A few chairs. A primitive version of a telephone hot line installed on the wall near the head of the bed. A few mementos. Down the hall is the dumbwaiter by which FDR hauled himself up and down from the first floor in his wheelchair, pulling on ropes with counterweights. I wonder what Patton would have said about leadership and character if he had seen Roosevelt hauling himself upstairs in the dumbwaiter.
Home reflects character.
The Kennedys' walls and furniture gleam with the silver-framed pageant of their photogenic tribal progress. Ronald Reagan's weight room in the White House seemed wistfully egotistical, decorated on the theme of himself, with movie posters of himself and the TIME Man of the Year cover illustration of himself. Richard Nixon wanted to outfit his White House guard in elaborate Graustarkian uniforms, a tinhorn spectacle of power, but was embarrassed out of the idea. Patton, too, was a great one for designing gaudy special uniforms for himself and his troops. If Nixon could have worn a brace of ivory-handled pistols, he might have done so.