Family of 3 Dropping By, Along With Secret Service

BOSTON — Company’s coming! Quick, dust the furniture, plump the pillows, empty the fridge. Wait. Maybe Bill and Hillary would be just as happy using your catsup as buying their own.

In the case of Boston land developer and hotelier Richard Friedman, who for eight days starting Thursday will once again be the Clintons’ host on Martha’s Vineyard, “I leave everything for them. Then the Secret Service comes and they take my stuff and put it in a different refrigerator, and they put his stuff in the main refrigerator.” When the president and his family leave the island off Massachusetts, “they put it back, and they put it in exactly the same spot that they took it from.”

Other than that, Friedman said, hosting Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton “is not a great deal different than having any other guests that you’d give your house to.”

For Thomas and Cathy McDonald of Skaneateles, N.Y., this may be welcome news. From Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, the McDonalds--who have never met the president and, friends say, may not have voted for him--will become the latest in a long series of “first hosts”--families who shelter the first president in recent memory who has no place of his own to retreat to when he wants a break from official Washington.

Bush had Kennebunkport, in Maine; Reagan had his ranch near Santa Barbara; Carter had his peanut farm in Plains, Ga.; Nixon had San Clemente; Johnson had his ranch in Texas; Kennedy had the compound on Cape Cod; Eisenhower headed for Gettysburg, Pa. Clinton has no real estate at all, not even a pied-a-terre in Arkansas. As a consequence, he and his family have turned first guests into a rent-free term of art.

On Coronado, the Clintons relaxed in a 17-bedroom Tudor-style mansion owned by M. Larry Lawrence, a major Democratic contributor who became Clinton’s ambassador to Switzerland. Lawrence made posthumous news when he was buried in Arlington Cemetery, then reburied elsewhere when it turned out he had lied about his military record.

At a beachfront estate near Santa Barbara, the Clintons’ hosts were their Hollywood producer pals, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. West Virginia businessman Paul Bob Burge hosted the Clintons at his beachfront home in Hilton Head, S.C. Tire magnate Leonard Firestone put them up in Vail, Colo. In 1992, the Clintons discovered the joys of Martha’s Vineyard when they stayed at the home of former Defense Secretary and Mrs. Robert S. McNamara.

“That was a long time ago, and I think we are not going to talk about it,” a family member at the McNamara home said firmly.

Just last May, the Clintons took a breather at Roseland, a five-bedroom house in Yulee, Fla., that featured a view of a white rhinoceros and its 4-month-old calf. The two-story cedar house is part of the 7,500-acre White Oak Plantation, founded by the late Howard Gilman, an arts patron and paper manufacturer.

In Jackson Hole, Wyo., Wall Street investment banker Max Chapman, a Republican, handed the Clintons the keys to his 800-acre Bar-B-Bar Ranch, shadowed by the Grand Teton mountains. And at the Hobe Sound, Fla., home of golfer Greg Norman in 1998, Clinton slipped and injured his knee.

The practice is perfectly legal and is not without precedent. The Reagans, for example, spent nearly every New Year’s Eve at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Annenberg in Palm Springs, where the Clintons also have been guests. The Carters borrowed a house on Sea Island, Ga., but they paid rent.

“Only a fraction of Americans own vacation places,” observed Norm Ornstein, a specialist in political ethics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He also pointed out that prior to the presidency, Clinton held the lowest-paid governorship in the country. Still, Ornstein said, “what makes some people uneasy is the same reason people are uneasy about the campaign finance system--the notion that you’re getting something from somebody.”

The Clintons may be houseless, but University of Pennsylvania architecture professor Witold M. Rybczynski said it would be wrong to think of them as homeless. “They have a home. It’s the White House. They’ve been there a long time,” said Rybczynski, author of “Home: A Short History of an Idea.”

Politicians are notoriously nomadic, Rybczynski noted, but for the public, the illusion of presidential rootedness remains important. “Think of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln,” he said. “The president’s house is such a potent symbol in American history.” A summer house has an even more idyllic connotation. “It becomes a kind of anchor,” Rybczynski said.

The couple’s Whitewater experience also may suggest that real estate acumen is not the Clintons’ strongest trait--a quality now being tested as they finally shop for a home of their own in suburban New York.

In the Martha’s Vineyard community of Oyster Pond, Richard Friedman’s “cottage” boasts jogging trails, tennis courts, stables and, of course, swimming and boating. The 20-acre estate could command rent of about $10,000 a week, Vineyard residents said.

Friedman, known to be a generous donor to the Democrats, first met the president when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. When in Cambridge, Mass., the Clintons began staying at the luxurious Charles Hotel, owned by Friedman. When Friedman heard how much the Clintons had enjoyed the McNamara home, he invited them to try his house next time.

Having the first family and its substantial official entourage as guests is “no disruption at all,” Friedman insisted. The 58-year-old businessman said he spent much of July on the Vineyard with his wife, Nancy, and their infant son Jake. His estate is big enough, moreover, that if he wants to stop by while the Clintons are in residence, there’s plenty of room.

But traditionally, Friedman said, “what I do is, I greet them when they come, make sure everything is OK--then I leave. Usually I have breakfast and a cup of coffee with them on the day they leave. Otherwise, I don’t want to be in their face.”

Friedman said the Clintons travel with a “minimal staff.” He was not comfortable answering questions about whether the Clintons fry their own eggs or bring their own shampoo.

The arrangement comes with no official quid pro quo. But Friedman and an older son, Alex, have been overnight guests at the White House, as have hundreds of Clinton backers.

In Skaneateles, 22 miles from Syracuse, Chamber of Commerce administrator Sue Dove described the McDonald house as “one of the three best houses” on a lake that is said to be one of the world’s purest bodies of water. The 8,000-square-foot “camp”--as lakeside abodes there are known--might rent for $10,000 to $15,000 a month, said real estate agent Craig Newell.

The Clintons apparently wanted to spend some vacation time in upstate New York to muster support for Hillary Clinton’s expected bid for the U.S. Senate. Hosting the first family guarantees no official payback for the McDonalds, but a longtime observer of state politics said that “if she wins, there won’t be a party in New York state that they’re not invited to.”

The home was apparently identified through a state party fund-raiser. As of this week, McDonald, a real estate developer, and his family have neither met nor spoken to anyone from the first family. Reached at home, Cathy McDonald said she did not know anything yet about first host protocol. Empty the refrigerator? Leave it full? “Frankly, I don’t know,” she said.

Along with access to water-skiing and hiking, the McDonald house features an unusual answering-machine message. “We can’t come to the phone right now because we’re out swinging, baby, yeah!” says an Austin Powers-like voice that belongs to Michael McDonald, 16. “Hey, the president is coming to our house in a little while. It’s great. It’s shagadelic, baby.”

One of the highlights of summer in the proudly Republican community is riding the postal boat, which delivers mail to homes on the lake with no access by road. Clinton is almost sure to play a few rounds of golf at the Skaneateles Country Club, and the first family may grab a bite at Krebs’ Restaurant, “famous throughout the country, if not farther,” said real estate agent Newell.

But Mrs. Clinton may want to avoid a new item on the menu at another local eatery, Johnny Angel’s. The “Hillary Special” is a sandwich, described as “a grilled hard roll and mostly baloney.”