The White House - 26 May 1995

Does anyone in the class remember the old phrase, American know-how?

The principle word-man or lexicographer of American political speech, Mr William Sapphire, doesn't mention it, though he does record such well worn catchphrases as the American system, the American way of life, and of course the most persistent, if dim, vision of the good life to come, the American dream. But I haven't heard American know-how – which was once on everybody's lips especially the lips of the Europeans – for at least I'd say 40 years. No I take it back. One unforgettable recollection of it, all the more memorable because the phrase had vanished from ordinary conversation.

About 15 years ago, 17 to be exact, the big shots who run the United States Tennis Championships moved the so called National Tennis Centre from a bosky little corner of Long Island called Forest Hills, to some parklike acres on Flushing Meadows, and planted the courts bang on the tarmac of LaGuardia Airport, which indeed dominates Flushing Meadows. Alright I jest, but not as outrageously as you might think. The centre court on which all the crucial championship matches are played, does often give a visitor the impression that it was deliberately placed as close to the LaGuardia runways as possible. The noise can be fearsome, of revving and roaring planes, so much so that one year, the opponents of Jimmy Conner's complained bitterly that they couldn't hear the grunt he delivers a split second before banging the ball. It became vital they should hear it because one man lost the Wimbledon Championship by hitting the grunt instead of the ball.

Anyway, there was another odd feature of the centre court, which once completed baffled everybody, most of all the players competing in the late afternoon. A great flat monolith, a screen of blazing electric lights had been installed along the west side of the centre court, so that as the sun went down the great rectangular shadow of the monolith not yet lit fell across part of the court – it shifted of course as the sun declined. Well, the first summer that the championships were played at Flushing Meadows, all incoming foreigners were asked what they thought of the new centre and its strikingly original features. A new man and forthcoming champion, the engaging Czech Ivan Lendl, who disguises a nice taste in irony, as well as poetry, behind a poker face. He looked at the slanting shadow on the centre court, stuck his forefingers into his ears against the uprush of a departing 707 and said: "Well I suppose it's what you'd call American know-how." I loved the crack at the time, but was surprised he was old enough to use it or remember it. Its heyday was in the five, ten years or so after the Second World War when Europe, ravished and bankrupt, had begun to pick itself up and see a glimmer of prosperity on the horizon thanks to the enormous investment of the Marshall plan. Because of the widespread destruction of aerial bombing of, you could say, the British industrial landscape, and the supporting fact that British – and for that matter French – methods of manufacture, technology, labour management relations, had fallen behind, there arrived here so-called 'productivity teams' from Europe, to learn American know-how.

I will dwell no more on that proud phrase, which was banded about during the 1950s, the decade old Americans now recall with tearful longing when under the benign and peaceable Eisenhower, the United States was more prosperous, more content, more ingenious and more admired than anybody. That long lost phrase American know-how slid out of circulation in direct proportion to the rising expertise of the Italians' shoes, cars, clothing and Germans' camera lenses, the cheap car and the Japanese in everything, I'm afraid it would only be used mockingly by foreigners today and here it is heard no more.

If you ask Americans when they emerged as the industrial or crafty whiz kids of the world, some of them will go back to the 18th century Franklin's stove his lightening rod, his invention of bifocal glasses and certainly recite all the American marvels of the 19th century from the cotton gin to the electric bulb and the typewriter. But there is also a whole literature of complaint and lamentation among visitors to America all through the 19th century going right up to – on my bookshelves – the Baedeker Guide to America of 1906, complaints about the primitive ordeal of travelling in America: the hard beds, the muddy rutted roads, the rudimentary inns, the universal fried food and cascades of public spitting.

When I came here – and, throughout I should say, the 1930s certainly – the cuspidor was a regular adornment if not a necessity of hotel lounges, and shining brass cuspidors lined the corridors of Congress like plant pots in a conservatory. I suppose the one institution of American life that today would be rightly cited as combining 18th century elegance with 20th century convenience is the White House. The White House changes its interior especially the presidential living quarters with every new tenant. There was a time at the end of the reign of Theodore Roosevelt, the outdoor adventurer and slaughterer of wildlife on several continents, there was a time when visitors taller than midgets complained that they had to duck their way into the ceremonial rooms to avoid being slammed down by the jaws of grizzly bears and skewered by the horns of antelopes or wildebeests. Few Presidents have transformed the place so radically, in conformity with an eccentric personal hobby, but they're allowed to do so. President Truman had the gall in the face of much public protest to install a balcony on the south-east portico; he wanted to be able to sit there on summer evenings looking out on the countryside just as he'd done back in Missouri.

Personal taste, received at a stroke, a transcendent touch, and a general seal of approval when Mrs John F. Kennedy moved in and did something that no predecessor had attempted, namely to do over completely the official rooms: the east room, the blue room, the diplomatic reception room. She begged and got from friends and institutions splendid true examples of 18th century colonial and federal furniture, she acquired French 18th century wallpapers and produced an interior scene of such ravishing elegance that none of the successors has dared –I think I hope – to improve on her. But this elegance and expertise are fairly new in the history of what was originally called the President's Palace. Its cornerstone was laid in 1792 and the work was meant to be completed – I mean the first tenant could expect liveable house by the time the nation had invented itself and worked out a form of government, which had happened – within 5 years but it was not to be.

Eight years later when the second president came along from Philadelphia to install himself and his wife into the new capital, they moved in a creaking soiled carriage along an avenue with no paving, into a house with no drainage and no water system. One structural wall was half built, only six rooms were habitable. The East Room was a shell of stonework, the grounds were littered with shacks, the living quarters of the diligent workmen who'd been at this job as long as they could remember. When the Adams's arrived, they were taking their coffee – more likely their rum break – sitting and drinking around the grounds. It's a dreadful story of a thoroughly inhabitable place even well beyond 1814 when the British enemy marched into Washington and performed the service of burning down the Palace. Once its walls had been smoke stained, it was wholly repainted in white and eventually, but not till this century, did a President Teddy Roosevelt put the White House on his notepaper and so it's been called ever since.

One of the boasts of succeeding presidents is that the White House is not some regal palace remote from the people that its inhabitants reign or rule over, but the people's palace, which is being temporarily dwelt in by the lucky winner of the last election. Every day visitors, ordinary visitors to Washington, line up and pass through the outer gate and nowadays of course, pass through also an inner detector ray, undertaken on a regular tour, until last week, throughout all the anxiety and hazards of wars and presidential assassinations – of which there have been four and five close calls – the White House has stood there in full view of strollers and people lowering the windows of their cars to get a clearer look.

The atrocious bombing of that federal building in Oklahoma City stirred an old outcry, a demand from the secret service to close off Pennsylvania Avenue to all traffic along the whole length of the White House and its surrounding lawns. President Clinton had gone into this often and now reluctantly decided it had to be done, almost as a nudging reminder that he was right. You'll have heard that a man with a strong claim to being a lunatic climbed over a fence at night-time and was immediately brought down.

Of course people are saddened, mainly at the thought that it had to be done, that the precautions taken in the name of security become more and more constraining on the President and his movements. But Mr Clinton evidently feels like President Johnson, who after the assassination of President Kennedy broke away one day from the secret service in the Main Street of Austin Texas, and visited, as they say everybody in sight. You have to stay close to the people he said, you have to press the flesh so you do. So Pennsylvania Avenue has become a mall, a walkway, very pleasant and every day the people line up for the tour – in any given year over a million of them – let us hope they will not soon be any good cause to stop them.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.