Mr. Porter Goes to Washington

By Hugh Sidey

One snowy morning last week Roger Porter, 28, hauled his lean frame out of bed and into the darkness of his Alexandria, Va., apartment. It was 5:45. He struggled through a few pushups, stood groggily erect and then touched his toes while his wife Ann scurried to dress and prepare breakfast.

He scanned two memorandums as he gulped his orange juice and chewed through his toast, talking here and there about the world and the nation and his place in it, the last still a source of wonder to him. The evening before, as most people in Washington hurried to their homes while snow began to fall, Porter had been in his office calling Air Force One with an urgent question on economic planning for his boss, L. William Seidman, President Ford's economic assistant Seidman was returning from Atlanta with Ford.

By 6:30 a.m. the young couple were in their Chevy and headed through the slush of Route 1-95 toward the White House. They listened to the news of Ford's southern excursion on the car radio, reached the southwest gate of the White House grounds just before 7 and parted, Ann to drive on to her job as a congressional staffer on the Hill, Roger to tramp through the piled-up snow to Room 200 in the Executive Office Building.

Somehow these young men, almost boyish, keep coming to Washington from far out there in the land, full of hope and energy, rekindling, no matter how grim the times, the legend of American opportunity for those of ability and dedication.

Porter was born in Provo, Utah, and reared there and in Ames, Iowa, the son of a professor. He played a little basketball and tennis, did some overseas work for the Mormon Church, graduated from Brigham Young University with straight A's (except for a few A minuses), became a Rhodes scholar, taught at Oxford, came back to Harvard and then became a White House Fellow, one of 15 selected to work and learn for a year at high-level posts in the Government.

He had no powerful friends, little money.

He did have brains and discipline, easy humor and an undented faith in this land and its system. He arrived to take his Fellow's spot with then Vice President Ford's office on Aug. 9, just 3 1/2 hours before he became an aide to a President. The harassed Seidman, whose assistant Porter would be, welcomed him. "Great," said Seidman, and then the two of them were swept along in the maelstrom of the historic presidential power change.

One day at Seidman's side Porter was suddenly motioned to a chair in the Cabinet room as Ford strode in. He began scribbling notes for his boss on the new economic moves. There came a week when he raced to Andrews Air Force Base and clambered aboard a windowless jet for a round-the-world flight. From Tokyo to Bonn, a small group of officials dispatched by the President helped explain to allied governments Ford's ideas for reviving the economy. Over the Christmas holidays Porter followed Seidman to Vail, Colo., and was seated at dinner across from Gerald Ford, listening as the President talked of his hopes for America.

In those fragments of the 15-hour workday not given to Seidman and Ford, Porter has examined his own mind and found his notions of democracy, Government and the men who run it expanding and changing. He marvels at the pressures that bear on the presidency and how any man withstands them and still keeps in touch with the real world. He sees now how messy and inefficient democracy has to be if human rights are to be protected. He senses America's strength and the difficulty of harnessing it in a free society, the need to help the weak but challenge the strong and vigorous.

On that morning last week Porter switched his mind from his good fortune to a TV set, where Seidman was talking on the CBS Morning News. Then he rushed to the Roosevelt Room in the White House for a 7:30 a.m. staff meeting stayed on to take notes at an 8:30 session of the Economic Policy Board. By noon he was eating cafeteria turkey at his desk, deep into the preparation of an economic briefing paper to be sent to President Ford to help guide him in his next moves That Roger Porter was there, neither overwhelmed nor overbearing, is perhaps one of the small testimonials of hope in these uncertain times.

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