THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Drum Rolls and Lightning

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For the past year Richard Nixon has led a singular exile, a man beyond his own shores, dwelling in the realm of world power, which he loves. He is not a Philip Nolan because he still resides firmly on U.S. turf, even goes to baseball games. Yet there is a tiny whiffy of The Man Without a Country around the nation's most prominent political scalawag. After five years a sizable segment of America still holds Nixon beyond forgiveness. It may always be thus. He may be ordering his life to acknowledge that.

Soon he will go to China for his second visit since leaving Washington. He will journey to France, Germany and Britain. Then he will move to New York, a city he wryly describes as the most private place in America because "nobody likes anybody else there."

There is no self-pity. His mind is hard yet, filled with the dangers and failings he perceives in the human condition, his own not excluded. He plays it as it lays. Curiously, his broad view contains a core of coherent national optimism that deepens irony. Hope and guidance from San Clemente, of all things.

He has put it in a book about the world, power and the presidency, which will be published in April. By all accounts it is a drama filled with timpani rolls of peril, but with lightning flashes revealing the way back to preeminence.

"Scare the pants off you," Nixon says, feet up on his desk, spectacles on, leafing through his raw prose. "Dicey time ahead for the United States ... the next two decades will be a time of maximum crisis ... 1985 is the year we face inferiority. Not just No. 2, but way back No. 2."

"Loss without war" is his warning. The Soviet leaders are not madmen, he notes, but they believe it means a good deal to be No. 1. So, too, may the Chinese, who could turn away from the U.S. if they see us continuing to slip. "They think we have the power now... but they question our will." So do others in the Nixon scenario. Germany and Japan must deal with a winner. The Saudis too.

Spirit, economic might, technical excellence are going for the free world, Nixon insists. "The world is going to move toward freedom ... We should mobilize our economic strength. If there is a real contest, there just isn't any question about the outcome. The U.S. and the West can be as strong as they need to be... An arms race for the Soviet Union is no win."

Nixon relishes Pope John Paul II's trip to Poland. "Stalin asked how many divisions the Pope had," Nixon chortles. "The answer is one hell of a lot of divisions." Nixon catalogues the Soviet flaws: their economy is a "basket case," Eastern Europe is not so firm, the cost of Cuba is growing. The Soviets have that one damnable advantage of singleminded, purposeful, directed leadership.