4 Presidents, 5 First Ladies Dine Together

WASHINGTON —  The White House is the ultimate prize, the place where mere politicians become presidents. Thursday night, it held a roomful of them. The only question: Who will be its next occupant?

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the executive mansion, President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton invited all the former residents to celebrate two centuries of presidential history and American democracy. Thus, George and Barbara Bush, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford, and Lady Bird Johnson sat at the same table for dinner Thursday night. (Ronald and Nancy Reagan were unable to attend.)

No snippiness was observed. But the scene was, in a word, surreal. Tuesday’s election still was in purgatory, and here was the father of one candidate sweating it out with the mentor of the other, and a first lady/senator-elect who will be the only one who has a real job come Jan. 21. Any novelist constructing the same scenario would have been sent back to the keyboard to do a more plausible rewrite.

“I have been hypnotized; in a state of disbelief!” actress Elizabeth Taylor said. “Can this really go on? How long will it go on for? Is there a statute of limitations? Can we get back to ‘ER’ ”?

Not only did Taylor miss the NBC drama Thursday night, she also arrived well after the current and past presidents were seated in the East Room. The evening’s 200 other guests arrived on time and were aggressively nonpartisan; historians rather than hysterics. Presidential scholars Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Michael Beschloss and Hugh Sidey headed a list that included donors to the White House Historical Assn., administration officials and friends of the Clintons.

“The timing of this was just Heaven-sent, it turned out,” Beschloss said. “It’s a tonic to have an event like this, especially at a moment when the fight over Florida threatens to get ugly. It’s wonderful to have something like this to bind people together, if only for an evening.”

The guests of honor were all seated at one long head table.