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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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110689
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p31
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 30The PresidencyThe Yen to Stay OnstageBy Hugh Sidey
Some days recently the real President (named Bush) has been
crowded out of the news by the antics of the has-beens. Ronald
Reagan was on display in Japan for a reported $2 million (or 284
million yen) from the Fujisankei Communications Group. Jimmy Carter
was in Nashville instructing listeners on how he wrote his books.
Richard Nixon huffed off yet again to China after disconnecting his
AT&T phone service because the company was sponsoring the TV
version of The Final Days, last weekend's ac count of the end of
Watergate and Nixon's presidency. Gerald Ford was at the Herbert
Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa, of all places, addressing a
conference called "Farewell to the Chief," a discussion of life
after the White House. Expenses paid, of course.
No answers could be found there on just what to do with these
famous fellows. Keynoter Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of
Congress, suggested creating "a House of Experience," like the
British House of Lords, where retired, talented Americans could
offer their wisdom. Public television's pragmatic Roger Mudd
pointed out that the last thing a new President would welcome would
be an official pulpit for the guy he just ran out of office.
And while there was massed clucking over the size of Reagan's
fee and Ford's continued service on corporate boards, the Communist
world was declaring the profit motive holy writ. Not let a retired
President participate in capitalism and make a noble buck? That
would be a sort of excommunication from America.
With the nonsmoking, jogging, superenergized Presidents we get
now, the nation could soon have six or seven healthy retired Chiefs
roaming loose looking for things to improve. The consensus for the
moment seems to be, as Mudd suggested, not to use them officially
but to encourage them to follow their own interests, one hopes with
taste and grace. We probably could not change them if we wanted to.
It is worth noting that each of the four former Presidents has
reverted to form with a vengeance. Reagan is back on the
mashed-potato circuit (raised to a world-class level), taking fat
fees for propounding his doctrine of hope and reward. Carter, who
always was a better missionary than a President, now has the
stature and the means to tread the globe's troubled pathways
relentlessly urging reform and righteousness.
Nixon is the most scrupulous in money matters. He will not take
fees for speaking, will not serve on corporate boards, dropped his
$3 million-a-year Secret Service detail. His passion remains power
and influence. Nancy Reagan's memoirs report that Nixon called the
White House in 1987 and offered his services to urge the hapless
Don Regan to quit as chief of staff.
Ford goes about doing good while doing well. He plays golf all
over the world for fun and charity, reminds everybody he was an
Eagle Scout and still lives by the code, practices old-fashioned
partisan politics in election season and openly relishes the money
from the boardroom.
True, Truman and Ike had other ideas about life after life in
the White House. But that age is probably gone forever, like it or
not.