THE BETTER PART OF VALOR

Even though they order armies around and with a few words give or take billions, Presidents worry profoundly about their personal displays of courage.

A glimpse of fear on the face of the man can become a lingering fear in millions. A small retreat from the world's anger can send ripples through every free society. It takes time to sort out what is courageous or merely foolish in the large acts of policy. Human hesitancy may instantly weaken a man's ability to lead.

That is why Jerry Ford has brooded so long and in such uncharacteristic isolation about his personal security. His first responses of defiance to the threat on his life were out of his all-American tradition--the Boy Scouts' code, the athlete's rules of conduct, the Navy's worship of bravery, and the noble Fourth of July exhortations he has listened to and given on the American legend of courage.

Courage is the greater part of leadership. But trying to define it in these complicated times is the biggest problem. It is a delicate equation, balancing instinct, intelligence, action and restraint. When the odds rise high enough against unlimited public exposure, then courage can blur into stubbornness and maybe even folly.

Dwight Eisenhower had less trouble with these impulses than any modern President. As one of the world's most renowned soldiers, he did not have to prove anything to himself or anybody else about his courage. He did go to Korea for a firsthand look at that messy war, but for the most part he avoided any public posturing. He did not go to Little Rock and lead black children through angry crowds, as some people wanted him to do in the nation's first school integration crisis. When his advance team ran into protests in Japan in 1959, Ike simply canceled his plans to visit that part of Asia and played golf in Hawaii.

John Kennedy had been a bona fide war hero, but he was concerned a great deal about showing his manhood. He delighted in the story of how he called the big steelmen "s.o.b.s," and in fact it was he who leaked the story. In the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, an evacuation plan was devised for key people in Washington. It meant that if the crisis grew, the select group would be taken by helicopter to the special command post under a Virginia mountain. Kennedy pondered a short while, then confided to some of his closest aides that if a nuclear attack came, he was not about to leave the White House or his family. He might go up in the fireball, but his pride would be intact; and the nation's survivors would then have inherited Lyndon Johnson or John McCormack, Carl Hayden or Dean Rusk, if any of them had followed orders to go under the mountain.

In the days of the Viet Nam War, L.B.J. craved some link with the men fighting in the field. He elevated his one World War II adventure into a saga of bravery. He told about "the Japanese ace" who relentlessly attacked the bomber on which Johnson was flying as an observer, as if the enemy pilot knew Johnson was aboard and might someday be President. In Manila in 1966, Johnson jetted secretly and dramatically to Viet Nam to stand in front of the troops assembled at Cam Ranh Bay. En route he talked about how he did not have to demonstrate his courage to anybody--but of course, that is what he did on that dubious mission.

When the war protesters engulfed Washington in 1970 and there was fear of violence, Richard Nixon staged his singular visit to the Mall at 4 a.m., where he talked with the kids, an act that was publicized as if he had met Grant at Shiloh. Sometimes Nixon seemed to relish a scent of danger, to almost taunt protesters. One night in San Jose in 1970, he stood above his car near a crowd of antagonists, and in the floodlights he gave them his big V sign. As he did it, he muttered, "That's what they hate to see."

Ford has not sought situations in which he can show his courage. They have come to him. But the problem cries out for him to put mind over impulse, forbearance over defiance, for the sake of the country as well as himself.

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