00:44):
sure anyway to lose very strongly to history in fact
that we thought you all might be interested in, so
we decided to hijack it and presented to you today. Yeah,
it's a really cool subject and pretty fun because it's
it's fun to imagine what life would be like as
a president, you know, even though they have probably the
most stressful job in the world. It's uh, it's really
fascinating to delve into all of these special perks and
(01:06):
and extras that they get just by virtue of being
the chief executive in the United States. And it's pretty
controversial some of these big financial perks that the president gets, because,
as you know, if you've been keeping up with the news,
the Obama administration has really been cracking down on people
from Wall Street and perks that people in the financial
sector have been getting, and many of them have been
(01:29):
uh lashing back at the president and saying, you know,
you get a lot of perks too, and what's more,
yours are tax free. So who are you to say
what we can and cannot have? You know, you can
have to salary. The president's salary is capped by nature
of you know, the law, but he gets plenty of
things on the side that has some people pretty worked up.
He doesn't even need a salary for all these other
(01:50):
things that he gets. And to presidents in history have
actually refused salary. Do you know who they are? George
Washington and DFK. I mean JFK attends of family money.
So that's true, understand, But George Washington, that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah,
So I guess I'd kick it off with the White House,
which is probably the most obvious of the presidential perks.
All in all, there's about a hundred and thirty two
(02:11):
rooms in the residential White House and in thirty five bathrooms.
In addition to the standards of the swimming pool and
the tennis chords and basketball courts, you've got the jogging
track and the punning green, which just owns so much fun.
And yeah, the real estate ad really writes itself, but
it's off the market, you guys. And in addition to UM,
(02:32):
the pursuits for active presidents and first families, if you're
a little bit more sedentary, well, uh, that's working in
your favorite too, because there are at least five chefs
in the White House, including a full time pastry chef.
And if you are an appreciator of fine arts, you'd
be happy to know that the President can request different
works of art to be brought in from the National
(02:54):
Gallery on loan. And I actually have a personal anecdote
about this. Um. You may not be surprised to know
that I have people and I got to go on
a very behind the scenes tour of the White House
a couple of years ago, during which I saw the
White House Kitten, which is much much smaller than you
may have thought. Yeah, I've seen pictures. Actually it did
seem small from the picture day. And I saw the
(03:14):
florist and I got to meet the resident flourish there
as well as George Bush's cat. That was pretty cool.
And um, the point of the story is about works
of art because my source told me that during the
Clinton administration, Hillary Radham Clinton was a very active art
enthusiast and she very much enjoyed swopping out the different
(03:36):
works of art. And one time she wanted a very
heavy and unwieldy piece of sculpture brought into one of
the gardens and it was a huge production to get
this thing put down safely. And of course the curator
was there, you know, fretting back and forth the whole
time that something would happen. But it was put into place,
and I think it was taken out undamaged, unscathed. So
funny story about that. Only if you are president and
(03:56):
first lady can you command a huge, unwieldy piece of
sculpture to be put And yeah, that's awesome. And that's
in addition to the super expensive fancy furniture that they
get it as well. Right, Yeah, in the White House
they get a hundred thousand dollars to redecorate the White House.
And as you may know from reading my blog. The
Obama is elected not to take that and to use
(04:17):
their own money to redecorate. But in addition to that money,
the president also gets to choose from an array of
historical desks that have been used by other presidents. So
you know, for instance, someone could use the desk that
Lincoln had years Yeah, I think about all the historical
documents that were signed on that thing, all the different
speeches written, Emancipatient Proclamation and um all manner of rugs.
(04:42):
I heard that the rugs are just stacked right on
top of each other, and they're so heavy they have
to get huge machines and to lift them up. So
that there recently about changes that Obama made, especially the
Oval Office. I guess he took out a bust of
Winston Churchill and he did he bring in a new uggers.
I remember talking about the rugs and in the Oval
Office there's some talk about that. But in terms of money, uh,
(05:07):
you mentioned the floor is the flowers alone? One source
I found said that they cost about more more than
two hundred and fifty thousand per year. That's wild. Yeah,
and upkeep alone for the entire White House is about
four million a year. So it's a it's a sweet
pad they've got there. It definitely is. So if you've
got a great house, the next obvious park would be
(05:30):
great modes plural of transportation. We're talking about the presidential limo,
the two Boeing seven forty seven's air Force one and
Marine one. Yeah, and air Force one. It's kind of
weird because technically whatever plane the president is on is
referred to as air Force one as the radio call name.
