He will not have to be dragged from the White House, as some recent cartoons have suggested

He will not have to be dragged from the White House, as some recent cartoons have suggested, but Bill Clinton leaves office just before noon today with obvious reluctance to fade away from public life. At 54, the youngest ex-US president since Teddy Roosevelt nearly a century ago will not head home to Arkansas but to a rally in New York to begin what many believe will be a liberal government in exile. He has reportedly been studying the examples of former ex-presidents, including Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, but he has not made up his mind which, if any, to emulate. He apparently admires Hoover and Carter most for their reinvention as statesmen. Claiming to have presided over "an era of great American renewal", Mr Clinton said in a farewell speech from the White House: "My days in this office are nearly through, but my days of service, I hope,are not." The White House said he had the day off yesterday and spent much of his time supervising the packing of his files and souvenirs, deciding which should go to the new family house in Chappaqua, New York, and which should be put into storage in Arkansas to await the construction of the Clinton library and public policy centre. In between those duties he was reported to be padding around the carpeted corridors of power, doing what he has always done best, schmoozing, back-slapping and glad-handing at a string of staff goodbye parties. At 12.45, President Bush will say goodbye and the Clintons will board the presidential helicopter, normally known as Marine One but renamed Nighthawk One for this occasion, because it will no longer be transporting a president. Similarly, when the Clintons arrive at Andrews air force base for their flight to New York they will be boarding not Air Force One, but Special Air Mission One. Mr Clinton's life as a private citizen is scheduled to begin at 3.05pm, when SAM One lands at New York's John F Kennedy airport.