The Situation Room – at the heart of a crisis | Hawk’s Eye – Burlington, Iowa

Uh-oh. You’re in hot water now.

Your plans fell apart in the most spectacular way and everything fell apart faster than you could have ever imagined. Worse still, the matter is about to be made public and there is no room for an excuse, no wiggle room to explain. But things could be much worse. As in the new book “The Situation Room” by George Stephanopoulos, you could be the President of the United States.

Better yet, imagine being the one who has to wake the president in a national emergency. Sometimes, Stephanopoulos says, monitoring threats to the U.S. government is boring work and you just need to take a nap on a nearby cot. When it comes time to wake the president, “pandemonium” best describes the job. And that’s what this book is about: in a few rooms in the White House, off the dining hall, a nonpartisan staff watches, watches, 24/7, to keep us safe.

Although all presidents surely monitored other governments while in office, Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to suggest the creation of a central department for security reasons, but he never followed through. John Kennedy did so, out of frustration: Eighty-seven days into his term, the Bay of Pigs invasion proved that major improvements in the security of communications between officials and the White House, and between foreign entities and the White House, were needed immediately.

Lyndon Johnson was obsessed with the Situation Room (so named, thanks to a Kennedy staffer) and was there almost constantly. Nixon rarely visited the Situation Room, and staff were taught not to call him because he was sometimes weakened during national emergencies. The Fords often “loitered” there on their way to the White House swimming pool; Ford, says Stephanopoulos, did not “put on airs…” Jimmy Carter experienced moments of anguish there; Alexander Haig was the “man in charge” of the situation room, but he had an excuse. Bill Clinton’s White House was sweating over Y2K, and when it all ended, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Nothing happened. The world was going to be okay. At least that’s what we thought, Stephanopoulos said.

You go to bed each night with the implicit hope that the planet doesn’t implode while you sleep. Yet count up the national and international crises you’ve witnessed in your lifetime, and it’s quite surprising. Now read “The Situation Room,” look inside the nation’s nerve center, and find out how it saved our national bacon a time or two.

Taking you back almost seventy years, author George Stephanopoulos takes turns getting readers’ hearts racing, then delighting us with a lively timeline and previously unknown tidbits about government in action. These insights include the work ethic and attitudes of the guys at the White House, and this part of Stephanopoulos’ reporting is gripping. Often, we were on the verge of disaster without even knowing it. Sometimes neither does a president. Hard sip.

Historians will devour this book, as will pop culture fans, political observers, and any American who follows international events.