THE ULTIMATE SLEEPOVER

The Land Commissioner of the Great State of Texas was buck naked in the White House when the thought hit him. Relaxing upstairs in a warm bath, he suddenly realized he was not unwinding in just any old bathroom. He was soaking in history.

“I remember reading about how Roosevelt rolled his wheelchair into the [same] bathroom while Churchill was taking a bubble bath and smoking a cigar,” said Garry Mauro, citing an occasion more than five decades ago when Winston Churchill visited Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House during World War II. The two political titans had forged such a close relationship that FDR carried their discussions of the fate of the world right into the prime minister’s bath.

“I just happened to be thinking about that when I was taking a bath,” Mauro said of his own overnight stay at the White House in 1993. “It was pretty cool.”

Cool, nothing.

The White House is more than the ultimate sleepover. It brings out the child and the tourist in even the most worldly of guests. For many, it does even more than that: With every stair step and alcove haunted by the great leaders and great events of the past, spending a night at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. can be a profound experience. Like an odd twist on the Hotel California: You can check out, but it will never leave you.

“You’re moved by it,” said University of Arkansas law professor Richard Atkinson, a close friend of President Clinton.

“In a nice hotel, there’s no sense of awe. There might be a sense of ‘Gee, it’s nice,’ ” Atkinson said, “but for me there’s nothing that stirs you into wanting to think about how can I better participate in this country’s life.”

Revelations that Clinton bestowed the favor of a night at the White House on as many as 900 people during his first four years in office--many of them honored for making huge financial contributions to Clinton and the Democratic Party--has led some to question whether the experience has been cheapened. Has a night at the White House been converted into a frequent-donor bonus for party fund-raisers? Grand prize in a campaign raffle?

Political moralists can ponder those questions to their hearts’ content. And the American people, who actually hold title to the building, may eventually weigh in. One thing is already clear, however: Among those who have had the experience, very few proclaim themselves anything but awed.

As cynical as people may be about politics or government, few seem able to sustain those negative thoughts when they come face to face with the reality of the White House, such as:

Spending a night in the Queen’s Room suite, as Atkinson did, with its echoes of men and decisions that created the “great arsenal of democracy” and sustained Britain in its finest hour.

Sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom, as others did, knowing it once served as the office and meeting room in which Abraham Lincoln and his advisors plotted strategy and struggled to save the Union.

Turning out the light on a bedside table originally purchased by Andrew Jackson.

Walking through corridors once as familiar as old slippers to Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Almost no one is too jaded for that.

“If I were a child, this would have been the greatest field trip of my life,” said Brian Greenspun, president of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, who stayed over for two nights in 1993. “And as an adult, it was still the greatest field trip of my life.”

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Clinton aides are understandably a bit sensitive about the subject.

“There is a large number of people staying over for all kinds of purposes,” insists White House spokesman Michael McCurry. “The bottom line is [the Clintons] enjoy opening up the place to different people.”

Among them: Bernard Rapoport, a Waco, Texas, insurance executive whose ties to Clinton go back to the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign. He gave this account:

“One of the guys [from the White House] called up and said, ‘The president wanted to know if you’d like to spend the night in the Lincoln Room.’

“I jokingly said, ‘Any charge?’

“He said, ‘C’mon!’

“So I said, ‘Yep, we’ll come!’ ”

For Clinton pal William Bowen, 73-year-old law school dean at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, a night in the Lincoln Bedroom evoked thoughts of history and more prosaic reactions as well.

Bowen’s grandfather and great-grandfather fought in the Civil War--for the South--giving their all to defeat Mr. Lincoln’s army. Although it is a heritage of which he’s proud, Bowen said he didn’t feel strange at all catching some zzzz’s where Lincoln toiled for a more perfect Union.

“You know, you long ago come to grips with that part of the history of the United States and the family involvement,” he said.

And what came to occupy his mind most of all that night as he lay in the bed used by Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt was a feeling more immediate than profound.

“They need a new mattress,” he said. “I thought it was awful lumpy.”

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Invitations to enjoy what administration officials call the “second-floor experience” commonly begin with a phone call. Sometimes it carries an invitation for a state dinner as well, or the showing of a movie in the family theater. Or sometimes just to stop over because you’ll be in town--a night that may include a late tour with the president himself as wide-eyed guide.

