Bush switched on the brass sidelight next to his bed. The soft glow gave the President’s bedroom the feel of an old but formal country inn, the kind that might be found in Williamsburg or Newport during the season. Pale-cream wallpaper overlaid with a diagonal pattern of blue and pink bunches of flowers; Early American wooden chairs decorated with whimsical, chip-carved lunettes; a scorched fireplace beneath a milky-white mantel; scrollwork made of Italian Carrera marble. Behind heavy drapes, a pair of floor-to-ceiling windows looked through the towering southern magnolias, planted in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson in memory of his wife, Rachel, and across President’s Park to the Washington Monument. Brightly lit against the early-morning light, the obelisk had the appearance of a spaceship about to rise. A spidery, antique chandelier of cut glass and gilded metal hung in the center of the room. On the floor near the bed, Barney, the family’s Scottish terrier pup, lay like a small sack of coal.
