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“not unlike a SWAT police unit you might see on television.” 5
    The real show was about to begin. About forty longtime friends and supporters joined Mrs. Baker and her daughter, Cissy, around the Baker’s circular driveway. They were about to be initiated into a scaled-down, informal version of a modern American ritual: the Arrival of the President. It is an event staged in waves.
    First, a huge helicopter landed five hundred yards to the east of the Baker home to drop off forty-five White House reporters and photographers, who were trucked to the president’s landing site. Next, a smaller helicopter touched down near a big red “pillow” landing marker on the Bakers’ front lawn to deposit White House aides. Finally, Marine One, the president’s huge white-capped helicopter, came into view, roaring in from the east at treetop level, making a sharp ninety-degree turn and then hovering for a moment before settling on the high ground near the house. Its throbbing rotors kicked up such strong prop stream that not only did it flatten the grass and whip up dust, but the people around the driveway had to lean into its backwind to keep from falling down.
    Neil Sexton, the Bakers’ longtime handyman, had been fearful all along that the presidential visit would wreak havoc. To his dismay, the helicopter whirlwind blew the lawn furniture down the hill and unceremoniously unwrapped Cissy Baker’s wraparound skirt. “I knew it,” Sexton muttered.
    Whatever the inconvenience, Senator Baker recalled that moment with the satisfaction of a country squire extolling his favorite Tennessee walking horses. “I had a yard full of presidential helicopters,” SenatorBaker later recalled. “I had three or four of them. Big old things. And people were more intrigued with that than they were with the president, to tell you the truth. They’d stop and stare at the helicopters longer than they’d stop and stare at the president.”
    As soon as the president landed, the senator could not wait to show off to the Reagans his real pride and joy: the picture-postcard view from the guesthouse. “I was just chafing at the bit to show the president that magnificent view off the back porch of the guesthouse, looking over the river gorge to its unspoiled mountain beauty,” he said. At the guesthouse, he said, “I started to raise the blinds, and they wouldn’t come up. I found out the damned Secret Service had nailed them shut.”
    In rising frustration, the senator whirled on the ranking Secret Service agent. “What have you done?” he demanded. “You’ve nailed the blinds to the floor.”
    “There might be a sniper out there,” the agent replied.
    The senator dismissed that as ridiculous. “But it’s two miles to the nearest hill!” he protested.
    The agent was unmoved. “Yeah,” he said, “but we can’t afford to take the chance.”
    Trapped by security demands even in this tranquil setting, Baker, who had made a run for the presidency in 1980 and harbored ambitions for 1988, found doubts suddenly flitting through his mind about whether he really wanted to be president. “I was beginning to think, you know, I don’t think it’s worth being president if you have to live like a prisoner.”
    But as those second thoughts preoccupied him, President Reagan bent over and started pulling the blinds up, ripping the nails right out of the floor. It was an impulsive act like those of other presidents—Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, or John F. Kennedy plunging into crowds against the warnings of the Secret Service, determined to assert their authority and independence. Moreover, it turned out that the blinds had only been lightly tacked down, giving Senator Baker a moment of liberation. “The Secret Service was huffing and puffing and carrying on, but we went outside,” he recalled with a broad grin, “and at that point, I knew this man is sure enough president.”
    After the Reagans had duly admired the view, Senator Baker played