Guests sleep in one of three rooms down the hall from the president’s residential quarters. One is the Queen’s Bedroom, a bright room with a four-poster bed. The other is unnamed and the third is the Lincoln Bedroom, the only chamber named for a single president.

Some guests arrive by taxi. Others are greeted at the airport by White House transport. One man was picked up at his hotel by a military driver who constantly radioed his progress through D.C. traffic.

Those who drive their own cars up and through the giant gates can expect a White House moment all their own. Instead of bellhops rushing out to grab their luggage, they are greeted by security personnel with dogs that sniff around the vehicle.

As for the accommodations, these Gump-like bystanders to history are so overwhelmed that they scarcely notice the details. Many can’t recall whether their beds were turned down at night, whether mints were left on the pillow, or whether the towels bore the presidential seal.

“Honestly, I can’t remember,” Jim Blair, general counsel for Tyson’s Foods in Fayetteville, Ark., said when pressed for particulars.

Little wonder. Blair and his wife, University of Arkansas political science professor Diane Blair, stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom, perhaps the most honored place for visitors.

The 16th president never slept there--or in the large bed that now dominates one wall. The bed, with its massive and ornately carved headboard, was part of what Lincoln considered an embarrassingly extravagant decorating spree by his wife. He refused to use it--or to ask Congress for the extra money needed to pay for it.

Still, it is the room in which he had his office, held his Cabinet meetings and signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

A copy of the document, as well as a holograph copy of Lincoln’s only handwritten and signed version of the Gettysburg Address, are enshrined in the room. Jim Blair said the documents “really got me. I did make a point of reading them over again and thinking about the country lawyer that . . . is probably our greatest president.”

The Blairs’ reaction is typical of what many experience. A humbling sense of gratitude, a sort of pride and a Is-This-a-Great-Country-or-What? disbelief.

Las Vegas publisher Greenspun, who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom with his wife, Myra, said he felt “transported” by his surroundings.

“Remember the old show ‘You Are There’? I felt like I was there. I was going back more than 100 years. . . . The room is full of historic documents and artifacts that make you feel like you’re there with Abraham Lincoln.”

Some claim literally. Both Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower reportedly sensed the presence of Lincoln in the room, and First Daughter Maureen Reagan swore she once saw an apparition of a red-coated figure standing by the fireplace. Her father’s dog, Rex, once led his master to the room, growling and stalking but refusing to go in. Amy Carter held slumber parties with friends who waited up all night for the ghost of Lincoln to appear.

Ann Henry, a longtime Clinton friend who teaches at the University of Arkansas business school, said she and her ophthalmologist husband, Morriss, were aware of the talk about Lincoln’s ghost when they accepted an invitation from Clinton to stay in the bedroom several years ago.

But it was the scene outside the window that left the biggest mark on her.

“It was a bird’s-eye view of what the residents [of the White House] look out on every day . . . and their existence within a fishbowl,” she said. “You can see people lined up outside for public tours. You can see demonstrators across in Lafayette Park. You can see the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial.”

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Even the jaded Hollywood crowd can’t help but be affected, said Atkinson, who has slept over at the White House twice. He described the first time in late 1993, when the first family had a screening of the movie “Philadelphia” and threw a dinner for the crew and cast members, including Tom Hanks.

“It was very refreshing because there was no pretense that this was not exciting to them,” Atkinson said. “The indifference that sophistication sometimes breeds was stripped away and no one was abashed about having a childlike glee about being there.”

As for himself, Atkinson remembers how an obviously excited Clinton led him and others during the evening on an informal tour, which included a stop in the Oval Office.

What came to his mind was “the continuity that democracy has provided, the bloodless transition of the people,” he said. “That was an exhilarating feeling.”

For Texas Land Commissioner Mauro, it was all of that and something more: a conviction that the night reflected something unique to this particular country.

“If I can end up with a friend in the White House, any American can wind up with a friend in the White House,” said Mauro, whose grandparents came from Italy and whose university degree came from an agricultural school.

“What it did was, once again, put into perspective that this is the only country in the world where people who are not born to the right parents and have a lot of money in the bank can spend a night in the White House.”