Relations.(The Talk of the Town)

After months of open-air rallies and stadium speeches, America's political families turned last week to domestic scenery: Sarah Palin in her Wasilla kitchen, mixing baby formula; Michelle Obama discussing with Laura Bush which bedrooms at the White House would be good for Malia and Sasha. The Obamas announced that they would be joined in Washington by Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson, who immediately became known as the First Granny. With a little license, one could imagine the clan as a Presidential version of the Griswolds, loading up the Prius, pilin' in the relations, and roadtripping it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the new family mutt.

"I enjoy decorating. So I get to get this whole new room and do whatever I want!" Malia, who is ten, told a reporter, over the summer, and, so, some previous tenants agreed to share a few tips. "The challenge is to make it your home," Luci Baines Johnson said. "It's the people's house, and it's very much a museum. And, in fact, our 'living room' was the West Hall. It didn't even have a door on it! Which is very symbolically appropriate, because your life is so open to the world."

For Johnson and her sister, Lynda Johnson Robb, a memorable perk of living in "the Great White Jail"--as Margaret Truman called it--was the proximity it provided to their father. "It might have been eleven o'clock at night, but he was home for dinner," Robb said. Johnson recalled, "I was on what we called Daddy Duty the day that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. I was a narcissistic teen-ager, and I said, 'Oh my God, why are we having to walk over to the Capitol, Daddy?' and he said, 'Darling, because of this great day, the Congress of the United States will never look the same again.' " Young Tad Lincoln, a hellion remembered for kicking balls into mirrors, enjoyed reviewing troop movements with his father. Almost every afternoon, Teddy Roosevelt would join his son Quentin in the attic for a game of "chase the President." (Presumably, before 1998, that sounded like a family activity.)

The generations of girls who have inhabited the White House compose a sort of underground society, initiating one another into the place's charms--"Have a helluva good time," Alice Roosevelt Longworth wrote to Susan Ford. The Johnson sisters planted notes for Tricia and Julie Nixon, especially in the solarium. "Lynda and I had courted there, so we just wished them some precious moments," Johnson said. "Luci and I were of the age to be entertaining dates, and, of course, you ...