The Itinerant Chief Executive

By Hugh Sidey

For Jerry Ford it was a more or less typical week: Charleston, Durham, Paris (France, that is). When he gets back from there, he will undoubtedly hit a few places like Des Moines, Madison and Manchester. Then he will be off to Anchorage, Peking (China, that is), Manila, Jakarta and Honolulu. That will take the President up to mid-December; and after a short desk stop in the Oval Office, he will emplane for the ski slopes of Vail, probably with a rally or two on the way. And after the holidays, presidential primary campaigns begin in earnest, and so it will be Pocatello, Binghamton and you name it.

Delaware's Senator William Roth wonders about all this travel on the basis of its cost alone. He has learned that the Federal Government plans to spend $2.3 billion for travel this fiscal year. Roth has a computer printout of Government travel patterns that runs 25 ft., roughly $100 million a foot. He would like to see a 10% cut across the board, with Ford leading the way.

When the Scripps-Howard editors dropped in to see the President last week, one of them asked how Ford could do the job when he was gone so much. Ford argued that it didn't matter where the President was, as long as he got the work done.

That will not satisfy very many people. The pollsters say their data show the itinerant presidency is one reason for national nervousness right now.

Americans have been arguing about this since Woodrow Wilson collapsed in Colorado in 1919 after 34 speeches in which he tried vainly to sell the League of Nations. There were new doubts when Warren Harding's health failed in the waters off Alaska in 1923 before he expired in San Francisco. The jet plane has reduced the physical burden of presidential travel, but its very ease encourages its use.

Part of the travel surely is necessary. A President does need to see his nation, does need to confront the world's other authorities eyeball to eyeball. But does he have to turn the White House into a kind of pit stop?

Ford seems now on the verge of making motion the major device of his leadership. All through the State Department last week there were doubts about the wisdom of the China trip. The top men in Peking are sick and aged, distrustful of our overtures to the Soviet Union. No real diplomatic business can be transacted. "He's going because he wants to," explained one diplomat.

Interestingly, that urge never seems to overwhelm people like Leonid Brezhnev, who keeps delaying his trip to the U.S. because we have not worked out anything new for him to negotiate on arms limitation. When he can make a deal, he will be on our doorstep.

Finally, one must conclude that Air Force One and the marvelous technology that sends it round the globe have become a kind of a presidential hobby, replacing the medicine ball (Hoover) and the stamp collection (F.D.R.). Crew members lather that beautiful plane with Glass Wax before a trip, polish it to a mirror finish with compressed-air buffers and add tire black to the ten wheels. They fill the hold with the tenderest chicken and juiciest steak, packing it all away in dry ice with flawless precision so that each day's meals come up on top in the proper order. On board, far above the world's anguish, life is eased by soft stereo and fingertip service from the six stewards. Who could resist?

"For sure, one reason that the President travels so much is that marvelous plane," Peter Lisagor, a Washington wit, tells his lecture audiences these days. "The way to keep the President at home more is to take Air Force One away from him and make him fly Allegheny ..." Lisagor swears that before he is able to finish the line, his listeners are roaring with laughter and clapping their approval.

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