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George Reedy, who was Lyndon Johnson's press secretary, takes a gloomy view of the inevitability of presidential isolation. In The Twilight of the Presidency, published earlier this year, he writes: "From the President's standpoint, the greatest staff problem is that of maintaining his contact with the world's reality that lies outside the White House walls. Very few have succeeded in doing so. They start their administrations fresh from the political wars, which have a tendency to keep men closely tied to the facts of life, but it is only a matter of time until the White House assistants close in like a Praetorian Guard."
A President must claw hard to reach the outside world. He must fight his own natural inclination and that of the men around him to make his life as easy as possible. Says Haldeman, who thinks that Reedy overgeneralized his experience under Johnson: "I agree that the place could entrap a President. That's why President Nixon physically leaves the place and goes to Camp David or Key Biscayne. Kennedy said that one good thing about the White House is that it was a short walk to the office —but that cuts both ways."
There is almost a built-in corrective to presidential isolation, argues Bryce Harlow. As his Administration wears on, every President gets into trouble and he begins to feel cloistered—and the inner circle expands as he reaches out for fresh opinion. There is already evidence of this in Nixon's Washington. John Mitchell, the patron of Clement Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell, recently expressed his concern at "the amount of popular cynicism about the Supreme Court." Before a group of his own restive civil rights lawyers, he pointed proudly to his department's accomplishments for Southern blacks; in one year, it added 108 school districts to the 162 desegregated from 1954 to 1969. When an ugly confrontation seemed likely between Mississippi state police and students at Jackson State after the shootings, he ordered Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard off on an Air Force plane to smooth things out there.
One important Republican Senator thought that Nixon's sleeplessness on the eve of the May 9 Washington demonstration was "the best thing that has happened recently. It was the first sign, the first indication that things were getting through to him." There have been others. Interior Secretary Wally Hickel finally got to see Nixon last week. Students have had ready access to White House offices and aides since the college strikes began, and reporters have found some normally closemouthed Nixon assistants not only available but downright candid about their jobs. These are only straws in the wind, but Nixon is obviously sensitive about the charge of isolation. One adviser criticized Nixon's welcome to New York City's construction workers because it would offend students sympathetic to antiwar demonstrators attacked by the hardhats. But Nixon jumped on a Wall Street businessman who made the same point at a White House dinner last week—a dinner that itself was a gesture toward the nation's suffering investors.
"I see all kinds of people," Nixon answered. "I'll continue to see all kinds of people—students, teachers, sociologists, businessmen, hardhats. Do you know that