President Bush in the bubble

by Frank James

Presidents live such isolated lives. I was reminded of that today in looking at the news video from President Bush's transit between the Marine One helicopter and the Air Force One jet.

The president leaves the helicopter and walks a few hundred feet at most to Boeing 747 on the first part of his trip to Europe to the G-8 meeting of the world's most powerful economic nations.

As usual, he is accompanied by the base's commanding general, and they're both followed by their wives.

It's a scene that's repeated scores of times every year. And everytime it bespeaks not just power but again the loneliness of the office.

The bubble the president, any president, finds himself in is very real. Presidents move about in their tightly guarded cocoons.

Access to them is limited to close aides and other senior administration members, senior lawmakers, the biggest campaign contributors and the occasional people picked to serve as photo ops at presidential events.

These are people who more likely than not will tell the president what they think he wants to hear, contributing to the impermeability of the bubble.

Even those who sometimes intend to be confrontational find themselves awed in a president's presence. Of course that changes somewhat if the president's political support erodes or if his actions threaten fellow members of his party. Bush is finding that out now even as former President Bill Clinton and other presidents did before him. Even then, a president is more often than not accorded great deference.

Bush is often accused of being out of touch. But it's in the nature of the presidency to make the occupant of the office that way to greater or lesser degrees.

The tendency of the presidential office to isolate the holder suggests that any occupant of the office who hopes not to be trapped by the bubble needs a powerful curiosity about the world, and a hypersensitivity to the dangers of the bubble, including the risk that a president is mostly told what those around him, or one day her, believe the president wants to hear.

Many critics of the current administration have said that didn't happen enough on the major issues that really mattered, including the decision to invade Iraq.

It would be interesting to hear the current crop of presidential candidates talk about what they know of this bubble problem and address how they would overcome it.