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Bodyguards have even become a sort of status symbol. Affluent communities like the star-studded Malibu colony in California hire private sentinels to augment whatever protection they get from local police. Aides to Playboy Enterprises Chairman Hugh Hefner boast that his personal-security arrangements approach presidential class. Eight security men were on hand when Actor Robin Williams recently turned up in New York City for the opening of The World According to Garp. Said the Washington Post's "Ear" column in a midsummer rundown of fashionable Ins and Outs: "Bodyguards are deeply In." The security binge is not, however, a matter of mere style. It is taken seriously almost everywhere, but nowhere more seriously than among the leaders of the world, or at least among those responsible for protecting them. When the Prime Ministers, Premiers and Presidents of the West congregate in one of their summit junkets, one of the biggest attendant stories is about the formidable apparatus of guards and safeguards. At Versailles, where this year's economic summit convened, more than 2,000 sentinels (police, soldiers and such) were mobilized, plus hundreds of other security experts and agents brought along by the seven major participants. At moments it seemed that security instead of economics was the name of the summit game. Given the variety, sophistication, scope and sheer quantity of safeguards put in place in recent years, one might conclude that the world has been made safer. No such conclusion seems to be warranted, though; witness the unflagging zeal of the continued quest for safety. Added precautions never seem to reduce feelings of insecurity very much, or for long. This may not be as odd as it seems at first. After all, while no strategy is ever entirely reliable in forestalling trouble, any safety measure can be counted on absolutely to keep people mindful of the possibility of threats. Result: feelings of anxiety instead of serenity.
The White House provides an illustration. While the security apparatus that has evolved there should assure Americans that their President is fully protected, it actually reminds everybody that danger is constantly at hand. The system has turned the President into a fleetingly visible leader who, even as he leaves a press conference held inside the White House, is surrounded by guards. Presidential security, provided by numbers that are kept secret for security reasons, is sufficiently large to give Ronald Reagan's entourage, when the President travels, something of the air of an imperial expedition. Hundreds go along when the President flees to Barbados or his California ranch for a vacation. On this summer's junket to England, after the Versailles summit, Reagan security was so zealous that his managers insultingly proposed having White House food tasters monitor the Windsor Castle meal that the President was to share with Queen Elizabeth and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The presence of the White House guards was heavyhanded enough to incite one Member of Parliament, John Wheeler (also director of the British Security Industry Association), to say, "Very frankly, your President was surrounded by a bunch of gorillas."