Never Yearning for Home

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

The New York Times's Scotty Reston, one of the best journalists of his generation, still charges around the world at age 74, probing Presidents and Prime Ministers and urging all those old fogies in public life to retire to their ranches.

Reston, and many others, had it figured out a year or so ago that Ronald Reagan, House turned 73 on Monday, could barely wait to leave the White House and get to the Pacific hills to savor fully his golden years.

Reagan did not retire -- never wanted to. Nor did Johnson, Nixon, Ford or Carter. Leaving the presidency is tough on the ego. Once you've played the White House game there isn't much else that looks like fun.

Yet thoughtful people are still swayed by the idea that the presidency is a kind of political purgatory because of its loneliness and burdens. Thomas Jefferson liked plantation life better than running an uncertain new Government and started the idea of a "splendid misery" along the Potomac. Today political opponents often find it comforting to believe that the other fellow is yearning for home.

The truth is that recent Presidents do not come to the job by accident. They spend most of their adult lives scheming and maneuvering to get into the Oval Office.

They know the presidency's charms and demands. Leaving is the misery.

Those jocular statements by White House Aides Mike Deaver and Jim Baker that Reagan seems to be in better health now than when he started the presidency may be clinically true. A success ful leader's body often seems to keep going when it should not.

When Lyndon Johnson had a serious heart attack in 1955, a lot of people thought he would be a semi-invalid. His doctor, Vice Admiral George Burkley, found that Johnson's heart functioned normally through five years of the presidency. When Johnson, believing he would lose the 1968 election, reluctantly went home, he seemed to lose purpose, reverted to bad eating and smoking habits, and died in four years.

The fear of assassination has also been overdrawn. The threat is there, as Reagan knows better than anyone. The idea of dying with his boots on is not something any President talks about publicly. But in private a couple of them have made it plain that it is better to take that chance than wither away idly in a rocking chair.

The theory that Reagan would want to quit while he was on top was nothing more than a theory, one put out by people who have never been President. A man at the pinnacle who has had some success smells more; one who has not yet succeeded wants to keep trying.

The fascination, the fulfillment, indeed the sheer exhilaration of standing hourly in the center of world affairs and trying to shape events are neglected in presidential literature. Most Presidents cannot describe their feelings; some are fearful lest such a confession make them seem power hungry, which is an occasional of at that level. Jerry Ford, perhaps the most modest and candid of the recent presidential crop, explained once while in power, "I can't wait to get to the office each morning to see what problems there are and try to do something about them."

There career probably as many facts known about Reagan's life and career when realizing that office as any recent President's. Yet we are just now realizing that Reagan per almost incidentally a sportscaster, movie actor and television personality. From his early days in Dixon, Ill., Reagan has been a leader, a man who always searched beyond his immediate occupation for some way to make his presence felt. It was never in the cards that he would give up a habit of 60 years.