Obama Chic: Inside the White House Cocktail Parties

It’s Wednesday night at the White House, and the era of the cocktail party has returned.
Only eight weeks into the Obama administration, the president and first lady have already hosted their fair share of social events. Indeed, White House social secretary Desiree Rogers has announced that the Obama administration plans to make Wednesday night social events a tradition.
“It’s not so much a cocktail party necessarily,” Katie McCormick Lelyveld, press secretary to first lady Michelle Obama, told FOXNews.com. “It’s a gathering that takes on the shape of the week’s agenda. The driving force is to reserve time Wednesday evenings to have at hand to use for whatever is at the top of the list of priorities that week.”
The announcement seemed to be a departure from the past several years, as the parties had all but fallen out of fashion since the Reagan era. President George W. Bush was rumored to dislike cocktail parties, and had given up drinking years before he was sworn in. As former press secretary Dee Dee Myers told Politico.com, the Clintons did not have a wide circle of friends in Washington and were "not as social" as the Obamas have shown themselves to be. The Reagans reportedly cultivated relationships with Washington society and Hollywood alike, while Carter instead enjoyed a more quiet social life.