Presidents Often Find Life Is Stifling in a Glass White House : Clinton echoes past chief executives in his promises to stay close to the people. But those vows rarely survive the reality of a public job and its private risks.

WASHINGTON — A modern-day President is aptly described as living his life in a “bubble”--a cocoon at once so transparent that all the world can see in but so confining that it isolates the occupant from that same world.

Many new presidents have vowed not to be so constrained, and Bill Clinton is no different. But he may learn, as others have, that breaking free is not so easy.

The need to keep a president safe and the demands of journalists, who feel they must accompany a president every time he leaves the White House, make it virtually impossible for a chief executive to carry on anything that resembles his former life.

Those same restrictions make it more difficult to stay in touch with the American people. Remember President Bush’s apparent amazement at seeing a supermarket scanner, an innovation now commonplace in the American marketplace?

“The bottom line is: This is not an ordinary person, this is the leader of the Free World,” said Shirley Ann Warshaw, a professor of political science at Gettysburg College, who specializes in presidential studies.

“Teddy Roosevelt used to love to walk the streets of Washington, but this is not the same Washington as in the days of Teddy Roosevelt. A President like Clinton is going to have to stay in touch with the American people other than by walking the streets of Washington.”

Clinton already has begun to discover some harsh realities. So disturbed was he when a group of photographers tried to capture his post-election golf game that he cursed at them. And he reportedly has clashed on several occasions with Secret Service agents who have impeded his movements.

“Public officials are people too,” he said during an interview with The Times in August. “They need to recharge their batteries, they need to let their spirits soar, they need to let their hair down, and it’s just difficult to do if the only place you can do it is sort of in your house. You can never do it outside, ever. It’s tough.”

Will Clinton jog through the streets of Washington? Will he stroll to his neighborhood McDonald’s for takeout coffee? Will he continue to hold his town meetings to stay connected to the American people? All signs indicate that he is going to try.

“I think that if you’re President you have to work at it,” Clinton said. “I’m convinced that one of the things I ought to do is to continue . . . to be willing to be with the American people in less structured circumstances.

In his maiden press conference as President-elect last week, he elaborated on the theme: “I live in an atmosphere that is highly personal and informal, where I know my friends and neighbors, and my constituents can come up to me and talk to me on the street. I would hope . . . I would be able to maintain some greater level of ongoing personal contact with folks than is typically the case.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Others have tried and failed.

Jimmy Carter tried once to attend an informal game roast at a friend’s house in the suburbs of Washington--and the evening ended with a Secret Service agent kicking down his hosts’ door. Gerald R. Ford tried to continue his annual Christmas ski vacations but found reporters lurking behind every mogul. And when Bush ventured out of the White House on forays for his favorite Tex-Mex food, other diners in the restaurant had to submit to weapon searches upon entering and then found themselves staring at a President surrounded by a ring of empty tables--again for the sake of security.

To be sure, the security threat is real. In recent years, one president, John F. Kennedy, has been killed, and two presidents, Ford and Ronald Reagan, have been attacked by would-be assassins.

Nonetheless, presidential efforts to escape the bindings are the stuff of legend. Carter would slip off to go fishing or jogging at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, and try to attend private dinners at the homes of friends, according to Jody Powell, his press secretary. Often, he would do this away from the watchful eyes of the press--but never far from the ubiquitous Secret Service.

Once he attended a game roast at the home of Frank Moore, then White House liaison to Congress. At one point, Moore’s wife, Nancy, went upstairs to fetch a book Carter had asked to see. On her way back, she caught her heel and fell down the stairs.

“Everybody jumped up and was screaming, and the President ran over to Nancy and dropped to his knees to try to help her,” Powell recalled. “All the Secret Service agent outside the door could hear was a huge crash and all these screams. He couldn’t get the door open, so he kicked it in. What does he see? The President, dropping to his knees.” Nancy Moore was uninjured, but Powell still shudders at the memory.

Another time, the Carters had gone to the Powells’ home during one Christmas season for a party. During the festivities, Ruff Fant, a neighbor of the Powells’, told Carter his wife had given him a shotgun for Christmas. Carter asked if he could see it. And Fant went to his house to get it.

“He was out the door and gone before it dawned on me that he was going to come walking back into my house carrying a shotgun,” Powell said. “I grabbed this Secret Service agent and I said: ‘In about five minutes a guy is going to come walking through the darkness into our back yard carrying a shotgun. It’s OK. He’s my neighbor.’ I had visions of Ruff laying face down in the grass with an agent’s foot on his neck.”

When Ford became President after the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, he, too, was determined to maintain some semblance of his former life. And he, too, discovered how difficult it was.

“I remember the Saturday after he became President, he insisted upon returning to Holland, Mich., for the Red Flannel Festival, some local thing with a big parade where he had gone every year when he was a congressman,” said Ron Nessen, his press secretary. “He went and did all the things he used to do because he felt he couldn’t disappoint those people. But he was never able to do it again.”

Ford tried to ski every Christmas, Nessen recalled, but that too was difficult. He had to borrow a house to replace the family condo. “Then they had to find a Secret Service agent who could ski,” Nessen said. “Then they had to have a press pool at the top, halfway down, and at the bottom. It was ridiculous.”

But Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has served on several White House staffs, dismisses the gripes of presidents who complain that they cannot lead normal lives.

“They are public people,” he said. “The others who are pulled into this orbit--brothers, mothers, children--you can feel sorry for them. But the one who is President doesn’t lose anything. He gives it up gladly. You’re only President for eight years at the most. Then you can be private.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.