The New Style of Exposure

By Hugh Sidey

In this era of world leadership, the metal detector is the altar and the minicam may be god.

In just 20 years, terrorism, communications, the jet plane and the increase of wealth and knowledge have forced, to varying degrees, world leaders into a haunted and secret peerage whose links with the people they guide are meticulously cleansed and staged. All of them lament this fact, from the Pope to the Prince of Wales, and none more than Ronald Reagan on his Old World pilgrimage, but they know their new age of isolation is nevertheless a stark fact of life.

The old order may have reached its zenith with John Kennedy's trip to Ireland in 1963. We just did not understand what was happening then. Kennedy rode through multitudes in an open car. He stood on the quay at New Ross from where his great-grandfather sailed for Boston, hugging and laughing with anybody who came, even shabby, unshaven figures who emerged unsteadily from the pubs to hail the visitor.

The small crowd allowed through security lines in Reagan's ancestral Ballyporeen was thoroughly infiltrated by security agents, both men and women dressed as camera-toting tourists. In the Ronald Reagan Lounge, John O'Farrell, an entrepreneurial genius, proprietor of O'Farrell's Pub, posed with his family as cast. They were positioned and tutored for pictures, including four-week-old Catherine Nancy O'Farrell, named for Mrs. Reagan. It was duly reported that a man in a cloth cap was ushered in as "a solitary rep-representative of the plain people of Ballyporeen."

Kennedy's motorcade inched into Dublin with thousands of swirling fans around him, the young President's profile etched in the afternoon sun. Reagan helicoptered from a secluded airport corner to his house in Phoenix Park; the streets of Dublin were nearly deserted.

But just as stagy as the Reagan spectacle were the protests that helped to produce the President's protective script. The "ring around Reagan" of at least 5,000 marching Dubliners condemning Reagan's foreign policy played to television cameras. The Catholic prelates who snubbed Reagan in Ireland sought headlines, not answers. The 1,800 journalists who descended on Ballyporeen outnumbered the village's entire population more than 5 to 1.

And yet during all of this plotted pageantry through Ireland and the commemoration of D-day in Normandy came images of true affection, understanding and meaning. Beamed to an estimated 300 million people around the world, that may be a fair trade-off for the lost intimacy.

The future may bring even more changes for ceremonial visits and leadership councils like the London economic summit. Many events are already covered through "pool" arrangements, in which a small group of reporters is selected to represent and report back to the rest of the press corps. There may have to be more of that, because hard-pressed countries and communities can scarcely afford the millions of dollars and man-hours necessary to protect a leader as well as cope with a huge entourage.

It might be less fun for those folks who seem to relish the story of security agents and protective apparatus as much as what Presidents and Prime Ministers do and say. No more yarns about "the sinister black briefcase" carrying nuclear codes, or the "android image" of the Secret Service, or how agents switch revolver style when they change clothes from casual (Smith & Wesson Model 10) to formal (Walther PPK), or the press "baying for names and quotes." Unfortunately, the prose that would result would be far more prosaic. The sense of pomp and ceremony and history would be sacrificed. But by taking refuge in an electronic cocoon, those who run the world might be able to travel through it more quickly, quietly and safely.