(05:51):
But you know, in common parlance, you know, we talk
about our Force one specifically talking about these really awesome planes,
the Boeing seven three sevens that you mentioned, and there
are two of them actually, and I think sometimes when
they take when they take the president out, one acts
like a decoy, partly to carry cargo and partly to
carry staff, which that kind of sucks to be a
decoy and to be flying on a decoy as a
(06:15):
as a staff member. But anyway, the Air Force one
plane that we're talking about carry up to seven d passengers,
which is not including the twenty six person crew. And uh,
there are areas special areas for the staff, even media
and security of course, and president has his own workout room,
isn't that nice wild yeah. Um, in addition to a
(06:36):
really nice office and bathroom and bedroom even can you
imagine having a bedroom on a plane this awesome? Um,
and like is really really excited about this. I think
to your presidential perks is that medieval tortures. Today we
both have our own little areas of fancy only four cents.
I'm sorry, UM, so you have say this is what
(06:57):
we're talking about. The middle level level of the plan.
There's actually malt will levels. The upper level you have
the cockpit, the telecommunications um center, and on the bottom
levels for cargo. But you don't really need a whole
lot of space for cargo because there are other special
planes c one one Star lifter cargo planes that carry
(07:17):
actually the motorcade of the president, and they send the limos,
the armored limos to wherever the president is headed, including
places like Perk number three, Camp David, which is the
super private getaway of the president. And when it was
originally built, I think it cost only what dollars to
belt so much, but it's been renovated so much and
(07:40):
it's such a nice relaxing place. And it's the fact
that it's ultra scure, like it's got super super um
strong security and ultra clothes. It's only an hour's drive
from d C. Not that he needs to drive, though
he takes he takes the helicopter. The helicopter. And it
was renamed Camp David during the I and Howard administration,
(08:01):
and that was after his grandson, which I think is
incredibly straight. That's that's really cute. But I don't know.
I like the first name law named after the Tibetan
utopia in the book Lost to Horizon and am right.
That's right. Um. It's got eleven different cabins, a pool,
its own skeet shooting range, and its own private office
(08:24):
cabin so the president can get some work done. So
even though it's kind of a relaxing place to go there,
it's still a place of business. And you probably remember it, um.
It's most known for when President Carter used Camp David
as a place for peace talks between the Egyptian president
and the Israeli Prime minister in seventy eight. And what's
interesting about Camp David is that, unlike the White House
(08:46):
you mentioned, you had a behind the scenes tour of that.
That's that's awesome. But Camp David is completely closed to
the public. Like, well, I hate to break it to you,
but now you're right, okay. I was like, oh, I
read authority, So yeah, this it's weird that, unlike the
White House, it's closed the public. It's even more secure
than the White House in that way. And it's nice
(09:06):
also because it's on top of a mountain, and so
growing up in d C. I know how hot that
city can get, and so you have much I think
about ten degrees cooler temperatures up up on top of
that mountain at Camp David. And in addition to all
of these wonderful perks that the president gets to enjoy
while he's in office, other little ones being things like
having your family around the office. You know they live there.
(09:29):
It's also your office. It's nice you know, your your
kids come in and just say, hey, Dad, how's it going. Yeah,
I know. I like working from home, flexible work hours.
As we know during the George W. Bush administration, he
liked to get in early, take a little break to
go work out, and then come back. And I think
Reagan was pretty famous for actually taking naps during the
work day, which is a luxury we do not have
(09:49):
yet around the house. Stuff works office, but fingers crossed,
you also get I smell a petition, you get free
soda from Pepsi and Coke, and like I mentioned before,
a complimentary emine isn't that nice. So in addition to
all these little perks you get while you're in office,
you may be happy to know too that the president
is taken care of after he leaves office. And since
(10:11):
ninety eight, all presidents have gotten a pension. And this
is particularly happy news for people like poor Thomas Jefferson, who,
as you may recall from the Monticello podcast, actually died
more than one hundred thousand dollars in debt, and he
would have been in luck had he had a much
later administration, because as of March two thousand eight, the
(10:31):
pension was one thousand, three hundred dollars annually, not too shabby.
In addition to a staff, an office, office supplies, and
Janie you pointed out the ex presidents also get phone services. Yeah. Yeah,
they get all the extra perks for for their office. Um.
And it's interesting you mentioned Thomas Jefferson because back when
(10:54):
one was researching first Ladies Um Dolly medicine, actually died
pretty poor. Because I think one of her relatives after
after James Madison died, after her relatives kind of squandered
her money and and she died pretty poor. Which is
now widows are more or less taken care of as
well if they want to be. It's interesting the wives
(11:15):
or the spouses of ex presidents also get benefits. They
they get a pension if they want to. But a
caveat to that is that they have to waive the
right to any annuity or pension under any other legislation.
