NEW YORK -- A new book by Christopher Anderson is called "George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage." Andersen, who also wrote "Jack and Jackie" and "Bill and Hillary," may not always be "respectful," to quote a reviewer, toward America's First Couples, but the appearance of his latest book -- midway through the current presidency -- and the prominence The New York Times book review has given it remind me of a phenomenon that puzzled me for several years after I settled in this city: the royal treatment that American people seem eager to accord their president.

Actually, I can't pinpoint when the realization hit me. Was it when President Richard Nixon, enamored of the colorfully uniformed, feather-capped, gold-braided honor guards of the European countries he had visited, introduced something similar at the White House? My bewilderment, as I recall, was not so much with the goofiness of the idea as the willingness of his aides or his government to accommodate it because it was a presidential wish.

Or was it when a friend of mine wanted to know what the Japanese word for "folksy" might be? That adjective had suddenly become an admirable quality in Gerald Ford when he became president in 1974 following Nixon's resignation in disgrace. An attribute that was not particularly glamorous had to be otherwise for the president. My friend's joking suggestion was, I realized, that the president of the United States deserved special status.