A Need for Some Privacy

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

In the first hours that President Carter was back at his White House desk from his Western retreat, he was briefed on the legislative tangles his natural gas bill had encountered. At least two or three times, a faraway look came into his eyes and he chuckled, "I wish that I was back on the Salmon River."

Indeed, his rafting adventure down the Salmon was perhaps the farthest withdrawal from the presidency, both physically and emotionally, that has been managed by any recent Chief Executive. It is true that Secret Service agents with their guns and radios were near by in other rafts. But their security paraphernalia were covered with outdoor garb, and even television cameras and reporters were banished from the immediate scene. For a few hours at a time then, the President heard only the rush of clear water, the muffled voices of family and friends, and the quiet language of trees and animals in a wilderness. Said Hamilton Jordan: "A man like President Carter, who has grown up close to the soil, gets a special peace of mind from being out of doors."

Then came word that the natural gas compromise was in trouble and Carter had better come home two days I early. There is a certain sadness in this. A President ought to be able to remove himself from public contact for two weeks, particularly to get away from Washington, which is just terrible in August and September. ("I consider it as a trying experiment for a person from the mountains to pass the two bilious months on the tide-water," wrote a new President, Thomas Jefferson, in 1801. "I have not done it these 40 years, and nothing should induce me to do it.") But today's politicians who want to sneak off now and then for some solitude also want the public and the press to be on hand for moments of programmed casualness. The two purposes collide.

Yet one wonders if all this high drama--the proclaimed need for instant communication to the world, the imperative of being on the bridge of the ship of state--is really that necessary. Carter, like other Presidents, both loves it and at times grows weary of it. He still frustrates his staff a little by adding appointments to his schedules even while trying to find additional moments of solitude. His early morning starts in the Oval Office (6:30 a.m. these days) are as much for the quiet of the hour as for extra time. "I don't have to get here that early," he told a friend. "I like to get up and come over here to be by myself." The special joy of Camp David is that in a little corner of the patio of Aspen Lodge the rest of the world can be held off for a few hours. Servants do not intrude. Security men are at a distance because the camp's access is tightly guarded.

The amount of White House intrigue and energy it takes to preserve even these moments is increasing. Nobody can even tabulate the requests from politicians, legislators, friends and special interests. There are 1,620 accredited White House correspondents, photographers and technicians constantly battering the doors. While the First Family has almost total privacy on the second floor of the mansion, once Carter goes out on the Truman balcony, tourists train their binoculars on him from in front of the south lawn. On these heavy tourist days at the White House (1.5 million visitors a year now), the corridors are so jammed that Rosalynn Carter, to get to her East Wing office undetected, must either walk outside on the drive or go to the basement and make her way through the mechanical rooms and up the back stairs.

There may be no satisfactory answer on a President's privacy. But at least a few people are beginning to wonder if we would not all be better off if there were some way to have the Federal Government pause, particularly in times like these when there is no great national upheaval.

Jefferson might have found a way. In that same 1801 letter in which he answered critics about his absences from Washington, he noted that George Washington had set the example by taking August and September off. "Grumble who will," he said, "I will never pass those two months on tide-water."

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