And um really uh this became um an issue for
Nancy Reagan and Betty four. They didn't want to waive
(11:35):
this right, so they actually didn't get that pension. But
um lb J's widow did until she died just recently
in two thousand seven. UM. And what's interesting, um. Another
point about the wives of ex presidents is Hillary Clinton
is an interesting situation because she's in addition to being
a spouse of a former president, she's a senator now
or she just was um before being Secretary of State.
(11:59):
She while she was senator got protection shared by the
US Capital Police, who usually handle the senators, and the
Secret Service, who usually handled the spouses of ex presidents.
So it's just interesting to see how widows are handled,
especially when they take on more roles. And you think
that this may be superfluous, but our country has no monarchy.
(12:20):
We obviously have no royal members of a family to
take care of, and the president and his wife would
be the closest thing to royalty that we have. And
to consider how much a president, even an unpopular president,
puts into his office, you wouldn't want to think of
him or his widow living in squalor. Yeah, that's true,
(12:41):
and you want them to be able to focus, you know,
on the job that they were hired to do. And
what's more, even after the President and the First Lady
leave the White House, their names continue to carry a
lot of power, and as we mentioned in the First
Lady podcast, they can attach their names to many different
causes and really continue to make a difference out of office.
And President Jimmy Carter even famously said that he's made
(13:03):
a bigger difference out of office than he ever did
as president. And if you don't know, uh, Jimmy Carter
and Roslin Carter are very active at the Carter Center
and they're still working very hard as philanthropists and making
people aware of different UH causes around the world, like
like free voting rights and UM Guinea warm eradication. So
it's important that the president is given the tools that
(13:24):
he needs to continue his work. Definitely. And another interesting
part about being a former president is that they usually
get a presidential library. UM, and every president except for
Nixon since Herbert Hoover has gotten his own library, and
recently George W. Bush has gotten some press because he's
made UM a lot of money really quickly. And UM
he made more than a hundred million for the library
(13:47):
in the first one hundred days after after he left office,
which is you know, a record setting pays and his
library scheduled to open. UH. So you have this library
which is raised by private phone, but the archivist actually
gives the president's official records and papers over to this
library and manages it for him or her. One interesting
(14:09):
thing that I found researching the retirement perks is, like
you mentioned, Candice, this didn't start the form presidents and
start getting UH perks until nineteen fifty eight. And back
in nineteen twelve there was talk about giving them perks
because Andrew Carnegie actually said that he wanted to start
giving a pension to these former presidents, which sounds really nice,
(14:31):
but Congress found this kind of inappropriate coming from a
private donor. Yeah, you can see a sort of um,
you know, mixed motivations there, maybe, but um So Congress
was like, no, we don't want that, and so they
introduced legislation to start giving them a pension, but that died,
so they weren't ready to do it either. So unfortunately
(14:53):
it went another about four decades. Finally in the fifties,
poor Truman was suffering. He's struggling to pay and higher staff,
so Congress finally passed that legislation in fifty eight, thank goodness.
And another perk, if you can call it a perk,
is that when former presidents die, their funerals are paid
for and they get a very grand state funeral, which
(15:15):
at least takes the burden off of the family dies,
which is very important. And prior to their deaths, they
receive medical treatment at military hospitals, and they continue to
have security parks throughout their golden years. So as you
can see, there are definitely a lot of advantages to
being president of the United States. You get the four
thousand dollar year salary, your hundred thousand dollars in expenses
(15:38):
and a very hefty entertainment account that is renewed annually.
But I believe that whatever you don't knew that the
end of the year goes back into the funds. So
what is there not to love about being presidents? Well,
for one, you become a little out of touch with
the world sometimes, I thinks, of course, depends on the president.
(15:58):
I think some presidents are more in touch than others.
Although I will say I don't believe Bill Clinton jogged
McDonald's too much towards the end of this time. I
think that was just in the very beginning. But um
And Rogers, who was Deputy Assistant to the President and
executive Assistant to the White House Chief of Staff during
the George H. W. Bush administration, told a little anecdote
(16:20):
about going to McDonald's once when he was traveling with
Ronald Reagan and apparently someone gave Reagan a fifty dollar
bill to pay for lunch, and Ed Rogers said, if
he looked like you didn't know what to do with it, really,
And if you're president and you have this expense account
and everything is being done for you, I can imagine
that you know, things like that would be unsettling when
you're a common person again or you're thrust into the world. Um,
(16:43):
but presidents do you have to pay for stuff. They
may have white house chefs, but presidents have to pay
for the groceries. They have to pay for their personal
care items. So you can request anything you want cooked.
