The answer?  20 years after Ronald Reagan famously removed Jimmy Carter’s solar hot water panels, George W. Bush installed the largest solar array on the Whitehouse out of anyone, believe it or not…

Since September 2002, a grid of 167 solar panels on the roof of a maintenance shed has been delivering electricity to the White House grounds. Another solar installation has been helping to provide hot water. Yet another has been heating the water in the presidential pool.

I bring it up because of my buddy Brian Gulatta’s blog post about Earth Days, yet another absolutely killer Sundance Film Festival movie we saw about the history of the environmental movement, and how it was basically shut down at the end of the 70’s with Reagan in office.  He ran on a platform that is alot like what is argued in the famous article Death of Environmentalism, that states that many modern day environmental tactics go against the grain of “what’s American” (which, as an environmentalist, I actually agree with). 

As we know, Reagan really kicked Carter’s ass, largely related to this in my opinion (besides the fact Carter sort of ran the country into the ground):

 
 
Through the early-mid 70’s Congress, under leadership of Nixon (of all people), the country passed some of the most sweeping environmental reform we’ve seen.  Endangered species, establishment of the EPA, etc. etc.   Environmentalism didn’t have it’s enemies like it has now — back then it was a common collective to think who doesn’t want clean air?  It is a long, complicated story why this fell apart (just as much the enviro’s fault as anyone else’s in my opinion).  It turns out the first earth day (April 22, 1970) had over 22 million people come out, for the largest single gathering nationwide in U.S. history.    They even closed down 5th Ave in New York for it:

So it’s funny that solar panels became a White House preference.  Carter invisioned they’d last forever, as a symbol.   Reagan tore them right down…

It is always funny to hear about the little things of the operations of the White House and how different Presidents have different approaches to running it.  This is why there are so many awesome books about life inside the White House, it’s curiously interesting.  This awesome article came out today in the NY Times about President Obama’s method of running things in comparison with Bush.  Bush actually sounds like a real stick-in-the-mud, versus this at least: 

From the article, comparing life at the Whitehouse between Bush II and Obama:

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket.

Thus did an ironclad rule of the George W. Bush administration — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times — fall by the wayside, only the first of many signs that a more informal culture is growing up in the White House under new management.

And a little more…

Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)

He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man trying to balance work and family life. He eats dinner with his family, then often returns to work; aides have seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading briefing papers for the next day.

“Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have never seen him happier,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The chance to be under the same roof with his kids, essentially to live over the store, to be able to see them whenever he wants, to wake up with them, have breakfast and dinner with them — that has made him a very happy man.”

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

“Wow, Gibbs,” the press secretary recalls the president saying. “Just got here and you already have your feet up.” Mr. Gibbs scrambled to stand up, surprising Mr. Obama, who is not yet accustomed to having people rise when he enters a room.

Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time. In the Obama White House, meetings start on time and often finish late.

Too funny…

And finally, George W. Bush’s plates:

If there is one thing Mr. Obama has not gotten around to changing, it is the Oval Office décor.

When Mr. Bush moved in, he exercised his presidential decorating prerogatives and asked his wife, Laura, to supervise the design of a new rug. Mr. Bush loved to regale visitors with the story of the rug, whose sunburst design, he liked to say, was intended to evoke a feeling of optimism.

The rug is still there, as are the presidential portraits Mr. Bush selected — one of Washington, one of Lincoln — and a collection of decorative green and white plates. During a meeting last week with retired military officials, before he signed an executive order shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama surveyed his new environs with a critical eye.

“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do something about these plates. I’m not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”

I don’t think I’m much of a “plate guy” either…