Nos. 37, 38 and 39, All Onstage

By Hugh Sidey

The presidency was on rare display around Washington last Thursday. First there was the 37th President, deposed Richard Nixon, quoted as saying in a David Frost interview that a President was above the law. Before noon No. 38, Gerald Ford, now a genial Palm Springs jock, was traveling nostalgically through the corridors of power on his second visit as a private citizen to the place he wished he had never left.

By afternoon the 39th President, Jimmy Carter, had reclaimed his rightful share of attention by calling an outspoken general back from Korea, setting a new arms-sales policy, dismissing Nixon's singular view of a President's power and asking one of his old opponents in the scramble to reach the White House, Scoop Jackson, to come around with his wife and kids that night for quail, okra and a fancy pudding.

In the late afternoon Jerry Ford came back strong. He held a "Cabinet meeting," one of the most unusual exercises by a former President yet recorded. Some of the old boys from the Ford team trooped into the board room of the American Enterprise Institute on 17th Street and gathered round the chief just the way they used to do it in the real Cabinet Room. There was a little more laughter this time, but then Ford called them to order and asked them, one at a time, for a thumbnail report on the state of the world in the areas they had controlled in more glorious days. 'Tin delighted that the Carter Administration has adopted your aircraft-noise program," Ford told William Coleman, who used to be head of the Department of Transportation. The new people were reaping a lot of benefits from the Ford Administration initiatives, lamented Jerry. Take the wiretapping bill, said Ford, turning to former Attorney General Ed Levi. Bill Simon, who used to run Treasury, summed up his grave doubts about the economy under what he felt was the vacillating hand of Jimmy Carter. After more talk and some laughs. Ford said that as for himself, "I am going to be heard from."

By evening Nixon had elbowed his way back into the city's consciousness.

In the third Frost interview, he talked both of a country arrayed against him and of one held together by his courage and daring. He was comparing himself to Lincoln again, and his troubles to the Civil War, talking about heaven and hell and lamenting that the Kennedys had never had him to lunch .Here again was the evidence -- and warning -- of how personal the presidency can become, how easy it is in the comfortable recesses of power to drift beyond reality.

Meantime, while the Carters and the Jacksons were rocking on the Truman balcony and stroking the family cat far from the camera lenses, Ford was back in focus trading quips with Bob Hope at a $1 ,000-a-plate Republican dinner. ("As Gerald Ford said," joked Hope, "Washington is a nice place to visit but I'd rather live here.") A few blocks over, in another hotel, the White House news photographers were holding their annual celebration. One guest was Billy Carter, and the speaker was Humorist Mark Russell ("Billy moved out of Plains because he could not stand the pressure of the inner city"). Billy then reported that he had gone over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to see his brother but could not get into his office. After that he had gone to the White House basement to see Chip Carter, who also was busy. He then had asked if he could see Chip's new baby, and was told he would need a security escort. Billy said to hell with the presidency and went off in search of a cold beer, which was not a bad idea about that time of the night last Thursday.

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