But if you haven't actually footed the bill at the
grocery store, it's not going to happen. And and other
downside to being president, the anti perks, if you will,
(17:04):
is that everyone has an opinion about what you do.
And I think with the Obama administration, even so early
in the game, this has been a huge deal. And
I think that the American public, and not even just
the American public, maybe the international public, has been very
nitpicky about this family. For instance, um, the dog Little
Bou Obama. Before Beau Obama came to be, there was
(17:26):
much debate about whether the Obamas would get a pure
bred dog, whether they should adopt one, and as you recall,
they had special concerns about their daughter's health since she
had allergies to dogs. It was very important that they
got one that was you know, I think we're allergy
friendly And a story that really piqued my interest since
I'm interested in fashion and style was Oscar de Laurenta
(17:50):
getting onto MSUs Obama for some of her choices of attire,
wanting to see her wearing more American designers and nitpicking
the items that she had chosen. And he even commented,
you don't go to Buckingham Palace and a sweater, because
she did. She had on a little stylish card. Again,
so bearing that sort of criticism is pretty rough. And
in addition to that, I mean, like one of the
(18:12):
parks we alluded to earlier was the Marine one helicopter,
and you know that started the controversy because it ended
up being much more expensive than it originally was thought
to be. And this, of course with this program was
started too before Obama came in, So during when he
was campaigning and he heard how expensive it was getting,
he was like, oh, we need to take a closer
look at that. And it's tough because he's he's inherited
(18:34):
all these super expensive things, and like is it worth
it for security? And and she was it worth stopping
a program? Like that's a waste of money for all
this money that's gone into it. You know, it's sort
of a darned if you do and darned if you
don't situation. And as you may recall, Alice Waters was
being very vocal about the Obama's choice of White House
chaff and encouraging them to have an organic vegetable garden
(18:58):
on the White House property and even trying to make
recommendations about the Secretary of Agriculture and UM. One of
our our bloggers here, Sarah Dowdy, who's our our green editor,
blogged about Mrs Obama having planned a garden and now
always well and good. Maybe she was able to uh
appease Alice Waters and her camp of followers, and then
(19:19):
not too long ago she was actually petitioned by the
Mid America Crop Life Association to put fertilizer and pesticides
on her organic garden. So you can't really win something
if your president or first lading. It's a job, definitely. So,
as you were saying, some of these parks may seem
like luxuries, but other ones, like security, for instance, are
(19:41):
just necessities, and some presidents have actually wanted to or
at least dependence have wanted to opt out of the security.
You can imagine, um, how awkward it is to go
around everywhere with security guards, the disadvantages of that sort
of perk, And it wasn't until eighty four that the
law was passed to UM to allow the President and
(20:02):
his dependence to opt out of that security, which is interesting.
And when people leave the House Stuff Works Office, we
actually offer security detail for our more notable workers here,
like our bloggers and our podcasters. And it used to
be that Marshall Brain did that, but he's been keeping
really busy, so now our producer Jerry Rowland follows people
around and sharing that they're safe from the masses of
(20:23):
adoring fans and and full creepy. Honestly, it really is.
So my question is, Jane, what do you think about that?
I'm not so sure. It actually turns out that, uh,
I'll have to face that decision soon because I'm actually
leaving the House Stuff Works office. I'll be moving out
of the area and sadly leaving behind all my colleagues
and Ukandice and I will cry. I'll cry too, and
(20:47):
you can't see tears through your your headphones this podcast.
But you should know that Jane has been such an
important and significant addition to the Stuff You Missed in
History Class podcast. It's a totally differ creature now than
when it first started almost a year ago, and I
really appreciate the quiet, dignity and intelligent conversation she's brought,
(21:10):
and especially all of her facts about the Crusades and
the history of the Catholic Church. She's really it's been
it's been a joy being able to record with you, Candice.
You're always effervescent and uh uh, you make history really exciting.
Even when I might dry interpretation, See, you're able to
(21:31):
spend it something happy and fun. I wouldn't call it dry.
Dane has promised that she'll continue listening to the podcast,
and I certainly hope that, even though there will be
a notable absence here, that all of you will continue
doing the same and until next time. You can read
more about presidential perks and other great presidential history on
the website at how stuff works dot com. For more
(21:57):
on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and be sure to check out this Stuff you Missed
in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot
com on page m
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