Keeping Up the Presidential Style

By LANCE MORROW

The search for the yacht went badly. Neither the Navy nor the Customs Service could find what the White House was looking for. The President's men had their eye briefly on John Wayne's old converted minesweeper, but the price was $2 million; the President had been sort of hoping that someone would, well, just donate a boat, accepting the nation's thanks and the tax deduction. No one volunteered, so, for now, the White House has given up trying to find a presidential yacht on which Ronald and Nancy Reagan can float down the Potomac on summer evenings, dancing with friends or lobbying Congressmen.

The problem would never have come up, of course, if Jimmy Carter had not sold the Sequoia in one of his paroxysms of anti-imperial budget cutting. Carter got only $286,000 for the old yacht that had served American Presidents since Hoover, but it was the symbolism of the thing that mattered. Carter took the oath of office in a $175 business suit and spurned a limousine in order to lead his Inaugural parade up Pennsylvania Avenue on foot. He went for an image of blameless frugality, a presidency in a cardigan sweater: no pomp, just folks. He even brought his relative Hugh Carter ("Cousin Cheap") all the way from Georgia to crack down on White House extravagances such as office TV sets and IBM Selectric typewriters.

Ronald Reagan practices a fancier personal style altogether. He spent $1,250 for an Inaugural morning suit (the whole elaborately striped works). As soon as he and Nancy got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they began investing the place with a swank and shine it has not had since early Camelot, restoring many of the touches that the minimalist Carter had banned. They put the trumpeters back on the White House balcony to welcome foreign visitors. They fully reinstated Ruffles and Flourishes and Hail to the Chief. They stationed a Marine in dress uniform at the entrance to the West Lobby, just to salute decoratively and open the door. They spent $736,000 (all privately donated) to refurbish the family living quarters of the mansion, which had become a little tacky. Nancy Reagan wears expensively elegant designer clothes ("American thoroughbred," Women's Wear Daily calls her look) and sets a handsome table of French dishes and the best California wines. Her Los Angeles hairdresser, Julius Bengtsson, flies in at least once a month to maintain the "highlights" in her hair.

The Carters had their own graces. But the contrast between their style and the Reagans' revives a question that was first raised in 1789, when Congress tried to decide whether the new President, George Washington, should be called "Your Highness." The question: In just what sort of style do Americans want to keep their Presidents?

The short answer is that Americans are ambivalent and unpredictable on the subject. No one expects the leader of the world's greatest democracy to live in Neronian excess: so far, no President (except maybe Warren G. Harding) has approached the White House with the attitude of Pope Leo X: "God has given us the papacy. Let us now enjoy it." On the other hand, as Carter proved, modesty of life-style does not automatically capture the nation's heart: James K. Polk brought a Presbyterian rectitude to the White House (he and his wife Sarah banned dancing and drinking), but such stern virtue did absolutely nothing to elevate Polk in the opinion of history. Chester A. Arthur went in for luxe, the best of everything, with roughly the same result.

Presidential styles are always a matter of elaborate psychological discretion and democratic fine tuning. A President cannot in any important way violate the values of his people or the spirit of his time; not with impunity, anyway. A President, being standin, scapegoat and exemplar, works even closer to the Zeitgeist than Phil Donahue. Before the sumptuous Reagan Inaugural, Barry Goldwater objected: "When you've got to pay $2,000 for a limousine (four-day rental required at $500 per), $7 to park and $2.50 to check your coat, at a time when most Americans can't hack it, that's ostentatious." A corollary complaint holds that it is at the very least unbecoming for Reagan, who is slashing at the federal budget like a samurai, to put on such a display of serene opulence in the details of his personal life.

Elegance is inflationary. Whether or not taxpayers are actually picking up the bills (they are certainly not paying for Nancy's hairdresser or the President's first-class country-squire tweeds), the style bespeaks to some a sleek and impenetrable callousness.

But the Reagans' display is never obnoxiously luxurious. They have the poise and humor to bring it off: Ron is always armed with that grin, those boyishly wholesome jelly beans. Besides, most of America would judge it hypocritical or bizarre if the Reagans suddenly started serving tuna casseroles at state dinners and getting their clothes at J.C. Penney. The presidency is a form of national theater; even in difficult times, Americans may still like to see a little sumptuousness there, in the same way they like to see Fred Astaire movies during their depressions. The trick is to be impressive without looking either corrupt or ridiculous. Richard Nixon's Graustarkian palace guard uniforms got him caught on the second point.

From the beginning, American presidential style has had to lean simultaneously in two different directions: the character in the White House should behave with becoming democratic modesty: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and so on. But he must also express -- in word, deed, bearing, personality, haircut and haberdashery -- the greatness of the idea and the people he represents. Lacking royalty, Americans need at least a little regality in their four-year constitutional rulers. The President today probably has too many expensively soundproofed helicopters in which he can flutter impressively here and there; but they are the late 20th century equivalent of George Washington's transportation arrangements. Washington's cream-and-gilt coach was the best in America. When he went out to ride on his horse, its hoofs were meticulously blacked, its mouth washed out, its teeth picked and cleaned, its hide curried to a satin sheen.

A President's social style -- whether he serves lemonade or champagne, for example -- sets something of a tone for his Administration, and even, in subliminal ways, for his epoch. But such questions of style do not alter, from one Administration to another, the immense and extravagant enterprise of the presidency, a multimillion-dollar-a-year project whose essence is not decor, but power. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said:

"The general's reward is not a larger tent, but command." Un less a President starts inhaling cocaine and roller-skating in the Oval Office, his personal style is as much his own business as his accent. Americans have generally had the sense to worry more about what he did with the power.

-- By Lance Morrow

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