THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: What Would Jefferson Say?

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The Presidency

It is a good time to get away from Washington and ask one of the old hands like Thomas Jefferson how the country looks from where he reposes. Jefferson is in style more than ever—the man who suspected bigness, distrusted cities, believed passionately in individuality. Jefferson is not readily available for consultation, of course. But if one cannot talk to him, then Dumas Malone, 86, the pre-eminent biographer, can stand in.

"I feel more at home here than anywhere," said the historian as he went up the hill to Monticello in the sunshine of Indian summer, his white hair ruffled by a warm breeze, facts and thoughts on "Mr. Jefferson" tumbling out in gentle accents.

"Jefferson was a humanist in the complete sense of the word," said Malone.

"Human beings always came first. . . His world is gone. His standards and values went with rural life."

Yet Jefferson's "basic faith in human beings and in the human mind," Malone said, remains the central political theology of America, the legacy of our most talented President. "Jefferson was an excessive optimist," said Malone. "He was an optimist when he probably had no business being an optimist."

"You cannot sum him up. You cannot go back to him for Government programs," said Malone. But in Jefferson is profound thought, curiosity, reason, taste, eloquence and the pursuit of excellence.

By Malone's account on that recent afternoon, Jefferson would have been appalled at the size of Government today, the number of cars on the streets (a prime cause, in Malone's eyes, of urban bad manners), the profit motive in everything, even sports, the ascendancy of merchants and bankers over the more creative farmers and industrialists, the decline of the English language and the idea that you use the White House as a "bully pulpit," in Theodore Roosevelt's phrase.

Today's political campaigning would have shocked him. "He was no man for a crowd," said Malone. "He gave few speeches. His voice was pleasant, but not strong.

His career was based on what he wrote."

Jefferson had immense popular appeal.

Within the Government, according to Malone, he had "a great gift with people. He exercised leadership over Congress. There was not another President who had such control until Woodrow Wilson."

Jefferson would have been an advocate of many of today's causes, Malone believes. He probably would have been sympathetic to Ralph Nader's consumer crusade and certainly would have been an early member of the Sierra Club, a subscriber to the Save the Whales campaign and most other environmental appeals.