David Koresh and Reverend Jim Jones - 12 March 1993

Lyndon Johnson used to pad around the White House at night just to be sure people were turning the lights out. Jimmy Carter decided to wear a cardigan. Bill Clinton is starting a cafeteria. These different gestures were performed either to show the people that the new president is determined to rid government of waste or to show the people that he's one of them.

Every man I can remember who ran for president at some point in his campaign wrung his hands and in a tone worthy of Claude Rains discovering that gambling was going on in a gambling joint would announce that the sheer waste in the government was perfectly shocking.

Ronald Reagan I remember had a comical time reciting the cost of a short documentary film put out by the navy, which was no more than a sort of etiquette guide for sailors when entertaining ladies in the mess, it was pretty basic, pull the lady's chair out at an angle so she can sidle in comfortably. I don't remember anything quite as basic as the advice given to a small group of English sailors on shore leave who'd been invited to tea with the local bishop and who were told when they met the bishop's daughter to be sure to initiate the conversation, which the most enterprising did by saying "my, miss, how white your chest is".

President Reagan discovered some pretty trivial and expensive pamphlets published at taxpayers expense by the largest and certainly the most comprehensive publisher on earth, the United States government printing office and he sought to it that such things were discontinued and he assured us that this sort of economy would radically reduce the budget, balance it he promised by, I think, 1984.

Jimmy Carter decided when he came in to be Franklin Roosevelt, something every Roosevelt successor has tried to be one way or another without success. Carter's winning stratagem was to address the nation a television version of Roosevelt's famous radio fireside chats to address us wearing a cardigan. This he and his new young team of advisors agreed would make him instantly and visibly appear as a friendly neighbour, the helping hand next door, a man of the people. To the astonishment of the White House, Carter according to the polls the morning after appeared less like a man of the people and more like a bum.

I remember now some of the more shocked and spontaneous responses of ordinary folk, who do you think he is coming at us in a sweater? Maybe all right down in Georgia but somebody had better tell him he's president of the United States, at least he could do would be wear a neck tie. Well, of course fashions in publicly acceptable menswear change and have been changing very fast lately, yet when Bill Clinton held his first television phone-in, he's going to do this, throw the lines out to the country let people phone in. When he started this institution the other evening, he wore a suit, shirt, tie just like a banker or a baseball champ invited to the White House, but when he was asked if he'd sit in a presidential wing chair he said certainly not, he wanted a stool just like any other talk show host.

Clinton's drive to clean up waste is I must say not restricted to populist gestures, though you must have wondered at the beginning about his cafeteria. Well quite simply the White House dining room, which has been described as the most exclusive dining room in Washington is going to be turned into a cafeteria for all the White House employees and it's on that list that Mr Clinton has wielded his axe.

Again, it's absolutely routine for incoming President to deplore the size of the White House staff and promise to reduce it, downsize it as we must now say, reduce this at once. Last time anyone checked on such a promise was a friend of mine, a statistician who has the figures on everything, and this was again after a year or so of Jimmy Carter. How did he do, I asked my friend, I mean the White House staff? Oh yes my friend replied, he reduced it from 550 to 780.

Well President Clinton has really sent a shockwave through all the government's wage slaves because his first cuts are promissory – more to come. He is at once cutting in the White House from Mr Bush's required team of 1,394 down to 1,044 – 350 staff jobs out. It's impressive, except perhaps to the Republican leader in the Senator, Senator Bob Dole. You're going to hear a lot of unimpressed remarks from him in the near future. Senator Dole said, "Well let's face it, it's primarily a symbolic gesture, especially when many employees are merely being transferred and he is reportedly requesting an additional three million in taxpayer dollars to bring in dozens of new political appointees." But no other president has made anything like such a cut symbolic or actual. The president also announced that from now on only three of his top aides will rate a chauffeur and a car, his National Security Advisor and his deputy. The president thought that his oldest friend and buddy Thomas McLarty who's now his chief of staff ought to have one, but Mr McLarty declined, maybe recalling Mr Bush's notorious Mr Sununu who drove White House cars and flew White House planes just to get his teeth fixed.

Anyway, the staff cuts saves 10 millions out of the White House total budget of 200 millions. These announced savings came in the wake of another puffing headline: "In the White House, broccolis in, smoking's out". You'll recall that to do a year or two ago, when President Bush kept seeing broccoli showing up on the dinner menu and uttered a cry from the heart, which was echoed I'm sure by a whole regiment of husbands. "Damn it," he said, I'm president of the United States, I don't like broccoli." Of course, the fat was in the fire, the broccoli growers of America or whoever protested at once declared their pride in the fact that Mrs Bush did like broccoli and next day delivered a truck full of the stuff to the White House once I'm told it was humanely despatched to several hospitals.

Not quite as bad a clanger as poor old Gerald Ford who on holiday in the Rockies leaned back with a drink one twilight and remarked to a couple of old newspaper men that he liked to fill his days by keeping on the hop, eating and drinking he said are a waste of time. Floods of telegrams of lamentation from every branch of, quote, "the food industry of the United States". Imagine, the president of the United States who has to learn as soon as possible that he's allowed a very narrow range of personal opinions, none that will offend any number of Americans unless he is or was Harry S Truman. A Washington music critic didn't appreciate the musical gifts of daughter Margaret Truman, the president threatened to knock the man's block off and made rude remarks about his ancestry. Asked why he never invited the baseball champions or other famous athletes to the White House, Truman immediately replied because sports are a lot of damn nonsense.

Mrs Clinton is introducing her style to the White House and making few bones about the fact that the day of French cooking is over. We're trying to move she says towards healthy fresh American food including broccoli. We eat a lot of vegetables and a lot of fibre and a lot of fruit. You want to know a healthy fresh all American meal such as Mrs Clinton will serve/did serve at a banquet, she consulted three American chefs who are doing interesting things around the country and this is what they came up with, "smoked marinated Florida shrimp" – probably a prawn to you, "roast tenderloin of beef, baby lima beans and zucchini basket, INAUD gold potatoes, Vidalia onions, a salad of wintergreens with goat cheese from Massachusetts and hazelnut dressing." The pud, sweet or desert, "apple sherbet terrain with new Jersey applejack mousse and hot cider sauce", the wines were from Oregon, Virginia and California. So there.

I, for one, must applaud the appearance on a menu on an American table once again of the long forgotten local nectar applejack, which used to be known as Jersey lightening, it's a rare, light apple brandy – Calvaldos if you must – an applejack old fashioned was once a drink about as American as you could get and if taken in suitable quantities left you as paralysed as you could get, but sipped savoured a delicious and I swear a nutritious drink. To balance or outweigh this indulgence, Mrs Clinton also announced understandably since she's taken on the revamping of the American healthcare system that from now on the White House will ban smoking everywhere, so no more ashtrays, which anyway in this country are beginning to look like like hitching posts, artefacts of an earlier civilisation.

Since all American airlines banned smoking, more and more cities are being bolder about banning it in all public places, the rebel movement if it exists is puny; after all, in 1970, 49% of the American population smoked. Today, it is 24% and going down all the time.

Oh, by the way for any sinner temporarily depressed by this sort of news, a new and a reputable study out by the Food and Drug Administration concludes that after all the long years of commotion, coffee is really a pretty harmless drink. There's another study I came on though, took years to complete with hundreds of males being watched night and day and, you know what, sleep is a prime or famous cause – now I must be accurate, sleep then is most conducive to heart attacks, so I wish you good day or goodnight as the case maybe, be sure to rest but don't sleep.

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