flowers: $500,000

The merger of Hollywood and the White House becomes official today, when the wonderfully homely Chelsea Clinton gets hitched in Rhinebeck, New York, in an obscene extravaganza that will cost a guesstimated $3 million. Flowers: $250,000 (some say $500,000). Vegan snacks: $250,000. Portable toilets: $15,000. The bride's jewelry: $250,000. Fireworks: classified.

What a distance we have traveled since Harry Truman carried his own suitcase to Union Station after the Eisenhower inaugural in 1953. He didn't even have a pension! (Congress passed the first presidential pension act in 1958, in part because of Truman's precarious financial situation.)

Now our presidents leave office as rich as Oprah, as Stephen Spielberg, as Barbra Streisand--as rich as all the Tinseltown celebrities who will attend that wedding today. Few have played this game as well as the father of the bride. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford