"I had been in the Oval Office a hundred times as vice president or more... But I had never been up in the residence."

"And one of the things — I don't know about you all, but I was raised in a way that you didn't look for anybody to wait on you. And it's — we're — I find myself extremely self-conscious. There are wonderful people that work at the White House. But someone is standing there and making sure I — hands me my suit coat, or..."

From the transcript of Biden's CNN Town Hall last night.

Anderson Cooper expressed surprise that Biden had never been in the residence part of the White House? Obama never had him over?

Biden continues. I'll add a page break because this is very rambly:

And so living in the White House.... it's a little like a gilded cage, in terms of being able to -- but walk outside and do things. The vice president's residence is totally different. You're on 80 acres overlooking the rest of the city. And you can walk out. There's a swimming pool. You can walk off the porch in the summer and jump in a pool and go into work. You can ride a bicycle around and never leave the property and work out. You can — and — but the White House is very different. And I feel a sense of — I must tell you, a sense of history about it. Jon Meacham, who you know, and several other presidential historians helped me with my — I asked my brother, who's good at this, to set up the Oval Office for me, because it all happens within two hours, you know, literally. They move everything out and move something — and it was interesting to hear these historians talk about what other presidents have gone through and the moments, and who are the people who stepped up to the ball and who are the people who didn't? And what you realize is, the most consequential thing, for me, is, although I have known this watching seven presidents who I got to know fairly well, is, I always in the past looked at the presidency in the terms of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, and how can — like they're superhuman. But I had to remind myself that the really fine men that I knew well, the last seven presidents, and at least there are people who I knew well enough to know that I could play on the same team with. So, it took away the sense of, this is — my God, I'm not Abraham Lincoln. I'm not Franklin Roosevelt. How do I deal with these problems?

I just want to say there's also a pool at the White House. But maybe it's more difficult to just "walk off the porch... and jump in a pool" and then "go into work" — if you know what I mean. Joe Biden famously jumped in that VP pool nude. And we're told the female Secret Service found it "offensive," which if true, is ridiculous. It was his own home and he liked to just walk off the porch and jump in the pool. You don't have to go inside and change into swimwear. You can just shed whatever you have on and you're perfectly attired for swimming. Good for him. But the White House is, perhaps, a more formal place. And whoever sees the President of the United States naked? I mean, other than in your mind's eye when Bob Dylan sings "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."

I had to look it up to be sure there is indeed a pool at the White House, and let me give you these fascinating nuggets of fact from Wikipedia:

The 20-foot (6.1 m) wide and 50-foot (15 m) long pool was created in 1975 by 38th President Gerald Ford during his presidency... Ford's son, Jack, learned to scuba dive in the pool, and 39th President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy frequently dived in the pool. Barbara Bush frequently swam in the pool; in 1990 a rat swam past her and was subsequently drowned by her husband, 41st President George H.W. Bush. Barbara Bush said that she "[swam] with a mask, and it just went right by in front of me... Fortunately, George Bush was there and drowned the beast. It was horrible." Hillary Clinton was also a frequent user of the pool.... In the first year of his presidency Barack Obama wrote that he would leave the Oval Office and "have a cigarette (or two)" by the cabana "savoring a quieter moment and letting my thoughts wander and deepen."

Can you picture H.W. drowning a rat? How dare you swim past my wife?! Does he grab it by the neck to hold it under? How long would it take — long enough to segue from feelings of heroism to feelings of cruelty? Was Barbara egging him on, praising him, getting excited by his man-on-rat prowess? Did the Secret Service stand back and stand by?

But Bush vs. Rat is not my favorite part of the Wikipedia White House swimming pool paragraph. My favorite part is Obama's prose: "savoring a quieter moment and letting my thoughts wander and deepen." I love Obama's utterly justified supreme confidence that his readers will drink up this notion that if he sits by the pool smoking and lets his mind go, his thoughts will not merely wander, like yours and mine — his thoughts will deepen. 

ADDED: "But I had to remind myself that the really fine men that I knew well, the last seven presidents..." — Did he just call Trump a really fine man? Or am I taking that out of context? Did he go on to exclude Trump...?