Incoming presidents may take office with soaring thoughts of changing the world, but one of their first decisions concerns lowlier matters - the design of the rug they choose to cover the Oval Office floor.

President Bush chose a $61,000 (£40,000) affair with an optimistic sunbeam design, President Clinton a $38,000 solemn dark blue rug with a large presidential seal in the middle, and the older President Bush a blue-grey rug costing $28,550 with the seal in gold.

Incoming presidents change much more than the rug, of course. They change the tenor of the White House, and often the entire culture of Washington.

They import their own values. With roughly 3,000 jobs to dispense, they bring an influx of outsiders to the city as well as their own court followers - Hollywood-types, musicians, artists, designers, chefs. And never is the change as pronounced as when a president from one party takes over from a president of the other.

The most celebrated example is John Kennedy, who took office in 1961 after Dwight Eisenhower’s eight low-key years in the White House. JFK and his glamorous young wife, Jackie, turned the capital into the new Camelot with white-tie soirées and dazzling guest lists drawn from the arts and science – a dinner for 49 Nobel prize winners one week, another for Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and other literary greats the next. Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to the President.

Ronald Reagan ushered in another cultural sea change when he replaced Jimmy Carter in 1981. Mr Carter hated pomp and ceremony; he wore cardigans, turned down the thermostats and installed primitive solar panels on the White House roof to save energy.

Mr Reagan removed the solar panels and restored the pageantry. He held glittering state dinners and enlivened the capital after the austerity of the Carter years with his optimism, humour and Californian glitz.

Bill Clinton, the first president from the postwar generation, gave Washington another thorough makeover. His inauguration was a five-day showbiz love-in with stars such as Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson and Jack Nichol-son flocking to the capital. Even Fleetwood Mac reunited for the occasion.

Mr Clinton brought a younger, looser crowd to Washington, many of them from Arkansas. Meetings started late and ended even later. Takeaway pizzas fuelled late-night breeze sessions. On one occasion Los Angeles international airport was shut down while he had a haircut on Air Force One as it sat on the runway.

With President Bush came the Texa-fication of Washington. A fleet of private jets from the Lone Star State flew into Washington’s Reagan and Dulles airports for the inauguration. The Texas Black Tie ’n’ Boots ball was the pick of the inaugural bashes. Stetsons, cowboy boots, cowhide cummerbunds and bolo ties were the favoured dress.

There were no black or gay entertainers. Unlike his predecessor, Mr Bush was in bed before midnight, an hour before schedule - setting the tone for his Administration.

It was more efficient, but much less fun. The Bushes dislike formal entertaining - “They do the bare minimum, and they do it glumly,” one former staffer told Vanity Fair magazine - and like to be in bed by 10pm.

The Bush years have accelerated another trend in Washington - the increasing polarisation of the city’s social life along partisan lines. Social contact between the two parties - a powerful political lubricant - has been reduced dramatically.

In the coming weeks the victor and his team must nominate roughly a thousand Cabinet Secretaries, ambassadors, US attorneys and other top officials. Below that they must appoint about 600 senior members of the executive services, 1,500 personal assistants and as many as 7,000 people to part-time positions on boards and advisory bodies.

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