Leadership as an Art Form

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

ON the surface, Richard Nixon's White House is a visual and mechanical marvel. Inside, where the President reigns in solitary splendor, the marvel is the man himself. The President's post-election campaign of self-assertion rolls on unchecked. Last week there still was no explanation of just why he had unleashed the massive B-52 bombing attack on North Viet Nam. His fiat to reorganize the Government caught the men elevated to super positions unawares and stunned the strata of bureaucracy below. Congress looked on in ignorance like the rest of the country. All through the nation Nixon was gaining the reputation of some kind of grim fiscal reaper as the depth and extent of his budget slashes filtered out. The actions were often not as unsettling as the calculated silence and distance of the President, an unprecedented attitude in an office that, as Nixon himself has explained, depends on keeping the people informed.

There was drama of sorts, of course. Colonel Ralph Albertazzie soared over the Rockies on a test flight of the President's gleaming new Air Force One (Boeing 707-VC-137, over $10 million). The plane soon will stand ready with its 16 private phone lines to sweep Nixon off on new adventures, while maintaining a flawless electronic umbilical cord to the Oval Office.

On the ground, Ron Ziegler, the youthful Press Secretary with the Hollywood profile and sideburns as hardy as Zoysia, was about to be made czar of the whole presidential image, a reward for his four flawless years of stewardship over the White House policy of non-information. He appeared in the press room in a suit of daring plaid and good-humoredly avoided answering questions on peace and bombing. He also showed up on a Virginia indoor tennis court in an "Izod outfit," the supreme quality in tennis attire. Coordinated Izods can cost $50. His play was just as good.

Back at the White House, Nixon turned 60, and the wizards in the White House theater, without even straining, came up with The Maltese Falcon, a 1941 thriller just made for the President. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, and the good guys win. There was a new film too, this one put together by Paul Keyes, producer and writer for Laugh-In, and it showed ten minutes of football fumbles and flubs while Rowan and Martin played straight, as if they were the President phoning in strategy to the quarterback. They say Nixon broke up.

But behind the crisp smiles and beneath the beautiful precision there are moments, some say, when Nixon is troubled. A lot of people, including Congress, are angry. Something has gone awfully wrong in those parts of the presidency that can't be flown or worn or priced or charted. They are the invisible dimensions of the job: civility and consideration, understanding and willingness to listen, candor and the patience to explain.

There is a curious turn in Nixon's character that has baffled the experts before. In private the President is courteous and kindly. But often his tactics in the governmental game beyond the Oval Office are insensitive and brutal. It is a two-way street, to be sure, and the Congress and other folks have committed their sins. But the power is in the White House. It is the instrument of initiative. What Nixon wants for the nation is not all that much different from what most others would like. But the manner in which he has gone at it has them muttering about King Richard even in Washington's exclusive Metropolitan Club.

There is no doubt that Nixon believes we are in a sort of national crisis where he must end the war, by whatever means, and arrest the growth of monstrous Government, fed by the ineptitude and the casual spending of Congress. But putting the presidency all together, from Izod outfits to the Paris peace talks, is an art form, as Thomas Jefferson explained. Not so long ago they used to practice that art in this city. Harry Truman, with all his independence and gutsiness, went through exhaustive consultations with Pentagon and State Department officials, down to the third levels of authority, before he committed forces to Korea. Alben Barkley, the mellow Kentuckian Senator and Vice President, was heard to rip into a Democratic colleague who kept attacking Republican leaders. Night after night Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson would go down to Eisenhower's White House breathing partisan fire, but something magic always happened when the old General uncorked the bourbon and told the Texans how much he admired them and needed them. Back on the Hill, those two passed the legislation that Ike wanted and a little extra for themselves. And it was about that time that Lyndon Johnson brought up some of that country wisdom of his. "After all," he would say, "he's the only President we've got." That is a far cry from what the men on the Hill are saying now about Richard Nixon.

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