The Kids Down the Hall

By MICHAEL DUFFY WASHINGTON

Annie Leibovitz likes to shoot to music. So when the photographer began setting up in the Oval Office for a Vanity Fair portrait of the new President just after his swearing-in, she pulled out her boom box and plugged it into an outlet not far from the portrait of George Washington. Instantly a stern White House functionary informed her, "We've never had music in the Oval Office." Only the President, it was decided, could approve such a breach in decorum. "Sure," said Clinton, and Eric Clapton's album Unplugged began to fill the room. A Secret Service agent remarked to a colleague, "I told you we were gonna miss the other guy."

This is not your father's White House. If anything, it's your daughter's. Gone is the strict Bush dress code that required skirts for women and forbade beards for men. In its place are not just the usual gray suits but also women in pants, tieless men in sweaters and the occasional diamond ear stud. Instead of the highly compartmentalized Bush system, in which no one knew what others were doing, the Clintonites prefer giant, free-for-all meetings and speak the same hard-nosed patois of politics and policy. "This place is completely different," said a Bush holdover now working for Clinton. "Before, I always felt afraid that I was going to do something wrong. Now, anything goes."

The important changes are not merely stylistic. For the first time in memory, many blacks and other minorities can be found working in jobs that don't come with a uniform. Though George Bush signed a landmark disabled- rights law, Clinton and Gore have disabled people on their staffs. Visitors to the Bush White House were typically greeted by a perfectly accessorized heiress who escorted guests to the aide (always male) they wished to see. Now, more typically, a geeky-looking 23-year-old male wearing two beepers escorts visitors to see the woman with whom they have an appointment.

Long-closed doors in the cavernous Old Executive Office Building are now open all day long, and doors connecting separate offices have been pried open. For the first time in years, people congregate in the halls to chat, turning the corridors into something akin to a high school between classes. The West Wing of the White House has been harder to change, since it is organized for "fat old men and their secretaries," as a Clinton aide put it. Last month Clinton asked about tearing down walls to make his horizontal management style work better, but was told it couldn't be done. Partly as a result, it is not uncommon to bump into the President, the Vice President or Hillary Rodham Clinton in the offices of deputy assistants.

Bush turned down hundreds of personal-appearance requests that were deemed "unpresidential" by aides, but the Clintonites say they will agree to almost anything. "The weirder, the better," said a booker. In early February Clinton appeared in a promotional teaser for a sports-blooper show on a TV station in Birmingham, Alabama. "Just watching one of my regular White House jogs would make your Hall of Shame," plugged Clinton.

On the second floor of the Old E.O.B., where the massive Clinton communications machine is located, the median age has dropped from 45 to about 25. The gang that is known internally as "the children" have brought with them boom boxes, R.E.M. tapes, takeout food, cappuccino makers and a dorm-room energy. Secret Service agents use the code name "18 acres" to refer to the White House complex. "We just call it 'the campus,' " says deputy press secretary Lorraine Voles.

The whiz kids were dismayed to discover a shortage of faxes, beepers, voice mail, laptops and high-speed E-mail. Young aides have swamped White House purchasing agents with requests for the computer of choice: Apple's Macintosh PowerBook. "Given the equipment around here," said a senior official, "it's no wonder Bush lost."

The Clinton team's appetite for data-by-the-megabyte has expanded presidential briefing papers from the normal dozen pages to more than 100. To save trees, secretaries have been ordered to use both sides of each piece of paper. Al Gore's aides used Dan Quayle's leftover stationery before diving into fresher stock.

To ward off isolation, Clinton urges aides to take Sundays off. Mrs. Clinton stopped by a Washington grocery last week for a bit of shopping, though she had only $11 with her at the time. David Dreyer, 37, the deputy communications chief, guards against complacency by leaving his office walls bare. "We don't want to feel like we own the place," he says. But for now, they do.