Selling Lincoln bedroom disrespectful

WASHINGTON -- Former President Gerald Ford was once quoted as saying that "if President Lincoln was alive, he would roll over in his grave."

I've often thought of that quote and wondered how Lincoln would have felt knowing that his seven-foot bed has been used by some recent successors for sleep-overs as a payback to deep-pocket political donors.

Actually, what is now the Lincoln bedroom was Lincoln's Cabinet room. He did not sleep in it, but subsequent presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge did.

President Harry Truman, an avid scholar of American history, turned the room into a shrine after collecting the Lincoln furniture from all over the mansion and placing it there.

It is the room where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in the southern confederacy in 1863. By that act he made ending slavery a basic goal of the Civil War.

A copy of the Gettysburg Address, one of only five copies written in his own hand, lies on a table in the room.

The Lincoln room became controversial in recent years when former President Bill Clinton offered the thrill of spending a night in it to celebrities, big contributors and many of his Arkansas friends, relatives and supporters. During his eight-year tenure, Clinton had more than 900 guests, including 72 of daughter Chelsea Clinton's chums, and the White House admitted that most of these overnight guests got to try out the Lincoln bed.

Clinton's guests included entertainer Barbra Streisand, actor Tom Hanks, producer Steven Spielberg, playwright Neil Simon, former Chrysler chairman Lee Iaccoca, the Rev. Billy Graham, actress Jane Fonda and her then husband Ted Turner, founder of the Cable News Network.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush sanctimoniously accused Clinton of "virtually renting out the Lincoln bedroom to big campaign donors." He condemned the use of the "hallowed" chamber for political payoffs.

Often, however, once a candidate wins the White House, he soon begins to savor the perks his predecessors enjoyed.

Last month it was disclosed that Bush and his wife Laura have hosted about 160 guests at the White House so far. But a White House spokeswoman refused to say how many had tried the Lincoln bed in the hallowed room.

Bush's guests included some of his biggest donors or fundraisers, known as pioneers, and their families. Each had raised or contributed at least $100,000 for the Bush presidential campaign.

The Bush celebrity guest list included country singer Larry Gatlin, songwriter Kinky Friedman and golfer Ben Crenshaw.

His personal friends included Roland Betts, a former partner with Bush in the ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team; Teel Bivins, a rancher and state senator, and Joe O'Neill, a Midland, Texas, oilman. Others were Republican National Committee fund-raiser Brad Freeman and Boston businessman Joe O'Donnell.

White House spokeswoman Anne Womack, who prepared a White House release on the subject, told me she didn't ask which of the guests had slept in the Lincoln bedroom. When I asked if she would pursue the subject since Bush had so heartily condemned Clinton's practice, she made it very clear that she had no intention of doing so. "There are a variety of guest rooms in the White House," she said defensively.

Certainly the first family is free to invite anyone it wants as a personal guest. But whether it's Clinton or Bush, there is something about the use of the Lincoln room for political purposes that rankles. It shows a lack of proper respect for the Great Emancipator.

We know there is nothing sacred when it comes to political fundraising. But putting the Lincoln bedroom up for sale seems to cross the line of propriety regardless of which party the president belongs to.